What Comes After Read Online Free

little, only it didn’t. I might have been sitting on a rock. I checked and there was a big sheet of plywood between the box spring and the mattress.
    I heard Aunt Sue and Book downstairs talking about the Whoopie Pies, then I heard a great rustling of the bag and figured it was Book, moving on to dessert. Every breath I took in my closet of a room tasted stale, so I pried open the window and gulped in the cooler night air. Then I dumped everything out of my suitcases — wet clothes in one pile, dry clothes in the other. When I finished, there was no room left to stand, so I lay back on the hard bed and clenched my eyes shut, and stayed like that, trying and failing to pretend that I was somewhere else, until Aunt Sue yelled to me up the stairs.
    “You can come down anytime. It’s sandwiches for dinner, so you can help yourself.”
    The last thing I felt like doing was eating, especially if Aunt Sue and Book were still shoveling Whoopie Pies into their mouths. I stepped out of the little room and went down to the kitchen. Aunt Sue and Book both looked up, but without much interest.
    “I don’t feel very well,” I said. “Thanks for coming to get me at the airport and all. I think I’ll skip dinner and go straight to bed if that’s all right.”
    Aunt Sue shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. You’ll go to school with Book in the morning. You already missed the first three days.”
    I nodded and went back upstairs. I left my stuff lying on the floor — there was nowhere to put it, anyway — and, after one last look around, pulled the string to shut off the faint overhead light, a naked twenty-watt bulb.
    Later, as I lay on that hard bed, the heat and the sadness both pressing down on me, I heard the door slam shut downstairs, then somebody trying to start the truck — once, twice, a third time before it caught. Gnarly launched into a barking fit after the truck pulled out of the yard. I waited for him to stop. After half an hour I started to doubt that he ever would, so I pulled my jeans back on and went downstairs. All the lights were out, but I could see Gnarly in the moonlight, running back and forth again under the clothesline, barking at something in the trees, probably squirrels.
    I went outside and squatted in the grass near the clothesline. Gnarly came over and sniffed me, and I let him. After a while he started licking me, which made me smile for the first time since I’d been in Craven County. I lay back in the grass and looked up at the North Carolina stars.
    In the silence, I could hear the distinct sound of goats
maa
ing in the barn. Lying there listening to them made me smile, too. I’d always loved goats — every one of them different from every other one, and all of them goofy and playful. Dad said they bleated in a higher pitch than sheep did — that’s how you could tell the difference — and the sound I heard was definitely a herd of goats. I thought about going in to see them, but the barn was dark and I didn’t know if I’d be able to find a light. Plus I liked what I was doing — petting this new dog, the way I’d done with hundreds of animals over the years in Dad’s vet office. I figured I would save the goats for tomorrow.
    Book was snoring loudly from a downstairs bedroom when the mosquitoes finally chased me inside. Even though Gnarly had been peaceful when I left him, he started barking again not long after I crawled back into bed, and he kept me awake for another hour, though I was bone tired and desperate for sleep.
    I even tried praying to God that Gnarly would stop, though I wasn’t surprised when that didn’t work. It hadn’t worked when I’d prayed to God to save my dad, either. I wasn’t even sure I believed in God anymore. I had confessed that to Reverend Harding the day he came to the hospital and wanted me to pray with him over Dad. He said everybody had their doubts, but it was all right to pray anyway, because you never knew who might be listening, and you also never