What Comes After Read Online Free Page B

school every day of my life until today, and the prospect of going without her, especially here, at a new school in a new state, left me shaky.
    Half an hour later, a small truck pulled into the yard. A guy was driving. Book introduced him as Tiny — they were football buddies — and told me to squeeze in the middle. Tiny, who was even larger than Book, grunted a sort of hello. He seemed nervous, but that didn’t stop him from trying to feel my chest with his elbow, pretending to be adjusting the bass on his CD player.
    “Hey,” I said.
    Tiny said he was sorry; it was an accident.
    Book just snorted.
    Craven County High School was two stories, with walkways on the outside of both stories, but since they’d built it in a geological depression, it sat low to the ground and looked like it was sinking. If there was a town of Craven — and I understood that there was — they didn’t put the high school anywhere near it, because all I saw when we got there was the same woods that surrounded Aunt Sue’s property.
    Book and Tiny didn’t even bother to point me in the direction of the office. A couple of their large friends grabbed them in the parking lot, and they dragged one another off toward what appeared to be the gym.
    I stopped a small boy with bangs and a giant backpack that looked as if it might cripple him over time. “Can you tell me how to get to the office?” I asked.
    “Say what?” he said.
    I had to repeat it two more times before I guess he finally understood my Maine accent. In the end he just pointed, as if he wasn’t sure I knew much English.
    Kids on the first floor hung close to the wall on their way to classes or lockers because of all the guys who leaned on the second-story railing and spit chewing tobacco over the side. I thought I was safely out of their range as I hurried toward the office, but halfway there a disgusting black wad landed on my backpack with a sickening splat.
    I ducked into a nearby restroom to wash it off. Three white girls were already in there, sitting on the sinks, smoking cigarettes.
    “Excuse me,” I said to a thin girl in an oversize army jacket. She didn’t move except to blow out smoke and then tap her cigarette ash onto the floor.
    “I have to use the sink,” I said. She looked me over, shrugged, and slid off.
    A second girl chirped at me. “You talk funny. Where you from?”
    “Maine,” I said. I didn’t tell her that she was the one who talked funny. Her “talk” sounded like “towk.” Her “where” sounded like “wur.”
    The second girl offered me a cigarette. “You want one?”
    I shook my head. “Don’t smoke,” I said. “Thanks.”
    They all laughed. “Everybody smokes down here,” the first one said. “It’s practically a state law or something.”
    “What about spitting tobacco?” I asked, nodding toward the brown stain on my backpack. “Is that a law, too?”
    “Nah,” the army jacket girl said. “More like a sport.”
    All three girls tossed their cigarettes in a toilet but didn’t flush. As they filed out, the last one turned back to me and said, “Welcome to Hell, Yankee.”
    I shook my head after they left. North Carolina didn’t feel like a different state. More like a different planet — one so choked with cigarette smoke that there might not be enough oxygen to sustain normal human life.
    I finally made it to the office, and after signing some registration forms, I had to meet with the guidance counselor to pick up my schedule. His name was Mr. DiDio. He was a heavyset man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He also wore his hair in a ponytail. He had a large Persian rug on the floor of his office and several beanbag chairs. The room smelled of patchouli. He called me “dude.”
    “Sorry I’m in such a rush here, dude,” he said as soon as I sat down — in a real chair by his desk. He handed me my schedule. He had a southern accent like everyone else I’d met, though not as pronounced as the boy with the backpack or the