Free The Great Good Summer by Liz Garton Scanlon

three—an older man and woman who remind me of my Papa and Meemaw, Daddy’s parents, which makes me sad because they’ve both passed on; and a man on his own, who I’m pretty sure is homeless. I recognize him from when our Bible study gave out clean socks and granola bars to people who were down on their luck, which, from the looks of it, he still is. So he makes me sad too, and I start to wonder if it’s just a sad sort of morning. Or if maybe every morning’s a little sad at the bus station.
    â€œOne way to Houston,” says Paul to the girl in the booth. Because here’s our plan:
    1. We will buy one-way tickets because we’re not exactly sure when we’re coming back, or how, or who will be with us. (Please, Mama, be with us.)
    2. We will buy tickets just to Houston, so that if anyone tracks us to the station, we won’t have given away our final destination.
    3. And we will buy tickets separately so that maybe the ticket girl won’t know we’re together. And that’s an easy way to keep our money straight.
    4. Also? You have to be fifteen to ride on the Greyhound alone—Paul found that out in his research—and since we are not exactly fifteen we plan to look as old as possible at all times. People like Mrs. Murray have always called me “mature,” so that’s what I’m counting on. Neither of us is wearing a school T-shirt at least, so that’s a start.
    Paul buys his one-way ticket to Houston, and I buy a bottle of Dr Pepper. And then, a few minutes later, after Paul’s gone to the men’s room and the homeless man has tipped over sideways in his seat, I step up to the window.
    â€œA ticket to Houston, one way, please,” I say, and I slide a little of my babysitting money across the counter. The girl, who has long, curved, tiger-print fingernails, slides a ticket back. She never even looks up.
    â€œHere I come, Mama,” I whisper as I walk away from the counter. “Everything is going to be okay. I promiseyou that. Everything is going to be okay.”
    And as the morning sun comes beating through the windows of the little station, I believe this, through and through.

Chapter Ten
    W e sit quietly in our seats as the bus starts up, hoping not to be noticed. Just like that, so quietly, and away we go. Right after we pass the big, beat-up sign for the county dump, the long lines of sooty, blackened trees appear. There was a week or so, not too long after the fires, when Daddy was coming out here all the time to help assess the damage and make bids on rebuilding the roofs. He said you could smell the smoke straight through the windows of his truck, and when he got home, his clothes smelled like he’d been camping. Now I lean into the rounded window at my shoulder and breathe in, but it just smells like bus.
    Before long the skeleton trees are gone. Loomer is gone. We are really and truly gone. I’m sure we’ve got a long way to go before landing in Florida, but it feels like the hardest part of the trip is over already. We did it. We left.
    I take another deep breath—more like a sigh this time—and I feel Paul do the same thing in the seat next to me.
    â€œY’know,” I say. “I’ve spent nearly my whole long life wishing for a dog and wishing for a middle name.”
    â€œI’m not one for dogs,” says Paul. And then a second or two later he says, “You don’t have a middle name?”
    â€œIvy Blank Green,” I say. “That’s me.”
    â€œWell, what kind of a name is that?” asks Paul.
    â€œA lame one,” I say. “Mama and Daddy decided to skip the middle-name thing, like we always skip a verse when we’re singing hymns at church? It was supposed to be meaningful—they were leaving room for God, they said—but to me it’s just always felt like I was missing a name. And missing a dog. And now I’m missing a mama.”
    I