Disclaimer: nope this is not mine and i dont own it

Well heres the sequal... read and enjoy and please dont forget to reveiw me!!

Chapter One – Nearly Eighteen, Five Days to Go

APOV

Goodbye is always sad, I thought to myself. I ran my fingers along the hood of Jasper's old truck. He had been forced to leave it here almost twelve months ago. Ok, more like nearly ten months, but still... I sat perched on its bonnet. It had been nine months, twenty-eight days and… I checked my watch: midday… nineteen hours. I had been counting down the days since about a week after Jasper had left. It was five days until his birthday and, if I could rely on his promise, I would see him soon after. I pulled out my phone and quickly tapped out a text to Jasper.

I had no idea what had happened between then and now, the few messages that I'd received, compared to the many I'd sent, were utterly devoid of details, and few and far between to boot. At that moment, the sun came out and its rays shone down to where I was sitting, I closed my eyes and basked in the sudden, unexpected warmth. After only a few minutes, the truck felt like it had been sitting in the sun for a few hours. I could feel it burning through my clothes. I took the keys out of my pocket, which I had surprisingly found in my closet a few weeks after he had left. I opened the back door and crawled in. I stretched out on the back seat and stared at the roof of the car.

I promptly fell asleep.

JPOV

I woke to the sound of banging on my door. I groaned. Not again. I tensed, waiting for the door to fly open and for my father to come barging in. But it never happened, I opened my eyes. My father was still yelling and rattling the doorknob, but he hadn't managed to break through my barricade. I breathed a sigh of relief. I mentally thanked my idea to shove my desk against my door. The yelling continued and I put an arm over my eyes to block out the morning light.

"Another day, better get up and face it…" I muttered to myself. I rolled off my bed and onto the floor; I spotted an old shirt under my bed and pulled it over my head. My wallet was hidden safely in the false back in the bottom draw in my desk. I grabbed them too. I checked the time on my phone, 12.00 pm.

The banging on my door stopped and I heard my father thumping down the stairs and muttering to himself. I perched on my window sill and surveyed my room. Directly across from me was my door, with my heavy desk pushed right up against it to stop him coming in during the night. To my left was my bed and to my right was a chest of draws. I shook my head at my pathetic excuse for a bedroom. I shifted around, something was poking me. I reached into my back pocket and drew out a screwdriver. So that's where I'd stashed it. I used it to jimmy the hinges on the grill of my window. After putting the screwdriver back into my pocket I climbed out and slithered down the drainpipe. I landed on my arse in the garden; at least I hadn't landed on the rose bushes again. Even after all this time, I still had to perfect that move.

Due to my carless state, I couldn't get very far, and in a smallish town like this, there was no way any taxi driver would take me to an airport. They all probably knew my name and birth date by now.

I walked down the driveway, getting my cap out of the overstuffed letter box as I went, jamming it on my head; I took off down the street. First port of call, Mother. As I walked, I remembered the first few days after I'd been brought home.

I hadn't wanted to leave the house, but father had made staying inside impossible. So I walked down the street, with everyone looking at me. I got a small number of sympathetic looks, but mostly I got glares and death stares. Everyone seemed to know that I had run away, and most seemed to know my father's version of events.

I kept walking; most people had better things to gossip about now. The screwed up, runaway, good-for-nothing son of Peter and Mayrse Whitlock was old news. But the elderly woman across the street still took the time to glare at me suspiciously out of her front windows, until she saw that I had noticed her, and drew the curtains firmly shut.

I walked till I reached the outskirts of town, and took a left. Cemetery, the sign said. As I walked under the large arch that was the entry way, I saw the groundskeeper, Joe, to my right. He looked up and saw me as I walked over to him.

"Here to visit yer pretty young mother again, boy?" He asked me when I was within earshot. I nodded mutely, it was pretty sad that my only friend in this whole town was the grounds man at the graveyard.

"Got some flowers for the lovely lady?" He asked. I reached around him and plucked a red rose from the bush he was tending to.

"I do now." I told him.

"Agh, run along now, I might come and say hello meself when I'm done here." He said. I gave him a smile and continued on to my mother. She had been buried on top of a small rising, where she could look out over everything. I sat down and leaned with my back against her headstone.

"Hey mum… H - How are you?" I paused, wondering, for the millionth time, whether she could hear me down there, or whether I was talking to earth and bugs. An older couple gave me strange, but sympathetic looks as they wandered on past me. They probably thought I was crazy. Maybe I was crazy. Did crazy people know that they were crazy? "Everything's ok with me… I guess. I stopped hanging out with James and his lot, like you wanted." A bit late for you though, I thought. "He doesn't annoy me anymore, for a while after I came back things were pretty fucked. I know, I know, 'Language, young man!' I'm sorry." I was crazy; I must be; I'm getting disciplinary lessons from my dead mother. For the first couple of months after I came back, James had made my life a living nightmare, I wasn't too sure who was worse, him, or my own father. "Dad's getting better too, he's just been ignoring me lately, look, the bruise is almost gone," I pulled up the sleeve of my shirt to expose the yellowing bruise on my shoulder, "Everything's gone kinda quiet at home, for the most part. My eighteenth birthday is in a few days. Five, I think," I did a quick mental calculation of the dates, "Yeah, five days, then, I'm going back to Alice. I probably wont be able to come talk to you any more, but I'll ask Joe if he might be able to say hi to you every so often for me. Oh, here, and this is for you." I had all but forgotten about the rose, I laid it down on top of her grave. "Joe says he might come down and say hello later too. He's a real strange one, but he's a good person, I think." I stopped to think for a second. "You know what I'm going to do the second I turn eighteen?" I paused, I didn't actually expect and answer, it was just a habit, I wasn't that crazy, "No mum, not go out drinking and clubbing and all the crap that normal teens do," Because I used to do that all the time, its not really that big a deal anymore, "No, I'm gonna go straight to Alice. At exactly 10.47 in the morning, in five days, I will be eighteen, and then I'm gonna be outta here. Like a shot. By 10.48 I'll be on my way to Alice. And no offense, but screw dad. I don't know what you saw in him. But even if I have to walk to Alice. I'm gonna get there." I paused, thinking about seeing Alice again, "Of course, I'll miss you. I won't be able to come see you whenever I want to anymore. But I have to get outta here, you understand?"

"Well lad, I'm sure she understands, but is she going to answer ya? Probably not." A voice came from above me. I looked up and saw Joe looming over me.

"Oh, hello again… I was just…" I trailed off helplessly. Joe ignored me; he produced a large bouquet of colorful flowers, seemingly from nowhere, and lay them beside my solitary rose.

"There you go, Mayrse, m'dear. A fine son yer have here." He said. He sat down and leaned against the opposite side of the tombstone.

"Now boy, the grapevine says that yer father's looking for ya. I'd go and see what he wants. I'll keep yer mother company for a while a'fore I git back to me gardenin'." I stood shakily up. Who knows what father wanted? Misinterpreting my hesitation, Joe turned to me, "Git goin'! Yer mother aint likely to git lonely while I'ma 'ere." I nodded and headed off down the hill, I could feel Joe's eyes on my back, but I didn't turn to look back.

With a sense of foreboding, I walked through the streets. I was surprised to feel my phone buzz in my pocket, I flipped it open. It was 2.00 pm and I had a text from Alice.

Hope ur doing ok. Im looking after ur truck... still. Hope to see u soon.

Luv alice

She always knew just when to say the right things. I quickly tapped out a reply to her, turned my phone off and walked up my driveway, depositing my cap back in the overfull letterbox, along with my phone, just in case. I put my shoes by the drainpipe under my window and walked in the front door. I closed it very softly, and very gently, as not too alert father to my presence. Too late though, as I started up the staircase, something hit me on the back of the head. I fell forward and managed to turn around just in time to see my father raising his closed fist again.

ok, so i was gonna post this yesterday but shit happened... so do you like it? Jasper's dad to a total a-hole, yes?

now, the the reveiwer who asked why i didnt just continue with near midnight insteal of making the sequal, in case u didnt figure it out at the begining of the chapter there is about a 10-ish month time break between the end of Near Midnight and here, i hate having huge massive time breaks in my stories. also it adds to the build up of the story. sorry if im inconviencing you in any way, but thats just the way i roll.

so reveiw it telling me what u think, personally i like Joe and i do wanna see more of him.. reveiw me

Moony out.