i couldn't resist.

i don't know what it says about me that i can't resist posting here now that i've created this thing. i don't even have any "followers" (disciples?) but for some reason i still wanna write for them. it's ludicrous.

this is an exercise we had to do in my fiction workshop. the assigment was to write about someone waiting for a bus. i wrote about buses that take you to times instead of places, because that is how i roll.

*

What the folks in Monroeville call the bus station is actually just a little grey counter in the corner of the Dairy Queen with signs taped to it indicating ticket prices. The Dairy Queen also doubles as the left half of the Pump 'N' Go convenience store, and from her red and yellow booth in the corner, Julie watches a man peruse the candy bar aisle. The man is carrying around a bag of pork rinds and he keeps looking from it to a king size Zero bar and back again like he can't decide. Julie wonders how long it'll be before he realizes it's impossible to make a decision at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Behind the bus station counter, a grey-haired lady sits on a stool frowning at a Sudoku puzzle from the Monroeville Mirror. In her head, Julie calls this woman Ethel. She looks like Levi's mother. Julie's never met Levi's mother - she only met Levi last night - but he had a picture of her in the front pocket of his backpack, and when he stepped outside for a cigarette, Julie went through his stuff. She thought the photograph was sweet, but a few of the other things in Levi's pack made her wonder about him. If you carry everything that's important to you in one bag, why on earth would you fill it half full with porn?

She's supposed to meet Levi again tonight at 7:30, but the bus to 7:30 keeps leaving with no one on it. Julie looks past Ethel to the window covered in smudges and lottery stickers. Outside, she can see the buses from earlier today lumbering in empty, then changing their times to later and pulling away again, hardly waiting at all for passengers. For as long as she's been traveling forward in time, Julie's never seen more than two or three people get on a bus at once. She figures most of the people of Monroeville are content to stay here at 4:30, lingering in the limbo of a pleasant moment for as long as they can, but never quite managing to finish that Sudoku puzzle from the Mirror or choose between a bag of pork rinds and a Zero bar. At least the 4:30 weather is nice. It's supposed to be raining at 6.

Julie herself has been stuck at 4:30 for weeks, sitting in the Dairy Queen that is also a bus station and a convenience store, stirring a cup of vanilla soft-serve that won't melt unless she takes it with her. She wonders how long Levi's been sitting at 7:30 waiting for her to show up, if he's even made it to 7:30 yet. They've only known each other for a day; maybe he'll decide she's not worth the wait and move on. On the other hand, it's not like they're getting any older as long as they're not moving. He could stay there alone for years if he felt like it and not develop a single wrinkle or grey hair. Maybe he's done this sort of thing before, is used to having to wait for women who can't make up their minds. Maybe that's why he carries those magazines with him.

Julie watches Ethel working on that puzzle and wonders how long she's been here. The elderly are usually more afraid to take the bus, afraid they might not make it off again. Julie hardly ever sees old people; most of the people she meets stopped taking the bus in their thirties, sometimes even their twenties. They find a happy time and they settle there like dust. But every now and then she'll see a hunched old man with a cane or a frail couple gripping each other's gnarled hands, slowly boarding the bus that goes to the End, and she respects the hell out of them. They never slowed down.

It wouldn't be so hard to make a decision, she thinks, if you could just catch a bus that goes back. Or if the people you wanted to stop time with weren't determined to move on. She spent a month at the 11:00 station with Levi last night and would have been satisfied staying there even longer, just the two of them (and that one guy catching a bus to morning because the coat of paint on his front porch had to dry overnight), but Levi said he wanted to get to know her better, and you can't really know someone you've only been with for a moment.

Julie's afraid of getting to know him better. Levi has long eyelashes and perfect teeth and sideburns, and these are things she can know about him instantly and be happy with for right now, but if she starts meeting him night after night, starts riding the bus with him, she might find out it can't work in the long run, and then where will she be? Alone at another station in Monroeville, just like now, but older.

Julie swirls the icecream in her cup with a red plastic spoon. It's exactly the same as it was when she got it, not melted in the slightest. The icecream is caught in a perfect moment, in its prime; it will never be as good as it is right now. But Julie isn't hungry. She's never hungry at 4:30. She watches Ethel frown down at the Sudoku puzzle, watches the man look back and forth between the pork rinds and the candy bar. Through the window, Julie watches the empty 7:30 bus leave and leave and leave.

*