Lisa Isaac

Last Stop

The bus slowed, its air brakes hissing. Celia’s body folded as the campus transport stopped. The other students quieted and glanced at the standstill traffic. Grumbling began. 

One girl was late to work-study, another to yoga. Celia was late to her next lifetime. She had a date with a month’s worth of Xanax. Checking the time, she furrowed her brow. Her roommates, with blessedly uncomplicated lives, would be home in a short while, and she wouldn’t have solitude. 

Stuck on Pine Road, by the chapel, sirens blared past and the bus did its best to move out of the path. One by one the passengers' pockets and backpacks dinged. The news came in fits and starts. “Some girl jumped off Snyder dorms,” a guy beside Celia relayed. “She doesn’t even go here.” Someone from the back gasped, “She flattened a car hood.” 

Celia imagined the girl perched atop Synder, then falling, arms stretched wide like Christ the Redeemer. Mid-imagination, someone said, “She’s still alive.” Celia put her fingertips to her mouth, half expecting broken teeth, and busted lips. Would she, or the girl, be manhandled by EMTs who didn’t care much for self-inflicted wounds? She had twenty minutes to think of such things before the bus began to move. 

Traffic had been rerouted. Her roommates were most likely already home. She thought of them busting her door, finding her. Celia pulled the line, and the bell dinged for the closest stop to her car, a fifteen-minute walk. Outside, by the bench, stood a trash can. She fished the pills from her bag and gave them one last shake. Then she tossed the prescription in the bin, its lid swinging shut.

Lisa Isaac is a prize winning, rural Central Florida Writer who lives with her wife and a smattering of entitled pets. When she's not writing or reading, she gardens and works at the local library. Her writing appeared in Bacopa Literary Review's 2023 edition, and is forthcoming in Sierra Nevada Review.