Bus Stop

Flash Fiction

Bus Stop

Jane, waiting for the bus, bored stiff. The sun was too hot, the bench too hard, the cars on the street smelly… Once again, she started thinking of getting her own car.

It seemed silly, she never goes anywhere that the bus doesn’t go. But she was getting tired of the bus. Waiting for it to come. Sitting with strangers, sometimes loud rude strangers. Well, that was the new guy’s fault. He hadn’t gotten handling the jerks up to snuff yet.

“You look familiar,” suddenly came a voice. She looked up. It was a man, smiling, but no one she knew. He was kind of cute, but Jane was kind of smart.

“Did you go to school at Ridgemont?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, that’s it. It’s a pretty big school,” he said. “I’m sure I saw you there.”

Jane smiled, not because she remembered him, but because she never went to Ridgemont. It was another scam.

As he sat, he said, “So nice to get off my feet! I just have one more sale to make and I can get home.”

“What cha selling?” Jane said, it was obviously expected.

“Necklaces,” he said, I try to get them in various jewelry stores for my clients. Just the one left, I was getting ready to give up for the day.

“Oh, can I see?” she asked, as expected.

Out it came, it was lovely. “Just sixty dollars!”

“Ooh,” she said, “it’s beautiful! But I just bought one really similar to it at Casey’s… cheaper too.

“Huh… he said, “I should go check that!” off he went.

She saw his picture in the paper a couple days later, arrested for selling stolen jewelry.

Now how could you get these exciting moments driving a car? Suddenly the bus stop won for another year.