8:02 PM

Izzy looked at her phone and realized with a start that it was 7:51pm. Gathering her books, she threw them into her backpack and headed for the library door. Doing a quick calculation in her head, she panicked – the last bus of the evening would arrive at 8:02, and given she was a quarter mile away it would be very, very tight.

Izzy burst through the library doors into a wet Seattle evening as the smell of rain on asphalt greeted her senses. Though nearly frantic at this point, she gave the slightest hint of a smile at the scent, which always felt grounding and reminded her why she loved this city so much.

Without another moment’s hesitation, the high school senior broke into an uneven run toward the bus stop. A quarter mile may not sound like much of a trek in the day, when the sun is generous with its time and buses arrive every ten minutes like clockwork, but at night, racing against the clock to catch the final bus of the day, which loomed like a closing gate, felt like one of those horror movie scenes where the victim is running toward a door that keeps stretching further out of reach the faster she runs. Each second became a sharp, breakable thing.

At the first intersection, the light turned red.

“Damnit!” she said louder than intended as she stood there bouncing on her toes. As car after car passed, she nervously looked across the street to the pedestrian signal as it slowly counted down the seconds. 20…. 19……… 18………….

Each second felt longer than the last. Eight seconds became an eternity, as Izzy felt a chill wind blowing through the tired city, and her toes began to cramp from the unexpected exertion. The moment passed as her heart skipped and her attention snapped back to the taunting signal.

As the countdown reached 10, she felt beads of sweat begin to make their way from her forehead down her face despite the cooling wind, as she remembered her mother’s text from earlier: Don’t miss the last bus, I can’t come get you tonight. Izzy imagined the house dark and cold, the spare key taped to the bottom of the mailbox, and her heartbeat pounded in her temple.

The light finally changed. Breathing a quick sigh of relief, she began an all-out sprint toward the bus stop. Her lungs burning and her breath fogging the air in front of her, she felt the buzz of her phone, which she barely dared to look at.

Its face read 8:00. Two minutes.

The bus stop was a couple of blocks away, just past a row of mostly empty shops whose proprietors were beginning their nightly rituals of closure, but all blurred as she ran by. Against her better judgment, she looked back over her shoulder, almost expecting to see the bus grunting past her, oblivious to her plight.

Fortunately, the street behind her was empty.

At the edge of the row of stores, her toe caught a raised slab of sidewalk, which sent her reeling, and she barely managed to stay on her feet. Acute pain flared in her toe, making her suck in a deep breath. She slowed slightly to test it. It was growing increasingly painful, but she found that she could walk on it.

“There is no time for this,” she scolded herself, and pushed on.

As she reached the final block, Izzy heard the sound she’d been most dreading - the unmistakable diesel growl of a bus engine. All over again, panic shot through her nerves, and she broke into a limping sprint, careful to not make the already painful toe worse. Eyes fixed on the bus stop now, she saw the bus already there with doors open and the internal dome lights glowing like a sparkling oasis.

“Wait!” Izzy yelled, but she was sure the driver couldn’t hear her.

As if in reply, the doors hissed closed.

No! No… no.

She continued to run, and almost unknowingly she began to wave her arms wildly in the desperate hope that the driver would see her. As the bus began to pull away from the stop, slow and tired, like it was considering its options, Izzy began to lose hope.

But just as she reached the curb, the brake lights shone a blinding red – the most beautiful color Izzy had ever seen – and the bus stopped.

She heard the hiss of the air brakes, and saw the doors open again as the driver, a middle-aged woman with tired eyes and a bandana leaned out. “Cutting it a bit close there, eh?”

All Izzy could do was nod repeatedly, as she doubled over with her hands on her knees and gasped for air. “T-th-thaaaank you. I was sure I’d missed it,” she stammered out between gasps for air.

The driver grinned, small but sincere. “Not my first rodeo. Get on.”

Izzy’s legs were shaking as she climbed the steps and fell into a seat, her backpack dropping to the floor with a dull thud. Even the cheap-looking interior of the bus felt like home, and the warmth coming from the heater lulled her into a quiet reverie as it pulled away for the second time. Slowly, she looked back over her shoulder to the darkened library in the distance, which now felt worlds away, like something she knew in a previous life.

Her phone buzzed again. Looking at the illuminated screen in the dark bus, she saw a new message from her mother. Did you make it??

Izzy replied, Barely, but yea.

As she sank further into her seat, exhaustion began to tighten its grasp, and she exhaled deeply for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

Izzy rested her head on the window as the rain returned in earnest, and she watched the city lights flowing past her in streaks of color. For the first time this evening, time became nothing more than a word, as the night bloomed ahead of her, open and forgiving.