The Stopover
On the bus to the plantation, a man and woman with large suitcases had got on outside a car wash. The couple had sat in silence until, unprompted, the woman said, “You were selfish and got off the bus, and it hindered me,” to which the man had replied: “Safety first.” Julianne fixated on using the word hindered to express frustration, and what would getting off the bus have made the man feel safer about? She had snuck a peek at him: sweatpants and a black baseball cap. Being newly in America, her mind went to the obvious answer: terrorism. The couple were from somewhere conservative, and the man was maybe one of those jumpy Midwestern types she’d seen on international news reports. Julianne considered why she wasn’t also jumpy though, why she was moving to America at all.
A short story by Hannah E. Joyner.