The Last Lollipop

Lilly Leaf was thirteen and convinced that most adults had forgotten how to believe in magic. She hadn’t—not after the stories her grandmother used to tell her: tales of invisible foxes, whispering willow trees, and a candy so perfect it could sweeten an entire lifetime.

The story she loved most was about a red lollipop that never melted, never grew smaller, and never lost its flavor. “But only one exists,” her grandmother would say, voice low and secretive. “It’s hidden where the world forgets to look, in the land of nevermore.”

So when Tilly found a faded bus ticket tucked inside an old book while cleaning her grandmothers refrigerator-sized bookcase—a one-way ticket to “Nevermore Station”—she knew exactly what it meant.

She packed a small bag. In it she took a journal, a compass, some peanut butter crackers, and a flashlight. Leaving a note on the fridge, “Be back Tuesday… probably,” she left and boarded the #777 bus at 6:36 AM. It was mostly empty—just a man with one eye, a woman knitting yarn, and a little boy reading an outdated newspaper.

No one said a word and the driver gave her a wink as the bus rolled away from the curb and straight into the fog.

Stops flew by, each one stranger than the last: a platform made of colored stones, a station built in the shape of a barn, and an imperial castle reaching high up into the descending clouds. But Lilly didn’t get off—she waited until she saw it:

Nevermore Station.

The sign was hanging crooked, carved from peppermint bark with a faint neon glow. She followed a winding trail of footsteps lined with lamp posts shaped like match sticks, leading her into a grove of old-fashioned bleeding-heart flowers and cherry blossoms that hummed softly when the wind blew. And there, in the center of a clearing, resting atop a stone shaped like a curled hand, was the last lollipop.

It shimmered in the light, impossibly perfect, as if it had just been unwrapped by the universe itself. Lilly approached slowly, half-expecting it to vanish.

But it didn’t. It just waited.

She reached out and took it. The moment she did, a warmth began to bloom in her chest—not heat like fire, but like sunlight blasting through a heavy fog on a sleepy morning. She gave it a taste.

Strawberries? Yes! Cherries? Yes… And it tasted like something else on top, too: some kind of lemon lime delight—like the sparkle of winter on a crisp snowy day, she was in love for the first time all over again. The flavor was indescribable and new each time, always perfect. And it never grew sour or lost its flavor.

Lilly sat on the stone for a while, grinning like a Cheshire cat who had remembered a secret the world had long forgotten. She knew she couldn’t stay forever—there was homework, dinner, and the ever prying eye of her mother and brother.

But she also knew that wherever the footsteps of her journey took her next, no matter how ordinary the world might seem again, she’d always carry something extraordinary in her pocket:

The Last Lollipop.