lost at sea // lancelot [blitz]

I see the crack between the doors and the stop in the archway and further them away from each other once more, for just a bit more as I leave the scene; heading down the steps, rushing off to the path I've known is the way home for years now.

Heavy pants, quick legs, long steps and swinging arms, tick tock goes the clock as I book it straight back home. Better safe than sorry. The boy I knocked over could be a built, hot-tempered delinquent with his heart in a furnace, and my unwanted physical encounter with him could've activated it and sent it in a blazing fury of passion to tear the hair straight out of my scalp as payment for the incident.

Please Lord don't let this worst case scenario become reality.

But then I take notice of the sudden lighter weight in my backpack than when I left seventh period in the middle of my journey.

"Huh?"

Oh no.

My diary fell out.

"SHIT--!"

I am so dead.

Oh God, I am so dead.

I hear approaching footsteps of haste and in a fit of panic, I dive into the nearest bush. The pain of the impact, the twigs digging into my skin, the potential splinters--they all can wait as much as they're hurting right now.

I can't die, not today.

The deep breaths are fought down into bated ones as I remain perfectly still in the shrubbery. I can't move for a better position, that's a risk I'd rather not take because then he could drag me out and batter me senseless like I'm in some kind of horror movie.

Except the villain is a schoolyard bully who never grew out of the phase when he became around my age. I can imagine his fists like iron, though.

I hear another person gasping for air shortly after concealing myself, but nothing else.

Fuck, he followed me.

As the puffs become softer, he speaks.

"Hey, uh, I don't know if you can hear me or not, but, uh, you dropped this."

Oh my God, my diary must've fallen out when I bumped into him.

Why is his tone not cocky and snide? Why is it instead oozing uncertainty and embarrassment?

Hesitantly, I alert his ears to the soft rustling as I shift myself amongst the leaves to be more comfortable, then slowly my head rises and pokes out of the green until my eyes are the only prominent facial feature fully visible to the boy.

He is of a bigger frame than I am, but he doesn't seem like the type to leave traces of fire amongst other people's skin with his fingers.

I guess it was just a scenario after all?

I just stare at him in the awkward silence, failing to relieve the strange air between us with words of my own because I can't find them in the form of a proper response.