Full Moon

CHAPTER 3

Ernest sprang, making sure to keep all of his papers in one place.

"Fuck!" he muttered between gritted teeth. Indeed, the boy was already late for class, and it wasn't like his Science classroom was exactly close from the main hallway. Just as the door to the dreaded classroom (for Ernest hated the Science teacher just as much as she despised him) was in sight, he realized that he had forgotten his science notebook.

Thinking about just how much he hated his life, he promptly ran back to the hallway, where the locker rooms holding in his precious notebook were located. The teen had to halt midway though, for one of the papers he was carrying had just slipped, barely escaping the grasp of his other hand, before delicately making its way to the floor, as if it were mocking him; cursing in a low voice, Ernest bent over...before being tripped to the floor and falling face first on the cold pavement. He hastily got up without even glancing back at whoever it was that had done the deed. From the corner of his eye, he recognized a bunch of guys who regularly played pranks and bullied him during their free time; despite the fact that he didn't even know their name, they apparently thought it to be quite amusing. The other students joined in their mocking cackles as Ernest resumed his race against time.

Despite wondering why he even bothered trying to get to class on time, he kept on running, barely looking where he was going...until he crashed into someone.

"Sorry I didn't—" the words died in his throat as he realized who it was he had bumped into. How many students were there in his school? Eight hundred? One thousand? And yet...

"Ernest!"

...he had to run into Ben. The blond had leaned over and regularly went from focusing on the notebooks and papers he was picking up, to glancing back at Ernest. That casual, tranquil air of his didn't waver, and neither did his kind smile.

"Feeling better?" He inquired. Ernest, in the meantime, was frozen with shock, his gaze locked on the boy before him. His heart was pounding, and he vaguely wondered if his expression reflected how mortified he felt at the moment. As if he hadn't made a fool of himself sufficiently two weeks ago, he simply had to make it even worse by bumping into Ben Hetchsen.

"Sorry for running into you. Here, let me pick that up—" the blond started, but Ernest didn't let him finish. Finally snapping out of his trance, the timid boy hastily snatched all of the papers on the floor before making a run for it, not looking back. Ernest did his best to ignore how fast his heart was beating, how dizzy and startled he felt; but most of all, the boy begged with all of his heart that Ben would quickly forget about the incident, and him altogether for that matter. He only paused once he had safely ducked behind a wall, taking advantage of the time to catch his breath. The ring of the bell striped him from his daydreaming, raping him viciously back to reality. He knew that he had been late quite a lot recently, and in his school, that meant he was up for a detention. Not even bothering anymore, he instead chose to walk to his classroom, wondering how his day could possibly get any worse.

--

Unfortunately, Murphy's Law proved just how tenacious it could be. As expected, Ernest had gotten a detention for showing up so late to class. The teacher then handed him back his test, and he saw with no surprised that he had failed it (Physics and he had never been great friends, as it turned out). The unbearable day dragged on, with people throwing bits of erasers and balls of paper at him; but that wasn't so bad: after all, he was used to it.

When all of his classes were finally over, he rushed to his locker, hoping to quickly get the textbooks needed to do his homework, then go home: instead, he found that someone had covered it in injurious remarks with a black marker, and that the lock was nowhere to be found.