North ran a finger over the harshly crossed out sentences. The paper under his touch was rough, drenched in the nervousness that accompanied Duck's desperate attempts to hide his apology. An effort to keep things light and playful after the self-assumed bomb he'd already landed in the message.
He wondered why the guy didn't redraft the entire thing altogether. Maybe Duck was trying for authenticity. His writing had never struck North as calculated, and, like always, there was a buzz of excitement underlying the note Duck left him.
Closing his eyes, North pictured the other boy on the bus to school that morning after having spent the night before reading over the letter North had left him. A shadowy figure of undefined features and frantic hands, huddled over a carelessly torn piece of refill, too relieved at having his mystery friend back to fully plot out his thoughts. It would be in reading back over his words that he would rethink the apology at the end, try to erase it from existence, and add a more playful post-scriptum. North somewhat wished Duck hadn't altered the note at all.
Uncapping his own highlighter, North waited until Mr. Ava returned back to the board before lowering in his seat. Like every other day since finding out Duck shared the same teacher, he tried not to surveillance the room. To see if he could spot Mr. Doubtful and, by default, Duck.
He tried to convince himself it wasn't the reason he had taken to sitting at the empty desk near the back with the leaking tap nobody else wanted to use. Pressing his glasses back up his nose, North hunkered down and wrote out his response, a lightness settling into his stomach he hadn't realized he missed in the days which passed not speaking with Duck.
YOU ARE READING
YOUR ONE LAST LINE |✔️|
Short Story*Watty's Shorts Winner, 2020* While cleaning out empty lockers during detention, North Kingsley comes across a battered textbook filled with off-beat and personal messages written in awful handwriting. On a whim he writes them a message back. Days...
