...double check the basement door.

Even before you arrived at the door, what you would find seemed relatively certain. You turned the knob and pulled gently. The door swung open several inches with no sound beyond the rattle of the doorknob in your hand.

Cool air from the basement hit your hand first, then your forearm, then everything else.

In fact, why had you even opened it? Why not just check to see if it was locked? And having opened it, why only a little?

You could think of a few friends who would tease you for being cautious. But also a few who would have locked it and scurried away without a second thought.

There was the search for your lenses to get back to... and there was defiance of the taunting friends, proving to them you weren't a coward... even though they were neither there nor taunting.

It was genuinely important for you to find those lenses, and leaving it unlocked would prove to your absent friends, and yourself, that you weren't a coward.