Tom’s eyes were fixed on the screen. The computer game glowed in his dark room, blue light washing over his posters and the messy desk where his maths homework lay open. His character climbed the leaderboard, 98…97…96… His fingers tapped fast and he leaned forward until his nose almost touched the monitor.
"Just until I hit top 90," he muttered.
It was 11.40 p.m. Question 1 was half-complete. His pen had rolled to the floor hours ago. He did not bother to pick it up. Top 90 came and went. Top 85. Top 80. Outside his window, the sky was pitch-black. All the neighbours switched off their lights and went to sleep. Tom’s back ached and his eyes felt gritty, and he rubbed them with the back of his hand before he kept playing.
At 12.30 a.m., his eyelids were heavy. His shoulders slumped. He reached out, shut down the computer and fell onto his bed without changing his clothes.
Morning came too fast. At 5.45 a.m., his room was quiet and the sky outside was dark blue. His maths book was still open on Question 1 and his bag was still empty on the floor. He sat on the edge of his bed for three seconds, then went to his desk and switched on his computer. He quickly made his coffee and let it cool as the game loaded again.
"I’ll play till 6.30 a.m.," he told himself. "Then I’ll do my homework on the bus."
The red numbers blinked 6.30. Beep. Beep. He slapped the button. The glare felt like a warning. His finger hovered over Shut Down. One last match, he thought, and he clicked Play. His back hunched and he narrowed his eyes at the screen. Rank 80…79…78… He forgot about the time, the fallen pen and the empty homework.
When he looked up, the red numbers said 6.50 a.m. His jaw tightened. The school bus came at 6.30. He jumped up, his chair scraping the floor. He grabbed random books and shoved them into his bag, which he left half-open because the zipper would not close. His uniform was on the chair, creased. He pulled it over his pyjama shorts and ran out the door, hair sticking up, loose shoelaces slapping his ankles, bag slipping off his shoulders.
The school bus was already moving away from the kerb. Tom sprinted and stretched out his arm. The bus kept going even though the driver saw him in the mirror. He stopped at the kerb, chest rising and falling rapidly, and his bag thumped onto the pavement. This was the cost.
Mum had to take leave to send him to school. In the car, she stared straight ahead. "Tom, I had to take leave," she said softly. Heat crawled up his neck. He hid the frayed strap in his palm and kept quiet.
He arrived at the general office with his shirt untucked and homework untouched. He spent the whole recess copying notes and answers he had missed, and he received a harsh scolding. In the next period, there was a Science quiz. Because he had not opened his textbook, he circled answers at random. The score came back later: 14 out of 40.
That evening, he did not sit at the screen. At 8 p.m., he shut the computer, finished Question 1, then the rest, and packed his bag neatly. He placed his alarm clock on the table, away from his desk, next to his maths book. He wrote Homework before grind on a sticky note and stuck it on his monitor. He read it twice and felt the weight of the day lift, a little.
At the end of the day, Tom had learnt his lesson. Discipline meant choosing what was important before what was fun, even when the top 70 blinked within reach.
Read more compositions like this one in Playwrite.
Every piece in the library comes with a teacher's note and phrases that stood out.