Cancelled

Revise, revise, revise, the thought was etched into Emily’s mind as she squinted at the printed text in her books. There was only so much light her lucky little lamp could provide in the darkness of her room. She was going to lose as much sight as she did of sleep. But there were too many chapters laid out in front of her for her to stop now. She could hit the sack after the pop quiz her teacher had sprung on the class a day earlier was over.

The clock on her nightstand projected the time 2:00 AM in bold red, as Emily was so used to seeing it do the night before all her previous tests. It let out a series of beeps. Repetitive, desperate pleas for the exemplary scholar to close her eyes, all of which she had ignored for the past week. Despite her eyelids drooping lower with every ticking second. Despite her hand being too weary to even hold a pencil properly. The remainder of her latte trickled down her throat in an attempt to replace her fatigue with more caffeine.

The night progressed. Paragraphs after paragraphs of information kept on coming. Her lamp was running low on juice. Emily’s idea of thrusting open the windows for more air backfired, as she was now tired and being feasted on by mosquitoes. What she had gone through was muddled with what she hadn’t in one giant mess on the table she was tempted to doze off on. Many times she had looked longingly at her cosy bed, where fluffy pillows and a warm blanket awaited her. If only she could.
No
By this point, the scent of fresh pages began to sicken her. The equations she had been through dozens of times since this horrendous night began were now a fuzzy jumble of numbers dancing around the page, teasing her. Fueling her to stare at them even harder, under the false hope that it would make a difference. Emily was tangled up in a mix of determination and stubbornness like a turtle tangled up in a plastic bag, drowning in a sea of highlighted notes and study guides. The only thing keeping her going now was the vision of her barely scraping by, maybe even acing, this test. Her pot of gold at the end of all this suffering.

If she could just…stay awake…for a little longer…

The bright rays of morning sun shone into the room a couple of hours later, slowly waking a grumpy Emily from her chair. She felt as awful as she looked. The mobile phone next to her jelly-like hand lit up with a new notification, nearly blinding her. Gathering every ounce of energy she had, she skimmed through the two-sentence email her teacher had sent. The sound of a device slamming onto the solid table echoed through the entire house as she stood up to get ready for the day.

Can’t make it to school due to an emergency. Pop quiz cancelled.