“Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!” called the bluebirds. Mary woke up and groggily rubbed her eyes. Why won’t the birds shut up? With a groan, she rolled over to check the time. Oddly, she found that her alarm clock was on the floor and the time was reset to 0:00. With a sigh, she got up and went to find her wristwatch. It read 7:50; she missed the bus! Suddenly panicked, Mary hurriedly pulled on some clothes. Her first period teacher, Mrs. Monroe, would not tolerate lateness and Mary wasn’t about to put her perfect attendance in jeopardy. She’d had perfect attendance since first grade! She might have missed the bus this morning, but if she ran fast enough, she still had a chance to make it to school on time. Mary grabbed her backpack and dashed out the door.

       As she ran, Mary mentally fumed about the night before. She stayed up late trying to finish her essay for English. But, after she finished, she couldn’t fall asleep. She tossed and turned all night until she managed to finally doze off. She didn’t know when she fell asleep; she didn’t know when she knocked over her alarm clock, but when Mary woke up, she was late.

       On the way to school, Mary tripped on a small twig on the sidewalk. She fell face-first and got a mouth full of concrete. Then, as she was getting up, her pants ripped in quite an inconvenient spot. She sighed and looked at her watch. It read 7:55 a.m. It was too late to turn back for a change of clothes. Extremely frustrated, Mary continued to run toward the school. She still had five minutes to make it to Mrs. Monroe’s class.

       Mary ran through the front doors of her school and hurried up the flight of steps to get to her class. But, as she approached the last flight of stairs, the tardy bell rang. It was 8:05 and class had officially started. Dejectedly, Mary walked towards her English classroom.

       “You’re late,” said Mrs. Monroe as Mary walked in.

       “Yes, Ma'am, I know.”

       “Very well, please take a seat,” Mrs. Monroe made a mark in her attendance book. Mary’s heart sank as she knew it was a tardy that would go on her record forever.

       “Class, please get out your essays,” said Mrs. Monroe as she began to collect papers.

       Mary dug through her backpack; her essay wasn’t anywhere in sight. When Mrs. Monroe came to collect, she could only say, “I’m sorry, I left mine at home.”

       She could see the look of disappointment on Mrs. Monroe’s face.

“Mary,” she said, “Since this is a first offense, you can turn it in tomorrow for half credit.”

       Mary held her head low as Mrs. Monroe went on to collect the rest of the essay. She has never made below a 90 on any assignment, a 50 was completely unheard of.

First period finally ended. As Mary walked towards math class, her best friend Emily approached her. “Wow, what happened to you?”

“Nothing,” Mary replied tersely.

“You sure? You look awful today.”