Leo leaned back in the chair. The victory was silent. It was unrecorded. No high score was saved. No one would ever know about the perfect strategy that beat the MOAB with only two lives left.
His mother was early. Ten minutes early.
He clicked "Play." Track selection. "The 1." The classic, straight-line beginner map. He bought a Dart Monkey. Then a second. Then a Tack Shooter near the first bend. Pop. Pop. Pop. The sound was a metronome of control. Each burst of a bloon was a tiny victory over the chaos of real life—the pop quiz he failed, the way Marcus looked through him in the hallway, the math homework multiplying like ceramic bloons on round 40.
The Last Unblocked Hour
Round 47. Victory. The last bloon popped. The words flashed across the screen in glorious, blocky letters.
Round 28. Lead bloons. He scrambled, selling his cannon and buying a Bomb Tower. Boom. The screen shook satisfyingly. He was in the flow state now, the one where time dissolved and only the path of the bloons mattered.
His heart slammed against his ribs. The rule was simple: homework first, always. If she saw the screen—the bright, chaotic blooms of color, the half-dozen monkeys waging war on cartoon balloons—there would be no bargaining. Just the dial-up tone of disappointment and the week-long sentence of "restricted access."