"It's too early for gym," Ashley groaned, wiping the yawn-tears from her eyes for the fifth time in the last ten minutes. "Why couldn't we have it in the afternoon?"

"Tell that to Melissa," I said, pointing to her faraway figure on the running track. "She's already doing pre-class warmups."

Gym was pretty much the only class Melissa never had trouble with. Her track times were the fastest among all the girls in our grade, and she was always eager to do whatever activity our teacher had planned. Incidentally, her favorite teacher (apart from Mr. Jameson) was Mr. Robinson, our gym teacher.

Ashley sighed, looking a little envious. "All that napping she does in class is to conserve energy for gym class, didn't you know? I wish I liked physical exercise as much."

"Same," I said, finishing up tying my shoelaces.

A loud whistle pierced through the air.

Mr. Robinson lowered his whistle and called, "Alright, everyone! Before we start, let me do a quick head count. Gather around here, please, and stop moving around!"

Melissa practically sprinted over, and I couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm.

Once Mr. Robinson finished, a frown settled upon his face. "We're one short today."

"We're always one short in gym," I whispered to Ashley. "I don't understand why he has to do this every single class; he should know already who's skipping."

"It's Nolan, Mr. Robinson," Claire, one of our classmates, said, looking like she was completely over this topic. "He's probably skipping gym again today."

"Like he always does," I heard someone else mutter.

"Well, that's just not right," Mr. Robinson said, shaking his head. "Could someone go and fetch him please?"

I stared in disbelief—and I wasn't the only one among our classmates. He had to be kidding us. He always tried to get one of us to go find him and bring him to class, but usually nobody knew where he went after the previous period ended. The searches always ended in failure, and only amounted to a giant waste of time.

"I don't think any of us knows where he is—" Claire tried, only to be cut off by another classmate.

"I saw him heading in the direction of the darkroom just now," Jordan said, oblivious to the sharp glares of everyone around him.

"Great!" Mr. Robinson looked relieved. "Please go and get him for me."

Alarm crossed his face, as if he had just realized what he had done. "Oh no, I couldn't—maybe you should get someone else—"

You dug your own grave, mister!

"Well, could anyone who's close to him please go?" Mr. Robinson said, checking his watch. "I really want to get started as soon as possible."

"Nobody's close to him," Melissa whispered to me, looking appalled by Mr. Robinson's assumption.

"Say, Chelsea, why don't you go?" another one of our classmates, Sheila, spoke up. "You're the one who always wakes him up in class, after all."

"Excuse me?" I barely squeaked out the words.

How did I have anything to do with this?

"Yeah, I'm sure you're used to it!" Cheryl, another classmate, said in a chirpy voice, as if by saying it in a positive tone I would be more inclined to the idea. "And I'm sure he would appreciate it much more if you went instead of any of us since he's more used to you."

Suddenly, I was surrounded with a whole class of students looking at me with hopeful expressions on their faces.

"Hey, please, Chelsea suffers enough having to wake him up almost every day," Ashley said, annoyed.

I was so moved that I almost cried. "Ashley, you understand me!"

"Why don't you go, Sheila? If you're so inclined on volunteering someone else, maybe you should start with volunteering yourself first," Derek said, looking unimpressed.

Sheila looked like she regretted ever opening her mouth.

"Well, it would make more sense if you went, Chelsea," Claire said, shrugging. "You're kind of ... known in school for being the one who always wakes him up, you know?"

"What? What is that?" I yelped. "I don't want to be known for something like that!"

"Okay, enough with the chitchat," Mr. Robinson said, stepping in and cutting off whatever else Claire was about to say. "Chelsea, it seems you're quite acquainted with Nolan. Do go get him, please. I don't want to waste any more of the class time than we already have."

I wanted to tell him that if he didn't want to waste any time, he shouldn't waste even a single second sending me to bring Nolan here. Of the few things I knew about Nolan, I was certain about this: he was not going to come to gym class unless I could somehow physically drag him here.

Instead, I suppressed a sigh and nodded at him. "Yes, Mr. Robinson."

As I left, I gave Jordan the hardest glare I could, even though my eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. To his credit, he couldn't even look me in the eye and had to stare at the ground.

The only comfort I had from having to run this beyond useless errand was the fact that while my classmates were running laps around the track, I got to slowly stroll to the school's darkroom. What was he even doing in the darkroom, anyway? I didn't even think he was into photography. Actually, he gave all of us the impression that he wasn't into anything, except for maybe sleeping.

It was still ten in the morning, so, as expected, there wasn't anyone in the darkroom when I cautiously entered. At least, I didn't think there was anyone—nobody responded when I opened the door and called out "Hello?"

The surroundings were pitch-black, and I regretted shutting the door the moment it closed.

"Nolan?" I said and instantly cringed at how loud my voice sounded in the silence of the room. "Are you in here? Hello? Is anyone in here?"

There was no response.

I'd never actually been inside the darkroom before; I wasn't interested in photography, so I had no idea what was actually done here to develop photos. All I knew was that usually when people hadn't started the process of making prints, the room didn't actually have to have all the lights off.

It was probably safe to turn on the lights ... if I actually knew where the switch was. I sighed and reached for my phone in my back pocket of my sweatpants.

"It's okay," I said aloud, trying to sound at least semi-comforting, "I can just turn on my flashlight, look around, and then leave and tell Mr. Robinson I didn't find him."

After turning on my phone's flashlight function, I started to make my way around the tables. I casually swung the light around as I walked to the opposite end of the darkroom. It was at the last sweep of my light across the room when I saw Nolan leaned against one of the table legs while sitting on the floor, knees hugged to his chest and eyes closed. He was clearly in deep sleep.

I was not happy that Jordan was right about where he last saw Nolan. Great, now I had to wake him up before English class even started today.

Keeping my flashlight trained on him, although I was considerate enough not to focus it on his face, I gingerly approached him. Instinctively, I came to a stop just a couple feet away from him. I wasn't going to shake him unless I absolutely had to.

Clearing my throat, I said, in what I considered a sufficiently loud voice, "Hey, Nolan. Please wake up."

He didn't stir even a little.

I sighed. Reluctantly, I squatted down so I was somewhat at his eye level. "Nolan, wake up. Mr. Robinson sent me to bring you back to class."

There was zero response.

I stared hard at him. Was I really going to have to resort to physical shaking before he would even react?

"Look, I would prefer it if you could wake up right now, tell me what a pest I'm being and tell me that you would never come to gym class so I could return to Mr. Robinson having put my conscience at ease," I said, knowing that I was probably the only one listening to my little rant. "As it stands, you leave me no choice."

I reached out and shook his arm hard. "Nolan! Wake up!"

He mumbled something and turned his head away. My grip on my phone slipped and I fumbled for it. Thankfully, I managed to grab it before it could fall to the ground. As I adjusted my grip on it, the light angled just right on his face.

"Oops," I muttered, but his eyelids began to twitch so maybe that wasn't the worst move in the world.

He was finally waking up! Relief washed over me; this meant that I could leave soon, right?

The second his eyes opened, he yelled and jerked away, rolling away from the field of light as if I were incinerating him with a flamethrower. "Turn it off!"

"Sorry," I said hurriedly, turning my phone to the side so that the light wouldn't touch him.

Okay, so a bright light shining into your eyes probably wasn't the nicest thing to wake up to. Now that the light was focused in another direction, I couldn't see the expression on his face; but he seemed like he was facing me.

"What are you doing?" he said flatly, a touch of anger to his voice.

"I ... Mr. Robinson told me to bring you to gym class," I said. "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shine the light on you, but I still have to ask you to come to class—"

"Turn it off," he said again, sounding agitated.

I did a doubletake. "What—you mean, the light? I can't—if I do that, I won't be able to see anything—and you won't be able to see, either!"

There was a long pause as we stared at each other.

"Fine." He sounded like he was saying it through gritted teeth. "But don't you shine that on me again, or I'll turn it off for you."

Of course I wasn't going to shine it in his face again; did he think I was some kind of monster?

"That was an accident. My hand slipped," I said, annoyed, slowly standing up. "I won't do it again, I promise."

"You'd better not." He made no move to get up.

I couldn't believe he wasn't telling me that he wasn't coming with me, instead wasting his time arguing with me about the light.

"Aren't you coming with me?" I asked.

"With you?" He sounded baffled. "Where?"

I gaped at him. "What do you mean, where? I just told you, Mr. Robinson told me to come and get you for gym class! You can't keep skipping it forever."

"Oh." Did his brain register nothing I said earlier?

"Well?"

"Where's gym held today?" was the reply he gave that I wasn't expecting.

"Uh, at the track."

"The outdoor track?"

How many other tracks did we have? "Yeah."

"I'm not coming. Leave," he said.

Now that was the response I was waiting for! I was free! I almost clapped my hands in joy before remembering that I was still holding onto my phone.

"Great! Bye!"

I practically skipped to the door, already thinking about how I was going to ham it up to Mr. Robinson about how I tried and failed to bring the problem student back.

And hopefully, he'd finally wise up and never do this to me again. The last thing I wanted to do was to have another conversation like this with Nolan.