Your head droops forward, chin pressing briefly against your chest before the sudden weight jerks it back upright. The cycle repeats itself again and again until your forehead finally gives up and settles heavily against your folded arms.

The classroom hums faintly around you, the scratching of pencils, the shuffle of notebooks, the occasional cough, but all of it drifts through your half-dreaming haze

You should be wide awake. English is your class, the one subject where you thrive, where you always have something to contribute. Yet today you are a husk of yourself, a barely upright corpse of a student who should never have attempted an all-nighter in the first place.

When the bell rings, its shrill tone slices through the fog in your head. Chairs scrape back, voices rise, and feet scuff the floor as your classmates bolt for freedom. You don’t move. The weight of exhaustion holds you prisoner, and the thought of standing up feels laughably ambitious.

Then a gentle pressure taps your shoulder, just enough to stir you from the dead. You blink open one eye, sluggish and gummy, to find Ms Roberts looming over you.

She is precise even in the smallest gestures: her lavender snout inclined toward you, the golden half-moon glasses glinting in the fluorescent light. Her black dress falls in sharp, clean lines, the golden belt catching a glimmer as she tilts her head.

“You’ve barely lifted a pen all lesson. That’s not like you. Usually, I can’t get you to stop talking about Shakespeare. Today, you could hardly keep your eyes open. Is something going on?”