“Valeria! Valeria wake up!”

I jumped from where my head was resting on the desk. The bright fluorescent lights from the classroom blinded my eyes for a second before I adjusted to the room’s lighting. My hand reached for my face and I felt something wet.

“Oh shoot!” I thought, “I drooled again.”

My classmates were looking at me as most of them laughed and others rolled their eyes. My best friends Mason and Kathryn were both laughing as they watched me struggle to come up with an explanation.  They weren’t surprised that I had, once again, been caught sleeping in class.

“Oh hey, Mr. Cantrell! What was that again?” I squeaked, clearly embarrassed by the situation.

“Valeria, we’re talking about the era of Greek Mythology. One of the most legendary and historic eras of human history. Why are you sleeping when we’re talking about such interesting stuff!” said Mr. Cantrell, while pinching the area between his eyes.

“Sorry! Won’t do it again!” I said.

He gave me one last glaring look before turning back to the class and continuing the lesson. I look back towards my friends, my eyes wide and awake from being woken up so suddenly. They both shake their heads and turn back towards the English teacher to hear more about Zeus and his sexcapades.

I slam my locker closed after having put in my textbooks and grabbing my lunch. I turn and lean back against the wall to watch all the students walking around the campus. I can instantly tell in what grades each student is in just from a single glance. A group who I can clearly see are freshmen run towards the lunch lines, quickly having found out that the lunch lines fill up quickly. They have a new toy look to them which is reflected in their style of clothes. Their clothes look new and bright in color. They haven’t yet felt the heavy dread of waking up at 5:30 to come to school, or even the tiredness of having slept for only four hours after studying for five. They have what we call the “freshman glow”, which seems to have some sort of Kryptonite affect on all the upperclassman.

I look over at another group of students. They look slightly older and yet still too young to be taking over the quad the way they seem to have done. The group all look the same clothes wise. They’re all wearing clothes that are too old for them and an air of confidence that annoys the upperclassman. The sophomore students laugh loudly and push one another around. One of them slamming into a tall senior who looks down with a glare. The sophomore boy quickly backs up and apologizes about twenty times before running back to their group of friends who all laugh at him.

Then I turn to a group of juniors. All of them sitting by a tree and laughing, though not as loudly as the underclassman do. They’re also a lot more dressed down. One of them is scrambling to get homework done. While also glancing at her phone from time to time, which I can only assume is a picture of the homework.

“Isn’t she in my AP Bio class?” I think to myself.

I bounce off the wall and start heading home.

After a long day of school and homework, I rest my heavy head on a pillow and instantly go to sleep.  I wake up in a classroom. I’m standing in the corner while class is happening but no one notices me. The lighting was an eery red and the walls looked as if old with plaster coming off.

“Why does nobody notice me? And why does the room look like a cheap haunted house?!” I say aloud.

I look out to the class of seniors and they all have the same features: bags under their eyes, shoulders slumped, some even straight up sleeping in class.

“What is that on top of them?” I ask.

Over the students was a dim light and some of the light was traveling towards the front of the class.  I see the light traveling towards Mr. Cantrell, almost as if he’s absorbing it.

“Oh my god,” I say, “The teachers are sucking the life force out of us!”

I yell and wave at the students, but no one can hear me. I see Mason sitting at one of the desks and I try slapping him but my hand just goes through.

“Mr. Cantrell!” I yell, “Stop what you’re doing.”

I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect him to suddenly look me in the eye and respond.

“No one will ever believe you!” He hisses, “I’ve been doing this for thousands of years and it starts when you guys are freshman until eventually, you guys have what you call ‘senioritis’! It’s the perfect excuse!”

“I don’t need them to, believe me, I just need to kill you!” I take one step towards him.

“Wait, what? Isn’t that taking it too far?” He puts his arms up and he takes a step back.

“Well, how else would I stop you from literally being the cause of senioritis. I could give you a death by a thousand paper cuts.” I take one step closer. I haven’t really planned what I’m going to do, but it seems like he’s scared.

“WOW! No, we can honestly work something out! Like do you want me to move to Russia and take care of children in an orphanage as repentance because I’ll totally do that.” He shrugs his shoulders and drops his head in defeat.

“What the heck! This was way easier than I thought!” I think to myself.

I look him in the eyes, “That’s exactly what you’re going to do. Leave now and never come back!”

He runs out the room and doesn’t look back.

I wake up with a start and sit up on my bed!

“Oh my god! That was the craziest dream ever.” I say.

I walk up to my friends and greet them.

“Guys I had the craziest dream last night…” I’m about to go into my dream when Kathryn interrupts me.

“Wait! Did you hear about Mr. Cantrell?” She says, “Apparently, he ran off to Russia!”

“What?” I ask, unable to comprehend what she just said.

“Yeah, I heard that he just got up from the bed, packed everything up and bought a plane ticket to Russia, mumbling something about some orphans.” She explained.

I think about what she said and I can’t believe. I single-handedly saved the entire school. I defeated Senioritis!