It was the middle of second period at Apalachee High School, and the boy who few knew slipped out of his algebra class in J Hall again. That didn’t strike his fellow students as unusual.

“He got up sometime in the morning, and class continued as normal,” Lyela Sayarath said. “He was probably just skipping.”

Many teenagers weren’t quite awake on Wednesday morning at the high school near Winder, in rapidly suburbanizing Barrow County. Junior Julie Sandoval was dozing in her physics class as other students caught up on work. Sophomore Jacob King also dozed off, in world history, after a morning football practice.