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There’s an empty desk in Lyn Carlisle’s journalism class at McMichael High.

It’s by the window. The one with a big plant in the seat because Carlisle doesn’t want anyone to sit there. It’s where Nick Adkins sat, the shy student photographer who liked to ponder the big questions of his teenage world.

Two months back, he wrote a guest column in the Phoenix Scope, McMichael’s student newspaper, about human existence.

Soon afterward, he penned a three-paragraph letter to Carlisle’s class about his need to be more social — a brave move, the teacher thought, because it showed his classmates how vulnerable he was and how honest he could be in a world that’s often insular, cliquish and cruel.

But she never told him that.

Two weeks later, within eyesight of his front door, Nick was killed in a traffic accident. He was barely a foot or two in the road, right before daybreak, trying to cross and board a school bus, lights flashing, stop arm out.

He was struck by an SUV going 45 mph, the speed limit, hit so hard he was knocked out of his tennis shoes and found at least 75 feet away. He died at the scene. He was 16.

In Raleigh, legislators introduced a bill that would install cameras on all school buses to prosecute drivers who ignore the law. They named it the Nicholas Adkins School Bus Safety Act.

In Stoneville, well-wishers erected a makeshift memorial — a white cross and bouquets of plastic flowers — near the spot where Nick was hit about 7 a.m. Jan. 26 on West Main.

At McMichael High, teachers and students held a candlelight vigil. They plan to plant a tree in his memory, dedicate the back page in the yearbook and establish a scholarship in his name for any college-bound McMichael grad.

Then there’s The Rock.

It’s the makeshift billboard, the huge boulder, near the tennis courts. Students cover it with birthday wishes, graduation messages and we’ll-beat-you rants.

For weeks, though, The Rock has remained mint green, with an anonymous quote Nick’s friends found on the Internet — “By chance we met, by choice became friends.’’

“I’m happy some softball team hasn’t painted over it, ’’ says Josh Schroll, a freshman who helped paint The Rock with his friend, Joey Plummer. “At least people respect it. At least, I’d like to think that.’’

Nick was short and thin as a stick, a sophomore who wore eyeglasses held together by masking tape and loved politics, photography and comedian Stephen Colbert.

That was so Nick, his friends say.

He wasn’t popular. He was hardly known, just entering his second semester at McMichael, starting to feel connected at this school near the sprawling tobacco fields of Ellisboro.

He was finding friends, his niche and his identity in his new home of 1,030 students. He was enjoying the History Club and taking pictures for the yearbook and the school newspaper.

He was beginning to blossom. That’s what makes it so tough.

“You have to ask the question, 'What if?’’’ Carlisle says. “On any given week, Nick would ponder what was important. He was so purposeful, he wasn’t tripping through things and that’s what is so gut-wrenching.

“He was capable of so much.’’

Meet Nick’s friends and they’ll talk about his raised Colbert eyebrow or his good-natured antics — leaving on someone’s desk a stapler, a tissue box, even a plastic cow.

It’s so high school. It’s a time of big Friday nights, bad acne and goofy prom pictures. It’s not a time of cosmic questions about life, death and the need to keep The Rock mint green.

But for some McMichael High students, it is.

Says freshman Josh Schroll: “This whole thing reinforces that life is practically meaningless.’’

Says sophomore Mi’Osha Neal: “Everything happens for a reason. God had something in store for Nick.’’

Says freshman Kristina McCarty: “You don’t think how people are supposed to fit in the world until they’re gone.’’

Says junior Jessica Oakes: “One little person, not thinking can change someone’s life.’’

Says sophomore Joey Plummer: “That road is long and straight. The school bus was stopped. She had to see him cross.’’

Police say they found no skid marks on the two-lane road into Stoneville.

In a few weeks, Judy Earlene Stillwell, the 60-year-old driver, will appear in a Rockingham County courtroom on a felony charge that could land her up to 15 months in prison — passing a stopped school bus and striking a person.

She’ll remember that day forever. So will McMichael High, at least parts of it. Like Room 102 on the first floor, where a big plant sits in a desk by the window and a letter about friendship sits in a frame on an office filing cabinet.

That’s Lyn Carlisle’s room. But now, that’s Nick’s room, too.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com