What causes gene to fail his test

Gene went to the beach, stayed out all night, rode his bike back to school (three hours), didn't eat breakfast and hadn't studied.

There was a search, a hopeless one, in the sand, and so we set off on the long ride back without any breakfast, and got to Devon just in time for my test. I flunked it; I knew I was going to as soon as I looked at the test problems. It was the first test I had ever flunked.