This single instrument case study illuminates the aesthetic transactions an adolescent male student constructs in response to an experimental Gothic studies reading unit implemented by his cooperating teacher over a sixth month period in his seventh grade ELA (English/ Language Arts) class. Ray is described as ''lazy' regarding academic reading tasks both by his teacher and his own admission. The study sought to understand what aesthetic transactions Ray constructed with an experimental reading unit prioritizing his construction of aesthetic transactions in the text choices and related context. Qualitative data, including field notes, artifacts, and interview transcripts were obtained and analyzed. The findings reveal that Ray constructs numerous aesthetic transactions with the unit that results in personal, social, and global understandings as well as his production of high quality work. The data suggest that what appears to be passive laziness, might be better described as active resistance to typical reading tasks that fail to promote these aesthetic understandings.