"Lexus."
    At the sound of his name,twenty-six-year-old Lexus Pierce attempted to stick his head in his desk,recognizing that awful,grating,impatient "you're-in-big-trouble-this-time-young-man" intonation in his teacher's voice.All around him,the children of the sixth grade snickered and whispered amongst themselves.
   "Yes,Ms.Ogrely?"
"Come here,please."
    This was bad.This was really,really bad.As if it wasn't horrible enough that the only person in the class older than Lexus was the teacher herself (at three hundred and eighteen years of age and still going strong,she was a remarkable lady,to say the least),she had to pick on him in front of all the twelve-year-olds and make him stand out even more than he already did.That was the way it had always happened,starting from the very first year that he was in grade six, when he should've been in grade seven.All of his fourteen previous grade six teachers had loved to pick on Lexus Pierce,the dumb,silent kid.
   It wasn't exactly his fault that he'd never passed the sixth grade.It was just that none of his teachers had ever understood his way of thinking,nor had they even attempted to understand that way of thinking.They were just determined to make him think like them.
   Lexus approached the teacher's bench,looking timidly up the mahogany panelling only to see the metal bottom of Ms.Ogrely's wooden gavel descending to rap him smartly on top of his curly blond head.
"Yes?" he squeaked meekly,somehow summoning the courage to brush the gavel away before Ms.Ogrely could do some serious damage.
   The gavel disappeared.A moment later,clutched in Ms.Ogrely's gnarled old hand,was Lexus' story,the one he'd been assigned to do for a class writing project a few weeks back.
     "Care to explain this?"
Lexus was suddenly extremely grateful that,while it did strike him as odd that he'd never been permitted to see his teacher's face,such a rule did prevent him the awful embarassment of viewing the expression of distaste undoubtably gracing her probably prune-like visage.
    "I...c-can't," he stammered.Come on,man,he thought.You're twenty-six.You're a big boy now.Why are you trembling in fear before this prison matron of a teacher?
    "Oh,I understand completely," said Ms.Ogrely sarcastically."I know it must be exceedingly difficult for you to communicate the probable reason why you've failed the sixth grade fourteen times." The single typed sheet that comprised Lexus' assignment trembled faintly as Ms.Ogrely shook a menacing fist at him.Lexus felt for a moment that he could read his teacher's thoughts loud and clear.Translation of Evil Teacher Subtext: What is this garbage? You call this a story?
    "I'm more than tempted to give you yet another failing grade to add to your extensive collection.Not only is this not sixth-grade calibre work,it doesn't even fit under any category of modern literature,not even abstract! To put it mildly,my four-year-old great-great-great-great grandson could write a story with more plot and substance than you,Mister Pierce!"
"But it was merely a social comment," Lexus protested,tilting his head back and trying in vain to catch a glimpse of Ms.Ogrely,staring down at him from her massive courtroom bench.He pictured her shaking her head,creating a humid not-quite breeze that would be scattering her paper-thin halo of white hair in a cloud around her shiny,balding,liver-spotted head.
    "A social comment?" Ms.Ogrely asked disbelievingly.She withdrew her wrinkled hand,taking with it the paper.Lexus could feel her studying it skeptically."I see no comment whatsoever in this...this...whatever it may be,let alone a social one!"
"Well...you have to read it out loud," Lexus tried to explain.There was an exasperated pause.
    Ms.Ogrely quoted,"'Once upon a time.The End.'" It was painfully evident in her voice that she still didn't see the message.
    Lexus sighed."No,I mean,read it backwards! If you don't understand a story,always read it backwards!"
"The End.Once upon a time." Ms.Ogrely sounded very tired,and about a million years old instead of just three-hundred and eighteen.
"No,all together," Lexus cried,feeling extremely frustrated all of a sudden.
    "Mister Pierce,perhaps if I'm doing an inadequate job of reading and understanding your assignment,the class might be of a little more assistance."
Lexus paled."No,Ms.Ogrely.Please.Not the-"
"Yes," she interrupted,growling menacingly."It's the witness stand for you." She pointed a finger the size of a bony,withered tree-trunk at the polished wooden stairs to the right of the bench.
   Resigned to his fate and trembling with unbidden fear,Lexus knew that he had no choice but to climb them,and so obliged,taking with him the paper that Ms.Ogrely thrust into his hands as he passed by her.
The class laughed a collective,nasally,mean-spirited laugh when Lexus appeared on the witness stand,miles above them,shaking like a leaf.
Oh geez.I'm cooked.They've got tomatoes in their fists,I just know it.
   "Class," Ms.Ogrely sneered,definitely smiling a twisted smile up there in the clouds at the top of the classroom,"Mister Pierce would like to take this opportunity to share his story with you.I would like you all to put on your listening ears and give him all your attention.This is very important to him."
The class snickered.
   "Take it away,Lexus."
   This was scary,incredibly scary.Every year,Lexus was summoned to the witness stand at least once to read something to the class in hopes that they'd either understand,or like him well enough to attempt to make the teacher understand.But he'd only found that as the years went by,he seemed to find fewer and fewer allies among his classmates,and the teachers just got more and more judgemental.So far,this year was definitely the worst.
   But he had to do this,and not just because Ms.Ogrely had a burning desire to embarass him.He cleared his throat.
   "'The Shortest Story Ever Written.By Lexus Pierce.That's me."
He didn't know why he'd reminded them of that fact; it wasn't as if he was able to go unnoticed very easily around there.But he always felt that he was being forgotten somehow.
Someone in the back of the room whistled.Lexus would've dropped dead right there if he wasn't so sure that no one would even bother to help him out.
   "'Once upon a time.The End.'"
   Unnerving silence.Lexus waited,then tried again."Backwards: 'The End.Once upon a time.'"
More silence,then: "Thank you,Mister Pierce." That from Ms.Ogrely,quite possibly burying her face into her hands in dismay.
"But I'm not finished yet," Lexus said quietly.There was a short,braying bout of laughter from two dog-faced boys in the front row.Lexus felt a small pang of annoyance.
"You most certainly are," Ms.Ogrely retorted.
"No I'm not."
"You are-"
    "Alltogethernow," Lexus panicked,his words spilling out in an indistinguishable rush.The class was beginning to talk amongst themselves,their attention no longer riveted to even Ms.Ogrely.He could feel his ancient teacher throwing waves of hostility out not upon the children beneath her,but onto Lexus as he quivered,leaning on the sanded wooden edge of the witness stand bench."All.Together.Now: Once upon a time,the end.The end,once upon a time."
    The class laughed,not understanding.They didn't even understand that this was their classmate standing before them; seeing him not as an equal,but as someone convenient and useful and there,for them to make fun of.They got their jollies out of seeing his anguish.Every class before them had as well.
Frustrated.
"Are you all stupid or something?!" Lexus screamed."I'm talking about The End,once upon a time.Once upon a time,there was an End.An End to something.Were you there when the once upon a time Ended? Are you even listening?"
     But not even Ms.Ogrely offered a commentary.Lexus could hear the scratch of a pencil on paper above the din in the classroom.She was marking their social studies test of the previous day,the one upon which Lexus had written only one thing: 'Point?'.
    Sighing heavily,Lexus threw the story paper up onto her bench,where it was eagerly snapped up and devoured by the teacher.Lexus heard furious scratching as he descended the witness stand stairs and returned to his desk amidst the continuing laughter of the twelve-year-olds.
    "Hey, Lexus," his seatmate called quietly as he sat down,putting his head miserably into his desk and shutting his eyes tightly.Her name was Beryllium.She was twelve,too,like everybody else,small and bland and tough."I liked it."
    Slowly,Lexus Pierce drew his head out of his desk,staring in confusion at his seatmate,the elvin Beryllium."You did?"
"Sure," she shrugged."Like,I had this cousin once,see? His name was Addy,short for Adversary.He was way corrupted,you know? Kind of like you,I guess.He's still stuck in the fourth grade,and he's one of those types always talking about the End of intel...intel..."
"Intelligence," Lexus offered.
"Yeah,that's it!" said Beryllium brightly."Always talking about the End of intelligence,Addy was.Having a cousin like him...I just kinda related to your story,that's all.It made me wonder if he ever did manage to make it past the fourth grade.Last time I saw him,he was in his forty-second year,and still going strong!"
    She turned back to her work,writing a single word again and again on a clean page in her notebook.
"Why are you doing that?" Lexus asked curiously.
"Because the teacher told us to," Beryllium replied,as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Can you read that word?"
"Sure I can.It's curric...cur-ric..."
"Curriculum!" Lexus mumbled impatiently.
"Thank you."
    Lexus put his head back in his desk.Behind him,a dark-haired boy named Gallium leaned over and poked Beryllium on the side of her head.She stared blankly at the paper in front of her,ignoring both the boy and her work.
   "Lexus," Ms.Ogrely called tiredly,and Lexus groaned softly."Come and get your story.I've finished marking it."
Lexus looked up hopefully,pushing back his chair and walking hesitantly to the front of the room.
   The gavel appeared from the great desk in the sky.Taped to it was Lexus' story.The paper was yellowed and crumbling,the ink smeared with the greasy fingerprints of the many people who had held that paper over the years with their pencils and jelly doughnuts in hand,and who had just as easily tossed it aside,unaffected.
   Ms.Ogrely had circled the mark she'd given him in the strict red ink that all the teachers used.There,at the very bottom of a long column of failing grades marked on the back of the story paper along with the signatures of fourteen sixth grade teachers that made it look like some sort of disorganized,rejected petition,was his fifteenth fail,and his fifteenth signature.
   Lexus sighed.