She took a desk in the middle of the room, towards the front. No one would sit in front of her, she hated having to lean to write down stuff on the black board. She set her books down and glanced around. The others around her were strangely subdued. Perhaps she heard someone whisper "test".

Panic shot through her chest. Test! Oh, no, she had forgotten about the test! She whipped her notebook out. Maybe she would at least have time to read the notes. Oh, please, oh please, she prayed. The words in her notebook were hard, she would never remember. Canine. Feline. Species. Phylum. Genus. And spelling always counted in this class. The girl was terrible at spelling. Why did I have to forget This test?

She had only scanned the notes when the teacher came in and the bell rang. She sighed in resignation when the teacher told them to clear their desks.

...

She waited in dread for the test to be graded. It was days before the teacher announced she was returning the papers. Before she handed them out, she went over the answers one by one. The girl cringed in her desk. So close to the front, it seemed as if the teacher was staring at her the whole time, drilling in each wrong answer.

The teacher finally came to the last question. The question that the girl had agonized over until the bell rang and the test had to be turned in. She hadn't even understood the question, with all the strange words that she hadn't studied. At the end, she had scribbled two random words in the two blanks. Canine and Feline. She had convinced herself that it could be the answer.

Now the teacher was staring at her. "The last question was the easiest question on the entire test. It was a gimme. And yet some stupid person..." The girl concentrated on keeping her face straight. She could suddenly feel her heart pounding away. She tried to keep her breathing quiet. She stared straight ahead and knew that everyone would figure out who the stupid person was.