The click-clack of chalk on a blackboard made an arrhythmic counterpoint to the ticking of the clock on the wall. A monotone voice assaulted my drooping ears, nearly putting me under. I was about ten seconds away from simply giving it up and slipping into the unconsciousness I craved. I didn't have the interest to listen. I'd heard it all before.

The room was cold, both in temperature and in the emotions I felt coming from it, the pictures of smiling faces and the childish drawings on the walls making a mockery of cheer as I shivered in my hard seat. To distract myself, and to keep myself awake, I chewed idly on the eraser end of my pencil, the crunch of the wood between my teeth giving me the only slim satisfaction I could find in my current situation.

"Psst! Psst!"

It came from behind me, a sound full of urgency and desperation. Or maybe something had sprung a leak. I took the pencil out of my mouth and glanced back over my shoulder. A small purple filly was trying to get my attention.

"What?" I whispered back, trying to keep my voice low. The filly simply pointed ahead of me and I sighed. I knew what was up. My time had finally come, and now all that was left was for me to face the music.

I turned my eyes front and saw the scowling face of a mare. She wouldn't have been too bad looking, if it weren't for the face that looked like it chewed lemons. Her mane was midnight black, and tied back into a bun so tight that it was almost screaming. Her coat was orange, and her cutie mark was a protractor. Half-moon glasses perched on her muzzle, completing the librarian look that was so popular among young mares these days.

Me? I didn't see the appeal of it. I like my mares with a bit more sass and a lot less class.

"I called your name three times!" the mare said, sounding vexed. She'd already worked her way halfway to a full head of steam, and I knew I was about to give her the fuel she needed to get the rest of the way. "Are you even listening to me?"

"You didn't figure out after the second time that I wasn't?" I asked. That wasn't the smart thing to say, but I never claimed that I was a smart guy.

The colts and fillies in the classroom behind me all went "oooh!" in perfect synchronization. No doubt they were impressed at my smart mouth. Either that, or they were really looking forward to the verbal beat-down I was sure to get. I hadn't made many friends here. In fact, you could say I hadn't made any at all.

Miss Persimmon didn't like my reply, not one bit. She scowled, her green eyes narrowing as her mouth turned down. The chalk she'd been levitating fell to the floor as she marched up to my desk, the children around me pulling back as if they expected an explosion. I didn't move. She didn't scare me. I'd put up with worse than an angry schoolmare in my day.

"Young lady," she said, and I flinched at the title. I felt the heat rising, the rush of blood in my ears almost drowning out the rest of her words. "I think you have something of an attitude problem. Do you want detention?"

"I don't want to be here," I reminded her. I kept my cool, but it was only by the tip of my hooves. I was scrabbling, holding on to the crumbling edge of sanity's cliff. If I let go, I'd fall into the boiling madness below.

And that tempted me more than I was willing to admit.

"Little fillies—" she began, and I flinched again "—need to go to school. You need to learn. Why do you resist that so much?"

I took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out. I was mad, sure. As angry as I'd ever been in my life, but it wasn't this mare's fault. She was a teacher, maybe even a good one, and she was trying to teach. It wasn't her fault that I'd already been through all of this. I'd graduated already, and I had no interest at all in going back to school. It wasn't her fault I was stuck in this situation.

But it was her fault that she didn't listen to me. Nopony did, not really.

"I told you before," I said, in as close to a menacing growl as my currently-lilting voice could manage. "I ain't a filly. I'm a grown stallion who got too close to a patch of poison joke."

She snorted and rolled her eyes. I could see she was already dismissing what I said as more attention-seeking and an over-active imagination, just like my mother had told her to on my first day here. It didn't help that none of the books in the school or town libraries had any mention of poison joke. As far as anypony in Hoofington knew, I'd made it up. Well, anypony but two.

"It's great that you have imagination, dear. But you're being disruptive. You need to pay attention in class."

"I'm not disrupting anything," I told her, getting my back up. "You're the one who came to talk to me. I was just peachy ignoring you and pretending I was somewhere else."

I could practically see the gears ticking in her head. Intimidation hadn't worked. Next up on the docket: try and fake some sympathy.

"Don't you want to grow up knowing all the things you need to know in school?" she asked me gently, trying to push the right buttons to turn me into what she thought would be a model student. "You need to learn! You're such a bright filly, you could be anything you like! A doctor, or a lawyer, or—"

"Or a police officer," I cut her off. "Yeah, I already know that. And I know that what you're saying is a load of crap."

Her face froze at the word, which would have made me laugh if I weren't trying so damned hard to hold on to my temper. The students in the class gasped again, shocked at that kind of language being leveled at a teacher. If they only knew. My vocabulary could strip the paint off of a house, once I got going. If it weren't for the fact that I was trying to watch my language for the sake of the kids, they would have gotten a real education that day.

"You're lying to these kids, and we both know it," I told her evenly, throttling my temper with both hooves. She reared back, the look on her face stunned, as if I'd slapped her across her muzzle. "Doctors? Lawyers? Most of these kids ain't gonna get that far. They're gonna work their tails off to study and learn things and still end up on their parent's farms, or hauling for a freight company, or doing some other low-skill job because the sick, sad truth is that most ponies ain't got what it takes in the head to be a doctor or a lawyer, no matter how hard they study. And you know it!"

"That is it, young lady," the teacher snapped, picking me up with her magic and trotting me over to the corner. Behind me I could hear my so-called classmates all giggling and whispering to each other as I was dragged off. She set me down on a stool, facing the wall, and said, "You're on time-out. And while you're sitting there, maybe you can think about appropriate ways to act in public."

She marched stiffly back to her the front of the class and took a moment to compose herself, picking up on her lessons once again. Math. Division, multiplication, the simple stuff. I had learned all of this ages ago. My anger drained away like soapy water after a hot shower, and I felt strangely refreshed and calm. Maybe I'd just needed to blow off some steam.

I sat on the stool and stared at the blank wall in front of me. A time out? As if that's a punishment. I could have laughed. All that meant to me was that I had an excuse for not paying attention. I let my mind wander, eventually blocking out the droning of the teacher and the occasional piping voice of a colt or filly who asked a question.

Time-outs weren't so bad, I decided. I'll need to figure out how to get stuck here more often. Somehow, I didn't think that would be a difficult. I seemed to be developing an attitude problem.

My name is Cinnamon Swirl. And this is my story.