Excerpt: Merry War

“Stewart, Beatrice?”
“Here!” I called, huffing as I plopped into my desk. He raised his eyebrow at me but continued on to the next student.”
“Close call, Bea. You really should start getting to school earlier.” Kristina said, leaning across the small aisle between our desks.
“No kidding. I woke up about fifteen minutes before we had to leave. Dad was not happy.”
“I hope everyone read the assigned pages of Much Ado About Nothing, because we are having a reading quiz today!”
“Crap. Did you read it, Kris?”
“Yeah, I stayed up until like two in the morning. You didn’t read it?”
“I skimmed the summary online. Hopefully it will be enough to pass the reading quiz, anyway.” I rolled my eyes and pulled out my notebook and pencil.
“Questions are on the board. Please keep your eyes on your own quiz. The answers should be as concise as possible. If you can answer the question in one word, then please do so. Of course, do not compromise the integrity of your answer by being needlessly vague. The quiz will be worth fifteen points. You have fifteen minutes. Go.”
I looked at the questions on the board and sighed. I knew the answers to about half of them. Better than nothing.
I wrote the answers that I knew and made some educated guesses on the questions I wasn’t sure about. I blushed when Mr. Cullen picked up my quiz and glanced over my answers. I knew some of them were total BS, and I felt like he could see right through me.
The rest of class consisted of lecture. Lecture days were the worst -- we just sat there and listened to him talk. And talk. And talk. I had stopped taking notes after the second week of class. Or, I hadn’t really stopped, but my notes were a lot less diligent and a lot more doodle. The side of the page I was currently on was nearly black with the density of hearts, flowers, stars, and scribbles that littered the margin.
I yawned widely as Mr. Cullen wrapped up the lecture.
“Homework is on the board. Please get started on the next section of reading; quiz will be next Thursday. I expect your lists of vocabulary words complete with definitions, antonyms, and sentences by Monday. Have a nice weekend.”
I shoved my notes and book into my backpack and turned to Kristina.
“I hate it when they say have a nice weekend after first period. He knows we still have five more classes to go to.”
Kristina laughed and led the way to door.
“So how did you do on that quiz?” I asked.
“Aced it. It was easy. How did you do?”
“I had to make up some of the answers, but I’m sure I got at least half right. It’s only fifteen points anyway, I’ll make it up on the final paper.”
“That’s the spirit. See you at lunch?”
“Yeah, see you,” I said, heading out the doors and toward the foreign language building. I had Spanish next.
“Buenos días, Maria.”
“Buenos dias, Señora.” My Spanish name was Maria. We had to pick them in Spanish 1 because... well, I never really understood why we did it, but all the language classes did it. Kristina was Victoire in her French class.
I took my seat with a sigh. I had this class with Kristina’s cousin, Ben. He was... kind of annoying. He was only a Junior, but he thought he was the debate team’s greatest hotshot. Which he wasn’t; that was a title that, if it were to be applied to anyone, would be mine. I guess you could call us rivals. We were also Spanish partners.
“Hola, Arturo.” That was his Spanish name. Arrogant boy thought he was some kind of child-king of the school. He probably had one of those collapsible lightsabers at home that he pretended to pull out of stones.
“Hola, Maria.”
We didn’t talk much more than that. The Señora didn’t appreciate our bickering, and we had a hard time communicating in anything but insults and jabs. There weren’t any real hard feelings between us, we just felt that our relationship was better suited to rivalry than friendship.
“Heard Cullen gave a quiz today. Was it hard?” he asked as I took my seat.
“Nah, not if you’ve read the assigned pages.”
“So you probably didn’t do so well, then?” Ben smirked.
“Shut up. I did just fine. And I’m really good at BSing answers.”
“I’ll say.”
I rolled my eyes but didn’t have a chance to rebut. Señora Wilkins turned out the lights and motioned to the TV that was hanging in the corner of the room. “Time for announcements, chicos! Silencio, por favor!”
Ready for the tournament tonight?
Ben had scribbled a note on the side of his warm-up sheet.
You bet I am. I’m breaking to Finals this week.
Sure you are. Just like at the Dobson Invitational?
I glared at him and looked back at the TV. The announcements were almost over, thank Lincoln and Douglass. There was no way I was going to dignify that with a response and he knew it. I would have broken at Dobson, but that stupid judge didn’t stick to his paradigm and I got screwed.
This time I would show them. I had a killer case and I was going to Finals. End of story.