He cleared his throat, then he…started reciting Shakespeare in a clear, booming voice.
“¡Ser, o no ser, es la cuestión!”
Hamlet? Lachlan had decided to give Hamlet’s soliloquy in the middle of a test worth twenty-five percent of our grade? He’d lost his mind.
But why the hell was Dr. Garcia smiling like the cat who ate the canary at the front of the classroom? And why was no one tackling Lachlan with a straitjacket?
I didn’t like this. It felt like an inside joke no one would explain to me. Except I wasn’t the only one confused. There was more than one furrowed brow and gaping mouth.
Lachlan came to the end of the soliloquy and exchanged a glance with Dr. Garcia. The man nodded, and Lachlan gathered his things, shot me a smirk, then sauntered out of the classroom.
What? What had just happened?
I had to force myself not to rush through the rest of the test. Even if Lachlan had gotten a zero and wasn’t competition anymore, my grades mattered to me. I wrote thoughtfully and with precision, and when I handed in my packet, I wasn’t the last one finished, but almost. Only a couple stragglers remained.
Lachlan was waiting for me outside, parked on a bench, which he made look like doll furniture. His long arms were spread across the back, so he was essentially taking up the whole thing himself. Sun dappled his tanned skin. His face tilted up to the sky.
Did this man ever get tense?
I stopped in front of him, my knee hitting his. “You lost?”
He grinned at me. “Unless you got higher than a one-hundred, which is impossible,youlost.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Are you demented? You didn’t even finish half your test. I’d be surprised if Dr. Garcia even lets you back in the classroom.”
He cocked his head. “Did you look on the back of the test?”
“Why would I?”
“If you had, you would have seen a bonus question.”
I sank down on the bench next to him. “There was a bonus question?”
He scrubbed his jaw with his hand. “Not really a question. An activity.”
I slapped his thick thigh with the back of my hand. “Out with it.”
“I finished the first two short-answer questions, so I thumbed through the packet before I went on. On the back, it said the first person to stand up and loudly recite the included portion ofHamletwould automatically get a perfect score.” He shrugged. “I guess I was the first one.”
I stomped my feet. “That is absolute bullshit.”
“Says the loser.”
I flipped him off. He was lucky I didn’t do worse to his smug face. “I don’t think this qualifies as a win, Lachlan.”
He dropped his arms and straightened, peering down at me from his perennial high horse. “Are you backing out of our wager? Is that what’s happening?”
“Circumstances aren’t what I agreed to.”
His brown eyes narrowed. “Come on, Elsa. Admit you lost, fair and square.”
I shoved his arm, not budging him a millimeter. “Stop calling me Elsa. I know you know my name, you ass.”
He barked a laugh. “I always knew your name.”
“Then why do you keep calling me the wrong one?”
His brow pulled together in the middle. “Are you ready to admit you lost?”