Apples Don't Just Mean School [in process of rewriting]

Shakespeare

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Emily's POV

"Well, I'll be here for an article, and I'm staying for one or two months before leaving for New York again," I explained. "What? I thought you'd be staying forever!" Matthew gasped dramatically. "Come on, you can live without me," I teased. "All days are nights to see till I see thee, all nights bright days when dreams do show thee me," he quoted Shakespeare's Sonnet 43. Wait, Shakespeare? "Since when were you the Shakespeare quoter?" He smirked. "Oft expectation fails, and most of it oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is the coldest, and despair most fits." That was All's Well That Ends Well!

"You're creeping me out. Who are you and what have you done to Matthew William Harper?" 9R laughed. "It behooves men to be wary," he declared - or more like, Autolycus from Winter's Tale did. "Oi, we're in front of the kids..." I reminded. "Never shame to hear what you have nobly done," Matthew insisted. I glared at him. Jared was of no help: he had excused himself to die of laughter corridor. "Let me play the fool, with mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, and let my liver rather heat with wine than my heart cool with mortifying groans..."

I couldn't resist it. I whacked him with a nearby book on Victoria's table. He doubled over, but still managed to choke out a passage from Rape Of Lucrece, "Pain pays the income of each precious thing." I gave up and returned the book to its owner. 9R was whispering and the laughter had died down. "Next time, I'll murder you," I threatened. Can you believe that he had the guts to reply with, "The great King of kings hath in the table of His law commanded that thou shalt do no murder. Will you then spurn at His edict, and fulfil a man's?" from Richard III?

Matthew's POV

I saw the murdeous glint in Emily's eyes and I knew that I was dead. "Oh crap," I muttered under my breath. 9R watched on with bated breath. Falling onto my knees, I scoured my memory for a quote that I had memorised. "O heavens, can you hear a good man groan and not relent, or not compassion him?" I wailed in theatrics, looking up at my ex-colleague with my best puppy dog eyes. "Hey, Jared? Come here for a sec, will you?" He came in obediently, hiding a smile. "Can you help me throw him out the window?" He looked her dead in the eye. "Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge."

Then we both ran to the opposite side of the classroom to escape her wrath. "You two are so immature!" she complained. I exchanged a knowing look at Jared. 'Hamlet,' I mouthed. He nodded. "They say an old man is twice a child," we both said at the same time. 9R was already half on the floor gasping for air. I grinned and high-fived Jared. I guess he isn't so bad after all... Now what? I can't hate him because he is WAY too nice. Darn it. What do I do now? Then, Emily advanced scarily towards us, wielding a hardcover book. err

I leaped for the back door, but Eren had beat me to it and locked the door. She had cornered us. The kids were in an uproar, and even Jeremy (who was teaching 8R beside us) was peering in through the window to watch the drama. She leaned in close to us, and whispered, "When the age is in, the wit is out..." before winking and strutting away sassily. I blinked. Did... Did she just quote Much Ado About Nothing on us? Yes, she did. "I am- WAS an English teacher after all," she said airily in response to our unspoken question and our gaping mouths.

Emily's POV

So they thought they could challenge me in a SHAKESPEARE quotation game? It's on. I flicked my eyebrows up at them. "Oh, so you wanted to play?" I smirked at their expressions. "We wouldn't dream of insulting a lady," Jared assured me. "But you would dream of insulting a man." I raised an eyebrow at him jokingly. He looked vaguely offended. "Right in the heart, there," he bemoaned. "What heart?" someone yelled out - one of the kids. They burst into a fresh round of giggles.

"Gender inequality!" Jeremy called out from the sidelines. "Jeremy, please go back to teaching your class, or else I will kick your a-" He paled at my words and speed-walked/ran back. "Anyway, I'm Jared Collins, and Ms Emily is going to murder me, so tell my family I love them because she is out for blood," Jared announced, shuffling away from me slowly. 9R was chuckling and whispering, still watching the 'showdown'. "What, never seen a woman kill people?"

"Just that no one really expected that you would react so strongly, dear," Jared said, causing the class to go, "Ooooo~" at his words. "Hey, you can't simply assume that just because I'm of the female gender and sex, I can't assassinate Shakespeare fans who have memoried, like, all his works, and are now quoting them excessively," I snapped. "Calm down there, Ms Feminist," Matthew joked. "We'll stop if it bothers you so much." "Well, it does."

Matthew's POV

Oh well... I wanted to recite Hamlet's soliloquy on suicide... Who asked you to memorise that in the first place? Honestly, you just sat down with a book on Shakespeare quotes, copied out six pages of them, then forced yourself to remember all of them by heart. Well, I had to prepare myself for this opportunity! Actually, screw this, I'm reciting it. We returned to the front of the classroom and 9R (thankfully) has stopped chortling at our every word. For some weird and miraculous reason, they found us funny.

"Wait, wait, let me say the one that I spent an hour on. Just one more." I cleared my throat, ignoring Emily's sigh. "To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep - no more, and by sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd.

"To die, to sleep - to sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause, there's the respect that makes calamity of so long life." 9R clapped and cheered. Emily pretended to faint. Immediately, Jared was at her side. She smiled up at him, and my already broken heart broke even more. I'm just the third wheel. She doesn't need me. I've got no chance.

A/N: I will NEVER complain about running again. Seriously. I ran an extra 2 rounds of the super long corridor because I thought it was 6 full corridor runs instead of 6 times of touching the ends. UGHHHHHH.