I raise my soda to meet hers. “Cheers, Beas. Let’s divide and conquer.”
On Thursday she passes me a note in class when Digby’s back is turned.
Veil Variants:
To dry the rain
on my storm-beaten face
On Friday I pass her back:
hypnosis
DOCTOR: You see, her eyes are open.
GENTLEWOMAN: Ay, but their sense is shut.
?—Macbeth
Her eyes widen, and she gives me a thumbs-up.
“Tomorrow—?bring everything you’ve been able to find,” I say.
“What are you two whispering about over there?” George asks, peering up from his microscope.
“Boys,” I say.
“Margeaux Templeton,” Beas says at the exact same time, and sticks her tongue out at him.
On Saturday morning I beat Genevieve to the door when Beas rings the bell.
“First things first,” I say, leading her up to my room. “You have to have one of these.”
We settle onto the floor, surrounded by books, paper, and pens, and I hand her one of Genevieve’s creations rolled in cinnamon and sugar. “A dirt bomb.”
She exchanges it for her notepad. “Here’s everything I found in the sonnets.”
I take her list and begin to compare it with mine.
“You?” she asks, biting into the doughnut with a shower of cinnamon and sugar.
Warmth and hope are seeping through me with every row of her finds that I add to my list. “I was looking for the two things that threw me before,” I tell her.
“Right. Freud’s teeth. Did you know there’s something about a snake’s tooth in a paragraph about dreams in Macbeth?” she says. She closes her eyes as she takes another bite. “And did you know that I’m kidnapping Genevieve for these?”
“I found something better for dreams and teeth in Romeo and Juliet,” I say.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
On courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream.
“It’s describing a fairy midwife who rides in a chariot made from a hazelnut,” I say.
