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“I’m going to assume this had some bad side effects.”
“Yup. Hard to see, hallucinations,poisoning yourself.”
Raina laughed. “Yeah, so that definitely makes sense. I mean, Juliet didn’t use it as makeup…”
“Now, the poison used inHamletis a bit trickier,” Jesse said, changing the topic. Researching with Raina was one thing, but joking with her seemed alarmingly friendship-like. “Shakespeare calls ithebenon, but there’s no real poison with that name so we don’t know what it is.”
“Like Juliet’s poison.” Raina dug in her bag for a pen before scribbling a couple lines in her notebook.
“Yup. It could have been hemlock, yew, nightshade, or ebony. I don’t think it could be ebony though. Shakespeare refers tohebenonas a juice; ebony contains a resin.”
Raina raised an eyebrow at him. “How do you know so much about poisons?”
“I, uh, went through a phase a couple years ago when I was pretty obsessed with magic. Like, I knew it wasn’t real, but I was still interested in it. And poisons were one of the main things I researched.”
Jesse swallowed, hoping Raina wouldn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t really want to go into the full story about why he’d started studying magic. Normally, Jesse hated extra reading, thanks to his dyslexia. However, in the weeks after his grandmother was diagnosed with her second bout of cancer, he’d been desperate enough to head to the library for answers.
Raina only nodded and flipped to the next page in her book. “So we can discuss the poisons that Shakespeare was likely referring to inRomeo and Julietfirst, then segway into the rest of his plays.”
“Don’t forget Romeo,” Jesse said. “Do we know what poison he takes? I mean, he kills himself. That’s some pretty strong poison.”
Raina’s fingers danced over her phone keyboard. “Google says it was likely potassium cyanide. But it could have also been medieval monkshood. I have no idea what the second one is.”
“I haven’t heard ofmedievalmonkshood,” Jesse said slowly. “I'll look that one up; you research potassium cyanide.”
“Deal.”
Jesse logged on to his laptop, opening Google. A search for medieval monkshood brought up a number of links, and he clicked on the first one, toggling the font to be size twenty.
He couldn’t find anything about medieval monkshood specifically, but there was a lot on general monkshood. Most of it Jesse already knew—monkshood was used in ancient times as a coating for spears and arrows, mainly for hunting and war. It was fast acting, which was helpful when hunting large wolves, and also made sense with what Jesse remembered about Romeo’s death. Itwasused by the Romans to execute people, so Romeo could have been inspired by that.
Monkshood was commonly found in Western and Central Europe, and Jesse knew from class thatRomeo and Julietwas set in Italy. He had no idea whether Italy was in Western or Central Europe or not, but he could look that up later.
“There’s not a lot about potassium cyanide,” Raina said after a few minutes. “Cyanide poisoning is pretty dangerous, so it makes sense scientists wouldn’t want a ton of information about it online, I guess. Apparently cyanide is used in a bunch of different medicines and stuff, so that’s all there, but that’s not relevant to our project.”
“We can go on the assumption that Romeo took monkshood,” Jesse suggested.
Raina bit her lip. “I hate to leave stuff out, so maybe we can add a quick mention about potassium cyanide, but that we found monkshood to be the more likely option.”
“Yeah, we can do that.” Jesse looked at her thoughtfully, taking in the long blond hair framing her innocent face. Her big, blue eyes blinked at him, reminiscent of an adorable little kid with a hidden agenda to con you out of your candy. Something prickled down his spine, reminding him just who he was sitting next to.
“Well, this has been enlightening,” Jesse declared, wiping his hands on his pants and standing. “But I have another engagement. Should we meet again in a couple of days?”
“That works for me,” Raina agreed. “I don’t know what time is good, but can we say Tuesday? That gives us the rest of the weekend to take a break from the project, and Mrs. Dixon said we’ll be watchingRomeo and Julietin class on Monday and Tuesday.”
“When did she say that?” Jesse asked, surprised.
Every time he’d glanced over at Raina, she’d been staring into space or doodling. Even though Jesse had only been paying slightly more attention than her, he didn’t remember a movie announcement.
“She didn’t. She told Gracie, who told me. Gracie’s missing class on Monday and was worried about missing important stuff.”
Jesse nodded. “Makes sense. Mrs. D always favors Gracie.”
“She’s a good student.”
“Hey, I’ve got nothing against Gracie. Just saying she’s Mrs. D’s favorite student. Or at least one of them.”
Raina opened her mouth, then closed it. “I’m going to stay here for a bit.”
