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“Hey, I think peas are disgusting, doesn’t mean they should be illegal,” Jesse offered.
“What’s wrong with you?!” Dean gasped in mock horror, dramatically flinging a hand against his forehead. “Peas are delicious!”
Zara cracked a grin. “Gay people are delicious, too.”
“No dessert for you until you eat your gays,” Jesse ordered, but his serious demeanor was ruined when he reached out and poked Zara in the shoulder.
“What the fuck?” Nicole asked as she came up behind Zara, shaking her head as she sat down.
Theo crossed around to take a seat next to Raina, snickering at his cousins.
“Be quiet and eat your gays, Nic,” Dean replied, stabbing a waffle bite and shoving it into his mouth.
“My friends are weird,” Nicole muttered.
Even though she didn’t like the other girl, Raina had to bite back a smile.
“Honestly, you should be used to it by now.” Dean glanced down at his plate. “Hey, where’s my banana?”
Jesse smirked as he poured himself a cup of milk. “Maybe you should ask Gra—”
“Jesse!” Both Gracie and Dean shouted. At the same time, Zara reached across the table to smack Jesse’s shoulder.
“Watch out!” someone called from across the dining hall. Raina’s entire table looked up as an apple soared over their heads. Raina ducked even though there was no chance of it hitting her.
“Sorry!” a pink-cheeked boy yelled, running around their table to retrieve the apple.
Nicole and Jesse put their heads together, whispering behind their hands. Theo and Zara began throwing Froots Loops at each other, with Gracie and Dean flirting on the other side of the table. Once again, Raina was left to her own devices—the outsider.
And that was how she spent the rest of her day, floating aimlessly around Trinity. Her friends were all busy, and Raina hadn’t wanted to interrupt their hectic schedules. Her first social interaction after breakfast came when she had tutoring with Nicole, and if Raina was being honest, she wasn’t sure whether she would have preferred solitude.
Raina had chosen a table near the back of the library because of the privacy it would give them, but the spacious library felt a lot smaller when Nicole dropped into the seat next to her. Raina immediately regretted not choosing a table where witnesses could see them. Just in case Nicole decided to act out the ending ofRomeo and Julietin real life.
“We’re going to start from the beginning,” Nicole announced, her tone making it perfectly clear she thought Raina was wasting her time. “‘Two households, both alike in dignity.’”
“You memorizedRomeo and Juliet?”
Nicole lifted a hand to examine her ebony nails. “Only the first couple of lines. I was bored.”
“Okay.” Raina flipped to the first page of her book. “So the two households are the Montagues and Capulets.”
“Exactly.” Nicole reached across the table, tapping a finger against Raina’s book. “See, for the most part, the play is all about the differences between the two houses. But what does Shakespeare do here?”
“He makes a comparison.”
“Good. Why?”
Raina raised an eyebrow. Did Nicole think she was dumb? “To show that they’re not really so different.”
“Congrats, you managed to understand the main point ofRomeo and Juliet,” Nicole said sarcastically. “Now give me an answer that’s a little less obvious.”
Raina looked down at her hands, a heavy feeling in her chest. Did Nicole always have to make her feel dumb? She shook her head, unable to form words.
“Look, Shakespeare is setting the stage for the rest of the play. Look at the first word: ‘two’. Then you have ‘both’. Those words are never about one thing. Shakespeare is telling us how Romeo’s and Juliet’s stories and lives are so intertwined and connected that it can’t be one or the other. It’s always going to be both of them.”
“Like when they both die.”
Nicole leaned forward. “Now, the rest of it’s a bit more complicated, because you kind of need some background knowledge of the time period that Romeo and Juliet lived in. See, Shakespeare’s plays are typically written during 16th century England, and back then, family was super important. It wasn’t just your parents and siblings; family meant your entire extended family, your name, your heritage, etcetera. And the bigger the family, the more power that family had.”
