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able to come up with that much, so I jumped in. “It’s a bit hard to get ‘punched in the gut’ by elves, I think. So we’re really looking for parts that made us soar above the clouds? The part about the rocks talking was beautiful, I thought.” And Karen had already stolen the “I could picture that” line, so I was left with, “It’s nice to think about that. The idea of emotions being stored for a really long time.”
    “Like immortality,” Karen agreed.
    And that was all either one of us could think of to say about the poem, even though it clearly wasn’t enough for Annalise. “Do you want to go next?” I asked Karen.
    “Yeah, okay,” she said reluctantly. I could totally understand her hesitance. It’s kind of scary, telling other people what words have power over you. Like you’re making yourself vulnerable just by admitting to feeling something. “I kind of cheated,” she said, her words rushed. “I mean, it’s not cheating, but it’s from a play we studied last year. Did you guys do Macbeth ?”
    I wanted to groan. Elves from Annalise, and now Shakespeare from Karen? I was in over my head. But I just nodded encouragingly. “We did.”
    “Okay, well, I remembered how much I liked the line ‘Lay on, Macduff/ And damned be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!’” She shrugged self-consciously. “I don’t know if it exactly punches me in the gut, but it’s really powerful, you know? Like, this guy is fighting on even though he believes everything is lost, just because he’s a fighter. Because that’s how he wants to go out. I thought it was cool, that’s all.”
    “Heroic,” I agreed.
    Annalise snorted. “Are you guys sure you read that play? Macbeth was a psychopath.”
    “Yeah, not a hero ,” I clarified. “But that one line? I think it’s heroic. That kind of bravery, and facing death like that? It’s impressive.”
    Annalise just shrugged. Apparently she wasn’t interested in admiring Shakespeare unless she was the one spouting him. I’m not sure quite why, but I found that attitude kind of irritating. So instead of pulling out the song lyric I’d dug up at the last minute that morning, I said, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” And then let it sit there for a minute.
    I admit, I only knew the line because I’d been watching Buffy reruns and Spike had said something like it and I’d looked it up to figure out what he was talking about. But I’d watched the whole original scene on YouTube, and I was pretty sure it was kind of the same thing Karen had been getting at. “King… Was it Henry? I don’t know. Some king. He wasn’t a psychopath. But it’s kind of similar, right? That whole speech is about facing down the odds and going on bravely. I mean, Macbeth’s alone and King Whoever has all his men with him, but the bravery’s there for both of them, right?”
    “It’d be a lot easier with all of them together, I bet,” Karen said. “The line from Macbeth is kind of a punch to the gut. But then your line is more of a soar in the clouds, isn’t it? Because they’re not alone.”
    And right there in Ms. Coyne’s first period English class, I felt the weirdest sense of…kinship? Is that right? Just a sort of recognition of a part of myself in someone else. It was what Ms. Coyne said poetry was all about, using the words to connect to people, even people who were long dead, but I’d always kind of rolled my eyes at that part of her speech and ignored it. So it was a little startling to feel it happening, especially when the person I was connecting to was the girlfriend of the most popular guy in school.
    I tried to cover up. Just because I was feeling that way, it didn’t mean she was. “Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s important. They’re not alone, so it’s easier.”
    “I think guys are really good at that.” Karen shifted her gaze to see if Annalise wanted to join in the conversation, but whatever she saw didn’t seem to be too