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coincidentally, a lot of their classmates at Rittenhouse. That was one reason Kylian didn’t get bullied about his sexual preference—students were afraid he could get into his mother’s secret files. He probably couldn’t, since Dr. O’Connell-Mercer kept them locked up, but her office was in their apartment, so people left Kylian alone.
    â€œWell, Mom would be right this time. I am depressed. I just know that things would have worked out for Jason and me. It was like a bolt of lightning connected us—”
    â€œPuh-lease,” Sutton teased. “Save the theatrics for the camera, Bree, and get over yourself. Didn’t the website recommend three other perfectly nice boys without evil twin brothers to lead you astray?”
    â€œJason wasn’t the evil twin,” Bree insisted. “He was the good twin.”
    â€œJustin wasn’t evil either,” Kylian said. “He just wasn’t for you.”
    â€œIt was pretty evil for him to hang up on me.”
    â€œHe what? ” Sutton and Kylian gasped at once.
    â€œYep. I was in the middle of a sentence, trying to explain—”
    â€œWhoa. Stop right there,” Sutton said, signaling a time-out. “You actually tried to explain that you’re into his brother? You’re out of your mind!”
    â€œI didn’t even get that far. I was just going to say that I didn’t think we were really compatible.”
    â€œWere you going to finish off with, ‘I hope we can still be friends?’” Kylian asked with raised eyebrows.
    â€œAll right! I’ve had enough! Why don’t the two of you just get lost!” Bree wailed. “I’m having a really bad day here, and you two are not helping.”
    â€œStop being such a whiner,” Sutton said, making no move to get out of Bree’s bed. “You barely know this Jason guy. There’s plenty of worms in the ground.”
    â€œPlenty of . . . ?” Bree shook her head, unwilling to think too hard about that one.
    â€œIf you really want us to go, we’ll go,” Kylian said.
    â€œIn fact, we were on our way to the park. They said on the news that several snakes disappeared from the zoo overnight. Think about it, Bree: missing snakes!”
    â€œSutton, why am I supposed to find that tempting?” Bree asked, utterly mystified.
    â€œWhat could be more tempting than snakes in Central Park?” Sutton crowed.
    â€œThere might be a wedding to crash at Tavern on the Green,” Kylian suggested.
    â€œIf you two will leave me alone for ten minutes, I’ll get dressed,” Bree promised. After shooing them into the living room and locking her bedroom door, she thought seriously about going back to sleep. Of course, knowing those two, they would pick the lock.
    So she got dressed and followed them to the park, then on to Starbucks for coffee, then to Sutton’s apartment to do homework. The whole time, though, Bree’s mood never really improved. Once she finally wandered back to her place and saw the stack of books Jason had loaned her, she felt even worse.
    The least I can do is read them, she decided. It’s the one way I can get to know him better.
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    Over the next five days, she devoured plays by Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Prize-winning African playwright, essays on black writing by Toni Morrison, poetry by Amiri Baraka, and everything else Jason gave her. They taught her so much about what the arts could mean in black culture, she knew she would always be grateful to Jason, even if she never saw him again. She wanted to talk with him, especially about the place of film and theater in terms of black culture—she had some ideas to bounce around with someone else who cared about that kind of thing. It all just strengthened her belief that they belonged together. But there was still the problem of getting in touch with him.
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    A week later, after reading the last word of Soyinka’s