Even the last New Year’s Eve Angela and I spent together, we were competing for a guy. Teddy Nguyen, a genetics major who lived in the dorm room below me, had asked me out several times; I just couldn’t meet up while studying for first-semester senior-year finals. After helping Angela prep for her Medieval Medicine class, I invited him to a party she was throwing, and the two of them flirted over the spiked punch all night. She swore she was only playing the welcoming host. But I knew she enjoyed taking something I wanted. It had been that way between us since we were children.

“Listen, Seb. All these are just old tests and papers from her undergraduate studies. I found her agenda book earlier but haven’t looked at it yet. Should we read that?”

“You do not want to look at the rest of these folders? There are also many more that rest under the bed.”

I withdraw a file from the box, entitled SORBONNE RECORDS. Small, rectangular receipts are flattened within, some stapled to larger papers, most just lying free. Swirling drawings trace the backs of two receipts.

“No, I don’t,” I say abruptly. “Let’s move on. I still have to pack all her stuff and donate what I can’t ship.” My extreme need to organize becomes amplified in stressful situations. Surveying the room littered with papers, clothing, and boxes, I feel like I might break out into hives.

Seb drops the folder back in the carton; it lands with a dramatic slap. “All right. I will defer to your twin powers.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your twin powers. Angela mentioned them. You were psychically connected? Studies have shown infant twins are able to sense the other’s discomfort without seeing or hearing the other.”

“You’re joking. Right?”

He smiles like I just asked him to explain gravity. “This power resides somewhere in the cerebral cortex, the area that controls our empathy, and the basal ganglia, the area of our brains that houses intuition. There are many mysteries associated with twins. Although I do not know if it pains you to discuss them.”

“Um. No, I’m not . . . pained.”

“Science is at its limit,” he continues, absentmindedly stroking the tattoo on his ankle. “Science is always at its limit until it surpasses itself. The earth is flat until it is not, gravity pulls greater on a fat man until it does not, and there are only sixty elements in the periodic table until there are not.” He pauses, inviting me to disagree with him. “We’re only a few steps short of understanding the final mysteries this world has to offer. Until we learn there are more.”

I nod slowly. “Let’s check out her planner.”