Eve shook her head. “No. Sorry.”

“Ah, it’s okay. He did black-and-white movies and stuff.”

“Oh, cool! Sophie is doing an old actor, too. Audrey Hepburn?”

Brody paused. “So you’re friends with Soph now?”

Eve hesitated, and began to say, “Well, we’ve hung out…,” but Brody cut her off.

“Yikes,” he mumbled. “Just don’t take her too seriously, ya know? You think the show is looking good, though?” Brody asked again.

Eve nodded.

A huge grin lit up his face. And Eve couldn’t help but think that Brody was extremely cute. His smile had this sly but sweet quality, like he knew something special about you that you didn’t know about yourself.

She tried to remember that she was supposed to find evidence that he’d written the list. Nessa had practically screeched it at her as they’d left the theater. Sophie told her that in order to get evidence, she needed to make him vulnerable. But he already seemed pretty vulnerable. He just kept talking and talking.

“My dad—you’ll see him when he picks me up—he’s not so happy about the theater thing. It’s so … what’s the word? When something happens so much it’s tired? Like when a guy in a movie races to get a girl at an airport before she flies away, or a bad guy gives away his entire plan at the end or something?”

“Oh yeah! Clichés! Oh, I hate them. They totally ruin even the best books!” As the words came out, she knew they were probably the wrong ones, but even if her hair and makeup were different, she was still Eve.

“Yeah, it’s a cliché that my dad wants me to do sports and not plays. Like, Dad—be more original!” Brody smiled that smile again and said, “You’re really easy to talk to. You know that?”

Eve pushed a strand of newly straight hair out of her eye with a gloved hand. “Nessa says that.”

“Nessa’s really cool, actually,” he said.

Yeah. Eve knew that. Why “actually”?

“I’m gonna like acting with her,” he added.

“She’s the best,” Eve said.

“Doesn’t really fit the part, but she can do it great, anyway,” he said.

Eve thought she knew what that meant, but she didn’t know what to say. Should she respond, “She fits the part perfectly”? Should she explain to him that what he said wasn’t kind?

“We have way too much homework, right?” Brody changed the subject again before she had the chance to say anything. He kept leading her in new directions in their conversation. How was she supposed to get any information out of him?

“Yeah,” she said. And she thought of what Sophie might do. Sophie had all the confidence in the world. Eve pretended to be like Nessa, who was an actress, and then act like Sophie, who was … well, tough. “Ugh, it’s hard concentrating on homework now, though,” she said.

Brody raised an eyebrow.

“Now that I’m ‘number one.’” She put on a forlorn face.