Meanwhile, I looked at Wynezra, and Wynezra looked at me, and the words our eyeballs said were “We should talk.” We both stood up with our scripts and wandered nonchalantly up either aisle of stairs leading to the back of the theater. At this point, I was becoming quite skilled at not walking like an idiot in heels. We stopped several feet apart, backs facing the stage, staring vaguely at the same faded, blood-colored wall.

“I need you to get me the role of Duke Orsino,” I said.

“Oh my god,” said Wynezra. “Why, pray tell, do you need the role of Duke Arsenal?”

“Or-sin-o!”

“Whatever!”

“I need it,” I said, “because it will get me close to Imogen.”

“Oh gaaawwwwd,” said Wynezra.

“Imogen is obsessed with this play. She’s determined to be Viola, and I’m sure she’ll get it. She’ll put everything into this role. And that entire role revolves around her fawning over the Duke. We agreed to help each other, right? I need you to do this for me, Wynonna. Will you help me, or won’t you?”

“No.”

“No?” I said. I wondered if I was mixing up her meaning with a double negative. “No, you won’t… not help me?”

“No, I won’t help you, Ezra! Not with this. I’m sorry.”

“You have to help me! We made a deal. I help you, you help me.”

“It’s not that I won’t help you. It’s that I can’t help you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on. You have to know what I mean by now. Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?” I said. I was thoroughly perturbed at this point. “That you’re selfish, dishonest—”

“I’M DYSLEXIC,” Wynezra screamed quietly through her teeth. Or my teeth. Once again, I faced the bizarre sensation of a stranger doing things with my face that had never been done before. In this case, I was staring at a version of Ezra Slevin who looked like he could kill me.

And then the words sank in.

“Dyslexic?” I repeated. I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice.

“Seriously?” said Wynezra. “You sat through an entire day of my classes. There’s no way you didn’t notice.”

“I mean, they were mostly lectures…” I started to say. But I remembered all too clearly Wynonna’s Kryptos-wannabe class schedule. The cipheric text messages.

“Shit,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Wynezra, nodding furiously. “Shit is right. That is what I’ve had to deal with every day of my entire fucking life. At least, until we started jumping bodies. It may be your consciousness, Ezra, but it’s stuck inside my brain. And my brain was not built to read. Ever.”

As I processed what she was saying, I became acutely aware of the stack of pages—filled with words—clutched in my now-sweaty grasp. My eyes wavered ever so slightly.

Wynezra noticed.