Excerpt from If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

PERICLES: Antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees those men

Blush not in actions blacker than the night

Will 'schew no course to keep them from the light.

One sin, I know, another doth provoke;

Murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke.

I murmured the last two lines under my breath. I knew them by heart, had known them for months, but the fear that I would forget a word or phrase halfway through my audition gnawed at me anyway. I glanced across the room at James and said, "Do you ever wonder if Shakespeare knew these speeches half as well as we do?"

He withdrew from whatever verse he was reading, looked up, and said, "Constantly."

I cracked a smile, vindicated just enough. "Well, I give up. I'm not actually getting anything done."

He checked his watch. "No, I don't think I am either."

I heaved myself off the sofa and followed James up the spiral stairs to the bedroom we shared—which was directly over the library, the highest of three rooms in a little stone column commonly referred to as the Tower. It had once been used only as an attic, but the cobwebs and clutter had been cleared away to make room for more students in the late seventies. Twenty years later it housed James and me, two beds with blue Dellecher bedspreads, two monstrous old wardrobes, and a pair of mismatched bookshelves too ugly for the library.

"Do you think it'll fall out how Alexander says?" I asked.

James pulled his shirt off, mussing his hair in the process. "If you ask me, it's too predictable."

"When have they ever surprised us?"

"Frederick surprises me all the time," he said. "But Gwendolyn will have the final say, she always does."

"If it were up to her, Richard would play all of the men and half the women."

"Which would leave Meredith playing the other half." He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. "When do you read tomorrow?"

"Right after Richard. Filippa's after me."

"And I'm after her. God, I feel bad for her."

"Yeah," I said. "It's a wonder she hasn't dropped out."

James frowned thoughtfully as he wriggled out of his jeans. "Well, she's a bit more resilient than the rest of us. Maybe that's why Gwendolyn torments her."

"Just because she can take it?" I said, discarding my own clothes in a pile on the floor. "That's cruel."

He shrugged. "That's Gwendolyn."

"If I had my way, I'd turn it all upside down," I said. "Make Alexander Caesar and have Richard play Cassius instead."

He folded his comforter back and asked, "Am I still Brutus?"

"No." I tossed a sock at him. "You're Antony. For once I get to be the lead."

"Your time will come to be the tragic hero. Just wait for spring."

I glanced up from the drawer I was pawing through. "Has Frederick been telling you secrets again?"

He lay down and folded his hands behind his head. "He may have mentioned Troilus and Cressida. He has this fantastic idea to do it as a battle of the sexes. All the Trojans men, all the Greeks women."

"That's insane."

"Why? That play is as much about sex as it is about war," he said. "Gwendolyn will want Richard to be Hector, of course, but that makes you Troilus."

"Why on earth wouldn't you be Troilus?"

He shifted, arched his back. "I may have mentioned that I'd like to have a little more variety on my résumé."

I stared at him, unsure if I should be insulted.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, a low note of reproach in his voice. "He agreed we all need to break out of our boxes. I'm tired of playing fools in love like Troilus, and I'm sure you're tired of always playing the sidekick."

I flopped on my bed on my back. "Yeah, you're probably right." For a moment I let my thoughts wander, and then I breathed out a laugh.

Excerpted from If We Were Villains by M L Rio. Copyright © 2017 by M L Rio. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.