Page 12 of An Academy for Liars

Dante’s hand peeled away from the desk and hovered, shaking, a few inches above the pig, then he seized it in a jerky motion reminiscent of an arcade claw machine fastening its metal fingers around a stuffed toy. He lifted the figurine a few inches above the desk, his eyes on Lennon, then dropped it abruptly as though it had burned him.

The pig bounced twice, struck the floor—its snout breaking on impact—and rolled across the classroom, stopping just short of Lennon’s sneaker. She leaned out of the desk to pick it up. It was heavier than it looked, and the scorched clay was rough to the touch.

Lennon raised her gaze to Dante again, parting her lips to ask him whether she’d passed the exam, but her tongue remained, limp and useless, like a small dead animal at the basin of her mouth. The exhaustion hit her then and she collapsed back into her chair, dizzy and utterly spent.

Dante eyed her for a beat longer, then nodded, first to himself then at Lennon, as if to admit defeat. In his eyes, something close to contempt. “Congratulations on your acceptance to Drayton.”

Lennon suffered aseries of four seizures in the hours that followed the entrance exam. The first, the worst of the four, on the floor of the classroom at Dante’s feet. The second in his arms as he carried her, thrashing, to the infirmary, where she suffered two more. Lennon, for her part, recalled next to none of this. What she did remember came in fractured dreams of scorched concrete and the sour aroma of trash left to rot in the summer sun. In her sticky hand, a thawing freeze cup popsicle, red juice leaking like blood through a crack in the Styrofoam rim. Across the street, in the fuzzy reflection of a car window, the aberration looked eyeless and unspeaking.

The dream changed again, homed in on the campus of Drayton, and she saw a boy, followed him as he walked barefoot across the lush lawn until he reached the porch of a fine house with shuttered windows. He raised a fist and knocked on the doors, over and over again, until his knuckles blackened and split, exposing a glimpse of white bone below.

When she woke the following morning, it was to an entirelydifferent boy sitting upright in the hospital bed beside hers. He was much older than the boy she’d dreamed of, with eyebrows so thick they very nearly met above his nose and long brown hair, which he wore tucked behind both of his pink ears. Something in his manner reminded Lennon of a very malnourished mouse. There was an old book spread open in his lap; a plastic inhaler stuck out of the middle pages, a kind of makeshift bookmark.

“You’re up,” he said, without the vaguest trace of concern. “I was beginning to think you were dead. Or dying.”

Lennon squinted past him, her eyes slow to adjust to the sunlight. The space—a large room that reminded Lennon of the orphanage dormitories in historical films—had a run of wrought-iron cots, twelve on each side, facing one another. All of them empty. The ceiling domed into a large skylight, warm sun casting in through it.

On the far wall was a bowed oriel window that looked out onto an overgrown courtyard. There were flowers there, flocked with butterflies, and strange statues—the suggestion of a human body, rendered in tangled wire, glass-blown orbs that resembled animals…or perhaps organs.

“Where am I?” said Lennon hoarsely. Wincing, she dragged herself into a sitting position. Her body felt like one gigantic sprain. Every movement hurt, even breathing.

“You’re at Drayton,” said the boy, and he flipped the page of his book. She decided, reluctantly, that he was handsome, but it took some squinting to really see it because he looked so sick and pale. “The doctor will be back soon so you can ask him all of your pressing questions.”

Lennon swallowed with a grimace, tasting blood and sour spit. There was a glass of water on the table between the two beds and she reached for it. It had a mineral taste, and it was slightly carbonated,the bubbles burning a bit when she rinsed her mouth, gargled, and spit the water back into the glass. It was rusty with blood. She tested the raw wound on the inside of her cheek with the tip of her tongue and realized she must’ve bitten it while she was knocked out. “How long have I been out?”

“Not long,” said the boy, and he gave a rattling cough, tugged the inhaler free of the pages of his book, and pulled on the mouthpiece the way you’d smoke a pipe. He took a few hoarse breaths, recovered himself. “Dr. Lowe dumped you here last night after your seizure—”

“I had aseizure?” That explained the body aches, at least.

“Four seizures, actually. You were out cold by the time you were admitted. I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You were in rough shape. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I had an asthma attack in the middle of my entry exam. Thought for sure I’d failed.”

“You’re a student here?” Lennon asked.

The boy nodded, didn’t look up from his book. “Sawyer. Second year.”

“Lennon,” she said. “Is there a bathroom around here? Someplace I can wash up?”

“You should really wait for the doctor.”

“Well, I’m not going to,” said Lennon, swinging her legs out of bed. “I feel like shit, and I smell even worse.”

Sawyer nodded to the other end of the room. “Down the hall to the right.”

The bathroom, like the infirmary, was empty. There was a run of wood-walled toilet stalls, basin sinks in sterile white porcelain. On a shelf near the showers were towels, disposable toothbrushes wrapped in plastic, crude-cut cubes of lye soap, and other toiletries. In the small mirror above one of the sinks, she caught her reflection. Apart from the blood crusted beneath her nose, she looked better than she’dexpected to, given how badly her muscles ached. The bags that perpetually shadowed her eyes had faded considerably. The aberration with no eyes was nowhere to be seen.

Lennon stripped out of her hospital gown and limped into an open shower stall with a slick tile floor. She bathed with a rough washcloth and a heavy brick of lye soap that smelled like jasmine. As she washed, taking care to rinse the blood from beneath her nose, she felt she was slowly reassembling the pieces of her person, but differently than the way she’d been assembled before.

When she finished showering, she stepped out into the empty cavern of the bathroom. On the countertop were the same T-shirt, shorts, bra, and socks she’d been wearing yesterday, folded and freshly laundered. Her sneakers looked like they’d been replaced, the soles scrubbed clean with a toothbrush. Careful to avoid making eye contact with her own reflection, for fear of seeing the aberration, Lennon dressed quickly and returned to the infirmary to discover that Sawyer was gone. In his place was a doctor stripping the sheets off the cot that Lennon had been lying in. He was a willowy man but rather short; his lab coat brushed mere inches above the tiles as he crossed the infirmary and thrust out a hand by way of greeting. His fingers were long and bluish, sparsely furred, with gray hair between the knuckles. “Lennon, good to see you on your feet. I’m Dr. Nave.”

Lennon shook it. His grip was very firm.

“Sit, please.” He patted the freshly stripped mattress. “Let me have a look at you.”

Lennon obeyed, and the doctor took her vitals. He produced a glass thermometer from the ink-stained pocket of his lab coat and held it under her tongue for some time. It tasted slightly sweet, as though it had been dipped in simple syrup. He then pressed two cold fingertips into the soft hollow of her wrist and nodded along to therhythm of her heart with his eyes tightly shut. “Do you still have your name?” he asked.

“It’s Lennon Carter.”

Dr. Nave released her wrist and opened his eyes. He held up a finger, just in front of her nose, moved it left. “Follow my finger.”

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