Page 22 of An Academy for Liars

She didn’t have an answer to that yet. How could she? “I just…I don’t want to hurt anybody or anything. Okay? That’s my limit.”

“You can do better than that,” said Dante. “You don’t want to hurt people, and I understand. Respect it, even. But you can aim so much higher than pacifism. I can teach you how to protect people if you’ll let me, how to prevent harm, how to undo it. But if I’m going to do that, you have to grow a backbone and get the hell out of your own way. Do you understand?”

“I—I think so.”

“There will always be someone who will use the power they have to hurt those who don’t deserve it. That’s why it’s important that people like you become competent enough to stand between them and those they’d otherwise harm. To let your scruples get in the way of that vital work is cowardice. Now let’s get you back to class.”

That night, back in Ethos College, Lennon returned to her dorm to discover that Blaine wasn’t in. She didn’t want to be alone, so she found her way to Ian’s room in Pathos College instead. She could tell he wasn’t expecting company. When she knocked on the door and showed herself inside, Ian looked more startled than anything else. There was a composition book lying open in his lap, filled with notes from Dante’s lecture.

“Where’s your roommate?” she asked.

“Don’t have one. I got lucky.” There was an awkward pause. Ian swallowed, and Lennon saw the bulge of his Adam’s apple rise and fall. He looked so young then, so helpless, that Lennon was reminded of that poor rat she’d failed to persuade. “You could stay…if you want?”

So Lennon climbed up into bed, sat beside him, drawing her knees up tight to her chest.

“What were you and Professor Lowe talking about out in the hall?” Ian asked, staring down at his journal, all that tangled writing on the page.

“It was less a talk than a debate.”

“About what?”

“The rats,” said Lennon. “I don’t like what we’re doing to them. I don’t think it’s right.”

“They’re rodents, for fuck’s sake,” said Ian. “They can’t think past eating and shitting. We’re practically gods to them.”

“Even still,” said Lennon. “Something about it doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Tell me you’re not going to abandon all of this because of some inbred lab rats?”

“No. I’m just saying it feels wrong. They don’t deserve to be meddled with.”

Ian closed his notes. “You ever heard of a rat king?”

“The Rat King? Like fromThe Nutcracker?”

Ian shook his head. “Arat king. The idea is that a bunch of rats get their tails knotted together, and the knot gets tighter the more they struggle to get away. With time, their knotted tails get glued together with all this shit and piss and grime. The filth fuses them together.”

“Ew.”

“People say they don’t exist. They call them some type of cryptid,but I swear to God I saw one. I was in New York, and I stepped out onto the street to smoke and saw what I thought was a cat, but when it crawled out from behind the dumpster and into the light of the streetlamps, I saw it for what it was. And it was fucking vile. It looked more like an arachnid than a mammal, this ball of grimy fur, scrabbling across the concrete. I fumbled for my phone—I was pretty fucking drunk—but by the time I managed to fish it out of my pocket, it had disappeared, back to the sewers, I guess.”

“What’s your point?” Lennon asked, unsettled and disgusted but still unwavering in her conviction. Rats could be vile—so what? They were still living creatures, and she still felt guilty for hurting them. “Are you saying that because rats are less than us, they deserve to be experimented on?”

He shrugged. “More or less.”

“But it doesn’t bother you, even a little bit?” Lennon asked, searching his face for some trace of remorse. But she found none. “You don’t feel guilty hurting something so small it can’t defend itself?”

“I like being good at things,” said Ian simply, “and I’m not good at much…but I’m good at this persuasion business. I’m not going to give it up just because I feel bad for a couple of rats. Besides, I’ve got no other options but this.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true. I was nothing back home. I’m not a college dropout; I wasn’t even good enough to get in. Didn’t even bother to apply. I worked at a fucking convenience store and probably would have until I drank myself into liver failure or found some other way to kill myself. I was nothing to no one. But here things are different. You know what I mean?”

Lennon nodded. She did know. In fact, she empathized with Ian more than she cared to admit. She’d felt the same, until the momentshe’d picked up that rotary phone in the booth in the middle of the parking lot. Drayton had lent her the rare opportunity to make something of herself for once, and she knew—just as Ian did—that she’d be a fool to squander that chance. If only she could set her moral qualms aside, like Dante urged her to. But a part of her was beginning to wonder if guilt, or in Ian’s case, denial, was just the price of the work they did here.

Lennon had known, since the moment she’d first arrived at Drayton, that in order to become someone she would have to let go of the person she was before. Maybe that meant setting her morals aside, if only for a little while. And what was the harm in it? How guilty was she, really? Lennon hadn’t hurt anyone, and all she’d been asked to do thus far was persuade a rat who’d been damned to death anyway.

Ian slid a hand along Lennon’s inner thigh. “Are we going to do this? Because if not, I need to sleep.”

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