Page 80 of An Academy for Liars

“Wait, you were married?” Lennon knew that Blaine was four years older than her, but it still took her by surprise that she’d ever been married. The construct seemed to suit her even less than it did Lennon. “To who?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, waving her off. “I don’t like him half asmuch as I like you. In fact, I think I almost love you. I definitely almost like you in a way that I shouldn’t.”

Lennon blushed despite herself. She’d never had feelings like that for Blaine, but you couldn’t listen to someone as attractive as she was say something like that without getting at least a little hot under the collar.

“What’s stopping you?” said Lennon. “From liking me in a way that you shouldn’t?”

“We’re too similar,” said Blaine. “If we ever got together, it would be more out of comfort and narcissism than any real attraction. Which is not to say you’re unattractive, because you’re not, of course—”

“In what way are we similar?” said Lennon, cutting her off. Blaine had a way of ranting when she was drunk, and she was extremely drunk tonight.

Blaine considered this question for a long time in silence before she deigned to answer it. “You and I, we like to play with people, don’t we? But we don’t like being played with.”

Blaine stared down into her shot glass, looking sad suddenly. It was Lennon who’d wanted to go out, but Blaine was outdrinking her more than three times over, and she looked all the worse for it. Maybe it had been a mistake to take her out when she’d clearly been in a bad way. Lennon had thought the drinks and the noise might cheer her up, but if anything, she looked worse, not better.

“I lied to you about how I came to Drayton,” said Blaine, in a soft voice. “I mean, not really. It was less a lie than a half-truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before I came to Drayton, things with me and my ex-husband were sort of…volatile.” Blaine ran her index finger around the rim of the shot glass until it whistled. She smiled. “He used to hit me. Butthe night I left for Drayton—the night I got the call—I finally hit him back. Just once…on the back of the head. With a brick.”

Lennon tried to mask her shock.

“He twitched on the floor for a little while. I’ve never seen anyone move like that. And then the blood, under his head, it just opened up, and this is weird, but do you know those old cartoons—likeTom & Jerry,Looney Tunesstuff—where a hole opens up in the floor? Well, that’s what his blood looked like against the tile. It was so dark and the puddle was so crisp it looked almost fake, and I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it, you know? I couldn’t get myself to believe what I’d done.”

Lennon swallowed dry.

“Anyway. I just stood there in a daze, watching him bleed out. I was just frozen there. I didn’t do anything.”

“It sounds like he had it coming.”

Blaine only shrugged. “The call from Drayton snapped me out of it. I remember stepping over him to answer it. I put my cell to my ear, and I heard my husband’s voice over the line, which didn’t make any sense because my husband was lying unconscious at my feet, bleeding out. I knew then that either what the operator was saying was true, or I was really going insane. Something I’d suspected for some time, to be honest. When they asked me to go for an interview, I said yes. I left my husband on the floor, packed half my stuff, and I just, I don’t know, I just went. They said if I passed the interview and entry exam, everything would be okay. And I did, and it has been.”

“What happened to your ex?”

“Oh, he’s alive. I think he lives in a care facility now. Somewhere. So it all worked out. I think that brick might’ve saved him from drinking himself into an early grave.” She said this like the brick just up and hit him itself, like the situation had no affiliation with her.

Lennon reached across the sticky bartop to squeeze her hand. “I’m glad you told me.”

“Why?” Blaine asked, looking up at her. “So you know what you’re dealing with?”

“So I know you,” said Lennon. “I’m not afraid. And I don’t judge you. I just…I just want to understand where you’re coming from, you know? And tonight, I feel like I do.”

“Do you?” Lennon could tell that Blaine took this as an insult. She hated being known, pinned down. “If that’s true—if you really understand me—tell me what I’m thinking right now. If you get it wrong, drink.” Blaine pushed another shot toward her.

“Are you inviting me to enter your mind?”

“Only if you can,” said Blaine. “But if you know me so well, you shouldn’t have to.”

Lennon squared her shoulders, tried to sober up enough to get a proper read on her. She began with the features of her face. Her lips were wet, and her breath smelled of malt and sugar. Her eyes were glossy, her pupils swollen fat so that they were barely limned by the blue of her irises. There was an urgency in them—Lennon was inclined to call it desperation—this desire to be seen and understood without having to say anything at all. After that, it became easy to sift through her thoughts, find the one that she wanted Lennon to see. But she was still surprised by what she found.

“You want me to run,” said Lennon.

Blaine’s expression fractured as soon as the words left her mouth.

Lennon often found that when she went out, there was a moment when the night went south, when whatever horrible outcome had been set into motion and the evening was doomed to end with her vomiting all over a curb or waking up beside someone who was about three times uglier than she’d thought he was when she was drunk.

This was that moment.

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