Page 36 of An Academy for Liars

“What happened to its mother?” Lennon asked, coming up beside him.

“She rejected it,” said Dante, and then, in a firmer tone, “Go ahead and set that cage down.”

Lennon, flushing, placed Antonio on a nearby lab table. “You could’ve just told me you’d heard me.”

Dante smiled to himself, never taking his eyes off the rat in his hand. “I could have, but I would’ve missed out on the joy of watching you attempt to be discreet.”

Lennon frowned.

“What do you want with that rat?” he asked, without judgment. If he was angry with her for attempting to steal it, he gave no indication.

Lennon hedged her bets, hastily, trying to deduce the best way forward. She decided, after a brief debate, to be honest. “I need it. To trade with.”

Dante raised an eyebrow. “Kieran has his claws in you already?”

She was surprised he knew about Kieran’s enterprise, but perhaps she shouldn’t have been. Dante, it seemed, knew about everyone and everything that happened on that campus.

Lennon stared down at her hands. “I was high the night I called the elevator.”

“And you think that this…altered state might’ve opened your mind? Made it easier?”

Lennon nodded. “That first time, when I was high, it was effortless.”

“And you think that’s how this should be? Effortless?”

“I mean, no. I realize that I’ll have to work for it, the way I’veworked for everything here. But the thing is, I tried so hard with Benedict, but there was just nothing on the other end. I think the drugs would open my mind more, make it easier for me to reach whatever it was I tapped into in the garden that night when it first appeared.”

“How does the rat come into play?” When Lennon didn’t answer (she was no snitch) Dante nodded as if she had. “Oh. Kieran. I assume he wants it dead?”

As he said this, Lennon became aware of how large Dante’s hand was and how pitifully small the rat was in comparison. He could’ve crushed it in a closed fist.

“I thought you didn’t want to hurt anything?” Dante asked, pressing her for a real answer.

“I don’t,” said Lennon. “But if it’s suffering—”

“What do you mean by ‘suffering’?”

“If it’s in pain—”

“Everyone has experienced pain.”

“Well, I mean constant pain.”

“Constant physical pain or constant psychological pain?”

“Just…I don’t know, any kind of pain.”

“What level of constant pain warrants a moral euthanasia?”

“Agony.”

“And how would you define ‘agony’?”

“I don’t like this line of questioning.”

“No one does,” said Dante. “But when you hold the power of life and death, it’s important that you produce answers. If only to quiet your own conscience.”

Lennon swallowed dry. “If someone or something is in a state of constant agony, a state of torment, I think it’s a mercy to end that suffering, even if there’s only one way to do it.”

---