Page 38 of An Academy for Liars

Lennon stared at the baggie in the flat of her palm. Within it were two white tabs. It was hard for her to believe that such a strong psychedelic could be confined to something so small. “Thank you.”

“Nothing to thank me for,” he said. “We had a deal.”

Lennon took that as her cue to leave, but Kieran called her name before she reached the door. She half turned to him. “Yes?”

“If you ever need anything else…you know where to find me. Not as a dealer but, you know, as an associate.”

“You mean a friend?”

He wrinkled his nose, disgusted, flustered. “I don’t have friends. But you know. I’m around.”

Per Kieran’s advice, Lennon gathered four of her closest classmates—Ian, Sawyer, Blaine, and Nadine—in her dorm room later that same evening and almost immediately regretted the decision. Blaine and Nadine, to her surprise, expressed some mild concern but took the idea in stride. Sawyer, however, was conflicted, and Ian was utterly incensed.

“Let me get this straight,” said Ian, pacing the room, “you’re goingto take drugs you got off a teenage psychopath who turned a rat into a crackhead? Are you hearing yourself?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to say ‘crackhead,’ ” said Nadine in a soft voice. “I mean, addiction is a complex issue—”

Ian ignored her. “This is a bad idea, Lennon. A dangerous one. It could ruin your life. Trust me, I would know.”

“We took the drugs at the party, and we were fine, right, Sawyer?”

Sawyer, sitting on the edge of her bed, only frowned.

“Nadine’s right,” said Lennon, unbothered by Sawyer’s lack of verbal support. “Don’t be such a fucking prude. I mean, didn’t you deal drugs?”

“This is different. That kid Kieran has killed people with whatever he was cooking up in his kitchen. And you’re fragile—who knows what the hell that’ll do to you.”

“I’m not fragile, and that was years ago. He was thirteen. He promised me this was clean.”

“I really worry about you sometimes,” said Ian. He had done a lot of worrying about Lennon recently. Worrying about who she liked or was maybe sleeping with. Worrying about where she was and why she’d come home to Ethos late. Worrying about what she said to him, and more importantly what she didn’t.

Lennon had first attributed this new possessiveness to the stress of their increasing workloads—the hours of homework, the hundreds of pages worth of reading, the pop quizzes, and of course the grueling exercises they performed on rats in persuasion. But Ian was easily at the top of their class, securing the highest grades not just in persuasion but in every other course he was enrolled in too. He was all but guaranteed a bed in Logos House. And yet he seemed miserable—edgy and irritable and corrosively jealous in a way that Lennon found at once exhausting and assuring. As shameful as itwas—and she was ashamed—she liked the fact that Ian found her worthy enough to be jealous over. After all she’d been through with Wyatt, it was nice to feel like she was something precious that someone as brilliant as Ian had to fight to keep.

“Are you going to say something to your roommate?” Ian demanded, imploring Blaine now.

“I’m not her keeper,” said Blaine.

“Maybe not,” said Ian, “but you are the only one who she might consider listening to, so how about you have at it?”

Blaine looked to Lennon for a long beat, then back at Ian. “She can do what she wants.”

“Fuck.” He kicked over the trash can by the desk. Crumpled papers and cigarette butts spilled across the floor. Nadine moved to clean up the mess, and as she leaned over, Lennon noticed that her blouse was open lower than usual (before, every button had been fastened, all the way up to her throat), exposing a pale slice of her chest. She wasn’t wearing her crucifix either, and her hair, which she’d worn in a sensible bun at the nape of her neck on every occasion that Lennon had previously seen her, now fell long and loose about her shoulders.

“Mark my words,” said Ian, stepping right over Nadine to jam a finger into Lennon’s chest, “this is a bad fucking idea.”

“Look,” said Lennon, squaring with Ian, “I’m taking the tabs. So you can either stay here and watch, or you can leave. I won’t hold it against you either way.”

He glared at her. “I didn’t think you were this dumb,” he said, then he turned on his heel and was gone, slamming the door shut behind him.

Nadine scrambled to her feet. “Should I go after him?”

Lennon nodded. “Just…try to keep quiet, all right? I don’t think he would tell anyone, but if he does—”

“I’m on it,” said Nadine, and then she too was gone, leaving just Lennon, Sawyer, and Blaine alone.

Blaine stared down at her hands. “I’m loath to agree with Ian on anything, but what if he’s right? What if this is a bad idea?”

“Jesus Christ,” said Lennon, “when did you all become such prudes?”

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