Page 42 of An Academy for Liars

Nothing.

Lennon cut the water, stepped out of the shower stalls, dried herself off, and fumbled into the pair of pajamas she’d brought with her. The bathroom, now empty, seemed dimmer than it had before they’d stepped into the shower. As if a few of the lights had been cut off. Those that remained lit flickered terribly. “Blaine?”

The name echoed through the empty lavatory. Again, there was no answer.

She made her way to the sinks, wondering if Blaine had stepped out of the bathroom, though it wasn’t like her to leave without first saying goodbye. Unsettled, she began to apply her shea butter, working it into her elbows and knees. She lifted her gaze to the fog-clouded mirror and saw behind her a figure that she first mistook as the aberration, and then as Blaine. She was wrong on both counts, but before she realized this a black screen of oblivion came down over her field of vision and she felt nothing.

Nothing at all.

When Lennon cameto, she was barefoot, standing shoulder to shoulder with a handful of her classmates—Ian, Sawyer, Nadine, and a few students down, Blaine, her head hanging, cheek cradled against her shoulder, eyes screwed closed. They stood motionless, as though their feet had been tacked to the floor.

Seated before them, behind a long oak banquet table, were members of Logos, among them Claude, who was smiling; Emerson, dragging on a cigarette; Kieran (who winked at Lennon and gave her two thumbs up); Adan; Yumi; and three others. They were all murmuring among themselves over glasses of wine and spent cigarettes smoldering in overflowing ashtrays. The air was blue with smoke. There was a glass apparatus, filled with greenish liquid, that had three spigots. Beside it were eight, frosty glasses, one for each student standing in front of the table, and a candy bowl filled with folded slips of paper.

In the dead center of the room—between the members of Logos and the line of initiates—was a small wooden card table with two chairs, a folded switchblade placed in front of each of them.

Emerson’s voice—high and clear—cut through the din of conversation. She was pinching a clove cigarette; it looked like a stick of charcoal burning low between her knuckles. Smoke wafted across the room, the lacy tendrils forming a number of words:primordial,wiles,ripe,ubiquity. It smelled, strangely, of burnt tea leaves. “Let’s just get on with it.”

Kieran stood up: “Fine.” He cast his gaze on the row of underclassmen standing before him. “Tonight will most assuredly be one of your worst at Drayton. Maybe one of the worst of your life. I won’t say it’s worth it, but I will say that none of you are here because you lack the drive you need to succeed. You’re all hungry, and that hunger is what got you through our doors tonight. But what will allow you to stay is something more: genius. What you do here tonight will prove whether you’ve got it or not.”

“Is…this s-some type…of hazing?” Lennon slurred and, to her intense embarrassment, dribbled spit onto the Persian rug beneath her bare feet. Her tongue felt numb, swollen fat behind her teeth.

Emerson stubbed out the nub of her spent cigarette, and immediately fished another from the pocket of her blazer and lit up on the candle flickering in front of her. “I thought you tied them,” she muttered around the filter.

“I did,” said Kieran, casting the words over his shoulder with a snarl. “It must be wearing off.”

“Or maybe you didn’t tie her off tight enough?” Claude suggested. “Do you need a refresher?”

“Shut up.” Kieran wheeled back to face the students. “Consider this an audition. You have one chance to prove yourself worthy of joining our ranks here at Logos. You step forward. You drink the absinthe.” He motioned to the fountain and the glasses arranged around it. “Then you pull a paper from the fishbowl. Read the name of your opponent out loud and take a seat at the card table. The opponent willthen step forward, drink themselves, and take a seat. No redraws. No do-overs. Nothing. Understood?”

Nobody spoke. No one but Lennon could, what with the tongue ties still firmly in place.

Emerson tilted her head to Kieran. “Cut them loose, will you?”

“Fine.” He snapped his fingers, and the row of students slackened to the point of collapse, falling to their hands and knees. Lennon, for her part, felt as though her legs had gone to sleep. The pins and needles were so severe it was as though her legs had been paralyzed. She thought for a moment she might fall too, but somehow managed to stay on her feet.

“Are any of you familiar with the knife game?” Emerson inquired. “If not, the rules are pretty simple. You’re going to splay your nondominant hand on the table, making sure there’s space between your fingers. Then you’re going to pick up the knife and pierce it into the table between your fingers as fast as you can without stabbing yourself. You’ll play two at a time, using persuasion to manipulate your opponent into stabbing themselves. Winners are initiated. Losers are out. Which is to say, half of you won’t make the cut. We’ll go left to right, starting with Blaine.”

Blaine, who stood at the far end of the line, froze. It was the first time Lennon saw her look anything less than entirely composed. She staggered forward, her bare feet scuffing across the carpet as she approached the table. She filled one of the glasses to the brim with absinthe, downed it in a single swallow. Her hand shook as she lowered it into the candy bowl. She withdrew a slip of paper near the top, read the name aloud: “ ‘Felix.’ ”

Felix flinched and paled at the sound of his name but stepped forward. He drank his absinthe, took a seat, and put his left hand down on the scarred tabletop, fingers splayed wide apart. Blaine did the same, and picked up the knife, and Felix, pausing to wipe a sweaty palm on his pant leg, followed suit.

“Pierce the table to the rhythm of this beat,” said Emerson, and she began to strike the table. “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Begin.”

They began to stab the spaces between their fingers to the rhythm of Emerson’s counting. It started out slow, and Lennon began to relax a little, suspecting that perhaps this game wouldn’t be as gruesome as she’d initially expected it to be. But Emerson’s counting picked up speed, and Blaine frowned with concentration. Beads of sweat formed above the dip of Felix’s cupid’s bow. Blaine’s attack was quick and incisive: one moment their knives were dancing between their fingers in unison, and the next, the tip of Felix’s split through the knuckle of his middle finger with a grisly crunch. He cut a cry that made Lennon’s heart seize in her chest, and ripped the blade free of his hand.

Blaine—looking pale and sick to her stomach—pushed sharply away from the table and stumbled to her feet.

“Welcome to Logos,” said Emerson, as two other members of the house escorted Felix out of the room. “Let’s keep going. We don’t have all night.”

Kieran stepped forward to wipe down the table and Felix’s knife, sopping up all the blood. When everything was clean, Nadine stepped up to the front of the room. She filled the glass of absinthe, pinched her nose tightly shut, and swallowed it down. She looked for a moment like she needed to throw up, but when she recovered herself, she pulled a slip of paper from the candy bowl and her chin immediately wrinkled with the effort of holding back tears. “ ‘Sawyer.’ ”

Sawyer stepped forward, filled his own glass of absinthe, which he drank down slowly, like it was water. They both sat down at the table, picked up the knives, and the game began again.

“One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four…”

This proved to be one of the longest rounds that was played thatnight. It felt like watching a game of tug-of-war between two people, equally matched.

“One, two, three, four…”

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