Page 57 of An Academy for Liars

“I don’t know…” Lennon grasped for words to describe what felt like the ineffable. “It was just different in Amsterdam, more within my control. I felt like I had, or claimed, authority.”

“Elaborate on that,” said Dante, adopting a tone that was similar to the one he lectured with in class.

Lennon frowned, thinking. “The first time, in the garden, it felt both emotional and almost…hapless or accidental. And at Benedict’s, I felt like I opened an elevator out of desperation. As if I was, I don’t know, begging for it. Pleading almost. But in Amsterdam…in a way it felt like for the first timeImade it happen. It was my will, my choice, alone. Not me being backed into a corner by Benedict or something supernatural happening to me. The elevator in Amsterdam felt like it belonged to me, and me only.”

“And you feel changed by that?”

Lennon hadn’t realized it until Dante had said it, but he was absolutely right. Shewasdifferent—changed, as he put it. “I guess I feel like I won’t be the same after this. Like there was a before and an after. Now I know I can make an elevator appear not because I asked or begged for it, but because I’ll make it happen. No matter the cost. Even if I go mad doing it—if I bleed out through my nose or suffer a seizure—I know that I can.”

Dante smiled, looking almost impressed. If he wasn’t exhausted before, the act of tamping down her will had drained him fully. It was clear to Lennon that he had nothing left to give. If she tried to open an elevator now, she doubted he’d even be strong enough to stop her. And there was something about that fact—his vulnerability in the moment—that she found almost…endearing.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t try to make our way back to Drayton?” she said, and in what was perhaps too intimate a gesture she snatched a tissue from the box on the coffee table and wiped the blood from the edges of his mouth. “Isn’t there someone, anyone, we could call?”

“There is,” said Dante, closing his eyes. She’d half expected him to flinch away when she put the tissue to his lips, but he seemed at ease. “But all they’d be able to do is tell us to make our way to the closest gate. As it stands, I’m spent, and I need to rest. It’d be easier to drive down to Benedict’s in the morning than make our way to the nearest airport and fly into Savannah.”

“But we don’t have a car.”

“We’ll get one,” said Dante, stifling a yawn. “We rest tonight and leave in the morning,” he said, and she could tell from his tone that they’d reached the end of this discussion, and that he’d reached the end of his patience. He got up and went to the couch, where he would remain, sitting pensive and watchful, through the last of the night.

In the morningthey checked out of the motel and walked a few blocks down the street, to a diner called Freddy’s. From the outside it looked like a greasy spoon, but the interior was surprisingly quaint. There was a bearded man seated at the bartop who scowled at both Lennon and Dante when they entered. They were the only two Black people in the restaurant, if not the entirety of the town, and had been drawing glances (some of them nasty) ever since they’d arrived.

Lennon edged past the man, who was loudly debating with another one of the diner’s patrons about whether or not the most recent school shooting was a government hoax (he argued, most fervently, that it was).

Dante claimed a seat next to a dusty window, and they both opened the laminated menus and skimmed through the offerings in silence. A waitress in a peach dress and matching apron, frilled at the bottom, came to take their order. She eyed Dante with a smile that was, perhaps, a little too urgent. This irritated Lennon, though she couldn’t say exactly why.

Lennon ordered a waffle, a poached egg, and a glass of grapefruit juice. Dante ordered a pot of coffee and a slice of pecan pie. They waited for the food in silence for a while, until Dante said: “Do you see that guy?” He gestured across the diner with a slight shift of his gaze. Lennon followed his eyes to the man sitting hunched at the bar, the one who’d glared at them when they entered. He wore a denim vest embroidered with a number of patches—American and Confederate flags, the “don’t tread on me” snake, and other patches, pins, and paraphernalia that looked vaguely white supremacist. “You’re going to get him to give us his keys.”

“Wait, what? Why?”

“We need a ride to Ben’s,” said Dante. “Consider this today’s class.”

“I don’t think I can do it without hurting him.”

“Then hurt him,” said Dante, exasperated. “I don’t give a shit. Whatever you have to do to make him give you his keys.”

“And if I fail?”

“If you fail, then we stay here until you succeed. If not with him then someone else.”

Lennon swallowed down her irritation and attempted to will the man, to no avail. He was a particularly difficult target. She began to suspect that either the walls of his skull were suspiciously thick, or he was particularly dense, which—given the patches emblazoned across his vest—was highly likely. By the time the food arrived, Lennon could smell the metallic beginnings of a nosebleed, and all she’d managed to do was make the man frown at his twitching fingers.

“Eat,” said Dante, tucking into his pie. It was a large slice, with a generous dollop of whipped cream on top. “It’ll help you focus. You can’t expect to overcome someone else’s mind when you’re not fueling your own.”

Lennon shook her head. She felt put off her food, nauseous from the effort of intense and sustained concentration. “I’m not hungry.”

“Eat anyway.”

Lennon cast her gaze away from her unsuspecting target, onto Dante. “Presumably you could just make me eat, right? Force me?”

“Presumably. But I don’t like to persuade people to eat things because, while I’m capable of forcing your body to chew, I can’t feel the texture of what’s in your mouth at a given time. And the mechanics of swallowing are…delicate and the risk of choking is high if I screw up. Now stop trying to distract me and focus.”

Lennon, with a sigh of frustration, homed in her focus on the man again. She looked for stories in his face, behind that thick beard of his, tried to find weaknesses to exploit, footholds to grasp onto, ways to manipulate. Ultimately, she decided to lean into the conspiracy angle, inspired by all of that bullshit paraphernalia emblazoned on his vest. She figured he’d fall for it, and he did.

The man pushed back from the bar and staggered to their table, his gait strange and unsteady, like a bowlegged baby first learning how to walk.

“For America,” he said, and shoved a hand into his pocket, withdrew a ring of keys, and extended them to her. “God bless you. God bless all of us.”

Lennon took the keys. “Um…thanks? We’ll take care of it.”

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