An Academy for Liars

Chapter 2

Lennon left the party. She edged past the koi pond and the grad students who encircled it, down the long driveway, and stepped out into the street, where Wyatt’s car was parked parallel to the sidewalk a few houses down.

It was a silver Porsche 911, a hand-me-down gift from Wyatt’s father to commemorate his successful dissertation defense. Wyatt had never allowed Lennon to drive it. He didn’t trust her behind the wheel or with much of anything, really. To him, everything she did (unplugging the iron before they left to run errands) or said (“I love you, the way you deserve to be loved”) was cast in a hard shadow of uncertainty.

Lennon unlocked the doors of Wyatt’s car and climbed inside. The leather of the seat was cold against her bare thighs. She didn’t check the mirrors before slipping the key into the ignition. But her gaze flickered back to the house. Though she didn’t know it then, this was the last she’d see of it for some time.

She began to drive. Aimlessly at first—letting the car drift from empty lane to empty lane—and then with purpose, pressing down on the gas pedal, picking up speed, the suburbs—the trim little lawns and tasteful houses, the organic grocery stores and Citizens Banks, the Mattress Firms and storage facilities—smearing past the windows in a blur. She thought a bit about the aberration she’d seen in the mirror of the bathroom. The girl with no eyes who was her but…not. And Lennon wondered what she wanted, or if she was some harbinger of bad fortune, or if not that, then the cause of it.

Her thoughts returned to Wyatt.

What she realized then as she sat in his car was that she had been so obsessed with trying to bridge the gap between them—to prove herself precocious and smart and worthy enough to be the recipient of his love—that she’d made the grave error of mistaking the want of closeness for closeness itself. But one was not a sufficient substitute for the other. Her love—or her yearning for it—was not, and would never be, enough, which is why Wyatt was with Sophia tonight, and not her.

By the time Lennon reached the abandoned mall on the cusp of the suburbs, she knew what she was preparing to do. There were blood thinners in the glove compartment, prescription strength. Wyatt kept them there after suffering a pulmonary embolism—years ago, before he met Lennon—that very nearly killed him. He’d warned her once to make sure that she never mixed them up with her antidepressants—the pills looked similar—because the blood thinners had no antidote. If you overdosed on them, there was nothing any doctor or hospital could do for you, apart from watch you slowly bleed out from the inside.

Surely, Lennon thought, downing a bottle would do the trick.

She decided she would find some bathroom stall or stockroom at the heart of the place where there would be no one to disturb her. No one to intervene, which should’ve been a good thing…but as Lennon stepped out into the deserted parking lot, intervention was exactly what she wanted. A sign, a symbol, the grasping hand of some meddling but benevolent god who would reach down through a break in the clouds and shake her senseless, until she was forced to believe—really and truly—that her life had meaning and that she was destined for something more than mediocrity. She wanted salvation and she found it in the form of a phone booth half-devoured by crawling ivy, standing in the flickering halo of one of the last streetlights in the parking lot that was still shining.

The booth was oak and old-fashioned with yellow stained-glass windows so thoroughly fogged that even if there had been a person within, Lennon likely wouldn’t have been able to see them. The leaves of the ivy plant that bound the booth stirred and bristled, though there was no wind that night. As Lennon stood staring, the phone began to ring, a shrill and tinny sound like silver spoons striking the sides of so many small bells.

Lennon decided, at first, to ignore this and started toward the mall with the pill bottle in hand, but the phone kept ringing, louder and louder, as if with increasing urgency. She stopped, turned to the booth, then walked toward it, reluctantly at first, half hoping the ringing would stop before she reached it. But it persisted.

Lennon drew open the collapsible doors of the phone booth, stepped inside, and closed them behind her. Its interior was oddly warm and humid, and there was a sulfurous scent thick in the air. The phone was an old black rotary. Its receiver quivered in its cradle with the force of the ringing. Lennon raised it to her ear. There was a sound like static on the line that Lennon recognized as the distant roar of waves breaking. Then a voice: “Do you still have your name?” it asked, as if a name were a thing that could be misplaced, like a wallet or a pair of keys.

She faltered, wondering if this was some sort of prank call or trick question. “It’s…Lennon?”

“Lennon what?”

She grasped for the rest of it, but it didn’t come. She was really high. “Who is this?”

“This is a representative from Drayton College.” The voice on the line was a combination of every voice of everyone that Lennon had ever known speaking together at once. A horrid and familiar chorus—her mother, her sister and first therapist, her high school boyfriend, her dead grandmother. “We’re calling to congratulate you on your acceptance to the interview stage of your admission process. You should be very proud. Few make it this far. Your interview will take place tomorrow, at your earliest convenience.”

“I don’t understand. I never applied for anything. I’ve never even heard of Drayton before—”

The question was asked again, with something of an edge this time. “Can you make it, Lennon?” The address, someplace in Ogden, Utah, was then given.

At a loss for words, Lennon fumbled for her cell phone, quickly typed the address into her GPS app, and discovered that the location was an eight-hour drive away. It was already nearly midnight: if she were to make it to the interview in time (which was a ridiculous idea in itself), she’d have to drive all night. What kind of program called prospective students the day before their interview? Was this all some sort of twisted prank? Her confusion festered into bitter frustration. “I’m not going anywhere, for an interview or for anything else, until I get some answers about what the fuck is going on.”

A lengthy pause, and then, in a broken, tear-choked whisper that was unmistakably her own: “He will never love you the way you want to be loved. And if you stay, he will love you even less, until one day you mean nothing to him.”

Lennon froze, her hand tightening to a vise grip around the receiver. Her throat began to swell and tighten. “It’s you. From the mirror. Isn’t it? Answer me!”

“We wish you the best of luck with the next step of your admission process.” There was a soft click. The line went dead.