Chapter 4
Lennon walked down the hall, the floorboards groaning beneath her sneakers, and approached the birdcage elevator. It was old and rickety, with brass walls. She stepped into the cabin and dragged the collapsible door shut with a rattle. The buttons on the operating panel ranged from one to eleven. She punched the 8 with her knuckle and a second, inner set of doors sliced shut behind the grate of the birdcage and the elevator lurched into a shuddering ascent.
It was a relatively short trip. Within a few moments the elevator ground to a stop and its doors trundled open. Golden sunlight spilled inside. Lennon, shaking, stepped out of the cabin and into what she first thought was a cathedral. It was rather dim, but there were windows cut into the stone above, pale sunlight bleeding in through them, laying bright squares of daylight that trailed like stepping stones down a wide corridor where both floor and ceiling canted in opposite directions—the former sloping slightly up and the latter down.
To the left was a large wall mural that vaguely reminded Lennon of Picasso’s Guernica . It depicted a series of grotesque figures—twisted bodies, contused and warped and seemingly seized by the throes of some primal passion. It was rendered in the same spirit as that strange portrait that hung in Benedict’s study, and she wondered if they shared an artist.
Stunned, Lennon turned back to the elevator, only to find a wall of stone behind her.
“Welcome to Drayton.”
Lennon turned to see a spectacled woman seated behind a long, low desk opposite the mural. She was thumbing through an issue of Vanity Fair magazine—just an ordinary human doing ordinary human things—and Lennon realized, with a great deal of relief, that the place was not entirely divorced from her former reality, though it was perhaps only distantly adjacent to it. The secretary lowered her magazine, folded it shut, and smiled.
“Your name?” Her accent, thick and husky, was decidedly southern.
“It’s Lennon Carter.”
The secretary nodded and keyed something into a wheezing brick of a computer that would’ve been sorely outdated more than a decade ago. Then she stood. “Do follow me.”
Together, they walked down a long corridor where a run of stained-glass windows offered distorted glimpses of the campus beyond. There was a large square, more than two miles across, densely overgrown with live oaks and magnolias, a few scraggly palms growing low to the dirt. Set around the square were a number of old buildings, townhomes and mansions mostly.
It took Lennon a moment to identify what she was looking at as a campus, composed of the square and tall brick townhomes set around it, all of them overgrown with ivy like the phone booth where she’d first received word of Drayton. The other buildings on the square reminded her of the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright, with flat roofs low-slung over wraparound porches. Paths—which seemed like piazzas under the dense canopy of the moss-draped oak trees—threaded across the square like arteries. People—students, Lennon presumed—gathered in the sprawling courtyards between the buildings. Their attire was varied enough to dispel any notion of a strictly enforced uniform, but they were all smartly dressed, in their tailored slacks belted at the waist, well-cut blazers and thick-rimmed glasses, tastefully wrinkled linen shirts with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
A few of those gathered on the lawn had spread out picnic blankets and kicked off their loafers, stuffed their socks into their shoes, opting to lounge barefoot across the plush grass that carpeted the courtyards, drinking in what little sunlight shone through the dense canopy of the trees. One girl—a pretty brunette in a dark wool pencil skirt—was in the process of peeling off a pair of stockings, like a snake shedding its skin.
“Do keep up,” said the secretary, without turning or even breaking pace. “You’ll be late if you don’t.”
Lennon hastily tore her gaze from the window and kept walking. The corridor forked and she followed her guide down a narrow hall to the right. Here the floor began to slope downward more severely; the ceiling and its skylights seemed farther and farther away. For a long time, there was nothing but the sharp rataplan of the secretary’s heels striking the marble floors. Lennon wondered, absently, how old she was and how she’d come to work at a place like Drayton. Surely they didn’t host job fairs or run ads online or in the papers.
“This is where I leave you,” said the secretary, stopping so abruptly that Lennon very nearly ran into her. She motioned to a small mahogany door near the hall’s end. “Good luck.”
Lennon dragged the door open and took in the lecture hall that lay beyond it—the walls paneled with hickory, the stairs steep. There were about two dozen students seated there, equipped with pencils and slim test booklets.
A petite man approached her, dressed in loose linen pants and a tunic shirt, embroidered with a tangle of brown vines along the collar. He motioned to a nearby desk. “Do sit down. The exam will begin shortly.”
Baffled, Lennon took a seat beside a strikingly pretty young woman with platinum-blonde hair and a silver ring pierced through her left nostril. She was rapidly typing something into her cell phone, muttering—with a raspy vocal fry that made her sound like a pack-a-day smoker who’d come down with a particularly nasty cold—about the fact that there was no reception. Then, as if called by name, she abruptly looked up and smiled at Lennon, and Lennon, a little embarrassed to be caught staring, smiled back at her. She decided then that if they both passed the exam and stayed at Drayton, they would be friends.
She surveyed the others. There was a person with a shaved head and thick eyebrows who sat near her, scowling. A boy with an overgrown military cut sat grumbling Russian curses through his gritted teeth (based on the two semesters of rudimentary Russian Lennon had taken as part of her core curriculum in college, he seemed irritated that the test was taking so long to begin). An impeccably dressed woman—bronze skin, high cheekbones, sharp eyes—chatted in a rapid-fire exchange of whispers with the curly-haired redheaded man who sat beside her. Both looked like the kind of fashionably erudite academics Wyatt would’ve liked to be friends with.
At the front of the room, a panel of six proctors, split evenly into two groups of three, sat at long tables on opposite sides of the lectern. All had the demeanor of professors fresh off a long sabbatical and possessed a kind of sharkish, academic curiosity that put Lennon ill at ease. One, a sleek-haired man in a perfectly tailored tweed suit, smoked a fat terra-cotta dudeen pipe and passed it to one of his peers, a dark-skinned woman who vaguely reminded Lennon of her own mother. She accepted the pipe and took a long toke and moments later spit a lively burst of fat, dancing smoke rings.
A blonde woman seated among the proctors rose and stepped up to the lectern. She wore an off-white button-down the color of pale flesh, tucked into the waistband of a dark tweed pencil skirt. Her hair was ice-white and cut into an overgrown, but elegant, bob.
When she spoke, the room fell quiet. “My name is Eileen, and I am the vice-chancellor here at Drayton, as well as one of the six proctors of today’s entry exam. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to our school.” A brief pause and Eileen lowered her head, as if trying to decide what she wanted to say next. “Our entry exam begins at birth, and everyone takes it. The test being administered today is merely the final step in your lifelong application process. And I warn you, it will be the most challenging.”
A thin boy, who Lennon later discovered was a math prodigy from Iceland who’d bagged his first PhD in number theory at just sixteen, tapped her on the shoulder and passed her a surprisingly heavy metal mechanical pencil and a manila test booklet.
“The final portion of the entry exam is split into two phases. First, the written exam, which is before you now. It’s composed of forty-five multiple-choice questions. The second and final phase of the exam is the expressive interview, wherein we will assess your ability to complete a task of our choosing. This portion of the test is not timed, though it will end at our discretion.”
Lennon glanced at her peers, wondering if they found this ordeal as bizarre as she did. All of them appeared relatively calm, apart from one frail boy loudly hyperventilating in the front row.
“The fact that a pool of applicants the size of a global generation has been narrowed down to you, who sit before me now, is a remarkable triumph. Should you fail to pass this exam—and most of you will, in fact, fail—then I do hope you’ll remember it as such.” Eileen extended both hands to the test takers. “You may now begin.”
Lennon pumped her mechanical pencil twice and opened the test booklet. There, she saw the grainy image of a young boy with tears in his eyes, taken from the shoulders up, in the style of an ID photo.
What is Nihal’s predominant emotion?
Yearning
Rage
Shock
Resignation
None of the above
Lennon stared down at the question, confused. How was she meant to parse exactly what he was feeling from a single image? She looked up, hoping for some hint as to how she was supposed to proceed, but her fellow test takers seemed every bit as confused as she did, frowning down at their papers, their pencils dancing between answers, circling things only to erase them and try again.
She squinted down at the paper. The boy, Nihal, stared back at her, his eyes wide and watery, a webwork of veins threading through the whites. She examined the image for context clues—he looked to be about nine years old; his shirt was an ill-fitting tank top, patterned with thin stripes; his bottom lip was slightly puckered, as if caught between the teeth. But none of these details gave any indication as to exactly why Nihal was crying. Unsure of what to do, Lennon circled A on instinct alone and moved on to the next question.
This image featured a slight woman who appeared to be in her early thirties (give or take a few years) with a pinched, freckled nose and a painted mouth, downturned at the corners. Lennon couldn’t distinguish the shade of her lipstick, given that the images on the exam were printed in black and white, but she assumed it was some shade of red. Her pale hair was gathered into a bun at the crown of her head, exposing her large ears, the stretched lobes pierced through with hoops.
What is Bianca’s current state of being?
Arousal
Satisfaction
Listlessness
Despair
None of the above
Lennon selected C .
The following question featured an abstract ink painting vaguely reminiscent of the work of Pollock. The brushstrokes were so viscous and heavy-handed it was hard to catch glimpses of the white canvas beneath the smears and spatters of ink.
What is this painting meant to depict?
Euphoria
Chaos
Joy
Gluttony
None of the above
She circled D .
There was another question and an accompanying image, this one of a wizened woman.
What is Maria trying to hide?
Contempt
Lust
Envy
Grief
All of the above
None of the above
Lennon circled C .
Lennon pressed on, feeling increasingly disoriented, struggling to parse the expressions of the people in the images or the motivations behind the abstract artworks she was asked to scrutinize. One question featured a woman cradling a newborn baby, presumably her child, to her breast and asked the test taker to distinguish her predominant emotion (Lennon chose malice). Another question featured the crude ink drawing of a Picasso-esque face, with one pupil three times the size of the other. The image was said to represent infatuation, and the test asked its taker to identify the secondary source of inspiration behind the work (she chose B for dread and felt sure of her answer).
As Lennon approached the second half of the exam, her nose began to bleed. Fat droplets of blood spattered the edge of question twenty-two, causing the ink to seep and smudge so that the expression of the woman in the accompanying image was badly distorted. She had chapped lips and thinning hair. She looked like she was in her late forties, maybe.
What emotion is Anya experiencing? Choose one of the following:
Grief
Awe
Envy
Disgust
None of the above
Hastily she circled E . Her nose kept bleeding profusely, spattering the pages of the booklet as she worked through the remaining questions, one of which featured a wide-eyed man, thickly bearded, his brows knit together. There was a tattoo beneath his right eye, but the poor image quality made it impossible for Lennon to distinguish what it was.
What emotion is Lyle trying to convey?
Obstinacy
Confusion
Disappointment
Frustration
All of the above
None of the above
Lennon pinched her nose and tipped back her head in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. It was all she could do not to gag when she tasted the blood draining, hot and thick, down the back of her throat. By some miracle she managed not to retch, and circled C .
Finally, she reached the last question: a dizzying image of countless hand-drawn concentric circles shrinking to a near-imperceptible axis at the center of the page.
What is this image meant to convey?
Ecstasy
Humiliation
Gratitude
Anxiety
Jubilance
None of the above
Lennon wiped away the last of her nosebleed and circled B with seconds left to spare.
“Pencils down,” said Eileen, stepping up to the lectern. As she did, all five of the other proctors rose in practiced tandem, and began to climb the steps of the amphitheater, collecting the test booklets as they went. One boy—broad-shouldered and sharp-eyed and sitting toward the back—kept circling answers in a hasty attempt to finish the exam, and as a result was immediately ousted by the same man who owned the dudeen pipe, dismissed with a hissing whisper and a finger pointed toward a dark door at the top of the stairs that Lennon hadn’t noticed before.
There were, in fact, many things she hadn’t noticed. Like, for example, the fact that the room had emptied considerably during the evaluation. More than two-thirds of those who were originally present at the beginning of the exam were now, inexplicably, gone. Lennon hadn’t seen or heard their departures.
Those remaining were led to a small waiting room up a flight of stairs and down another narrow passageway, this one lined on either wall with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were packed to capacity with old leather-bound tomes. The place smelled of dust and horse glue. From there, they were ushered into a kind of parlor. Its walls were paneled with dark wood and heavy green curtains were drawn across its only window. There was a fire dancing in the hearth, though it wasn’t nearly cold enough to warrant one.
The test takers were supplied with a few refreshments—small buttermilk biscuits with raspberry jam and pats of butter molded into the shape of flowers, sliced peaches with whipped cream, and sparkling water in ceramic bowls that tasted of rosemary and minerals. Lennon ignored the biscuits but had her fill of fruit and drank several bowls of water in the minutes before she was called into a private testing room down the hall.
Here there were no proctors or lecterns. No fellow test takers. The door groaned shut behind her, and Lennon was left alone in a large, sparsely furnished classroom. The far wall of the room was consumed almost entirely by a clean, green chalkboard. In front of it, an empty chair and a mahogany desk. At the center of the classroom, another single desk and chair, facing its larger counterpart.
Opposite the door Lennon entered through was a stained-glass window left slightly ajar. There were students gathered in the courtyard below, and she caught snippets of their conversation. They were rigorously—and with raised voices—debating some philosophical matter that pertained to the immateriality of the mind.
Unsure of what she was supposed to do, Lennon stalled there by the door for some time, waiting for directions from one of the proctors who’d overseen the first portion of the exam. But they never showed up. Instead, after a few long minutes that felt like hours, a man she didn’t recognize entered. He was slim, and tall enough to need to duck a bit when he walked through the door. His jaw was sharp and faintly stubbled with the ghost of a beard, like he’d intended to shave that morning but had forgotten. His hair too was shorn short. His skin was a rich bronze. Lennon guessed he was about Wyatt’s age, give or take a few years. He was covered in tattoos. The backs of both of his hands were tattooed with moths, and the imagery was repeated on the hard planes of his neck. The moths on his hands had their wings, but a few of the ones on his neck had had their wings ripped from their thoraxes. The imagery was grotesque enough to make Lennon squirm.
The man drew the door shut, frowning slightly, his blunt brows drawn together. He made no apologies for his lateness. Barely registered Lennon when he spoke. “You have a name?” His voice bore what she guessed was a faint Brooklyn accent, though she wasn’t sure.
“It’s Lennon.”
His gaze flickered to her. He looked, for the briefest moment, startled. But he recovered himself quickly, extended a hand covered in tattoos. “Dante.”
Lennon shook it. His palm was calloused. “Nice to meet you.”
Dante walked to the desk at the head of the room and shrugged off his trench coat, draping it across the back of the chair. He set his briefcase on the floor beside the desk. His shoes were brown leather oxfords, mud stuck to the soles. He nodded to the other, smaller desk that stood opposite his. “Sit.”
Lennon obeyed, and stepped into the center of the room and slipped into her seat behind the desk. It was so small her knees pressed painfully against the underside of the tabletop. It seemed like it was built for a child.
Dante settled himself in the chair behind the desk and reached into the inner pocket of his blazer, withdrawing a crude, fat little pig figurine with three stubby legs (two in the front, one in the back) and deep holes for eyes. He set it down on the desk, facing Lennon. “This is the expressive portion of the entry exam,” said Dante. “Your task is to make me lift this figurine without leaving your desk or touching me. Understood?”
Lennon nodded, swallowed nothing. Outside, a drizzling rain began to fall, and the students gathered in the courtyard hastily collected their things and retreated indoors.
“Let’s begin,” said Dante.
Lennon blinked. At a loss, she said: “Um…would you lift the pig? Please?”
“I said make me lift it. Not ask me to.”
Lennon didn’t know what he meant by that (what was she supposed to do, produce a gun from thin air and order him to lift the pig with a finger hooked over the trigger?) but didn’t dare ask. Instead, she focused her attention on the pig, wondered at its origins. Its ears were perky, and Lennon imagined its creator forming them, carefully pinching wet clay between thumb and forefinger and affixing its curlicue tail before ushering it into the oven, where it would bake and blacken until the soft earth hardened into scorched terra-cotta.
“You’re trying to reach me,” said Dante. “Not the pig.”
Lennon raised her gaze, observed him the way she had the photographs during the previous phase of the exam. The terrain of his face told stories. There was a silvery scar to the left of his cupid’s bow, near the corner of his mouth—a busted lip poorly stitched? Lennon couldn’t place his race but could tell that, like her, he was mostly Black but mixed with something else. White, maybe?
Dante endured her scrutiny without expression. His hands remained motionless, palms flush to the desk, flanking the pig figurine. But she noticed a slight fissuring in the stone fa?ade of his expression. He looked almost…disappointed. He checked his watch; it was dull brass with a brown leather strap, and Lennon swore its face was painted to resemble a woman. “This is a waste of time.”
A sudden pang of anger pulsed through her, so sharp it snatched the breath right out of her lungs.
Everything, she realized then, had been leading up to this. This one chance at a success so great it could make up for her countless failings. All that stood between her and success was the smug man sitting in front of her and that fucking pig figurine. Lennon would make him lift it. She had to make him lift it. She refused to crawl back to Wyatt with her tail tucked between her legs, fresh off yet another failure. In the moment, her desperation grew so dire she felt like her survival and her success at Drayton were near synonymous. And though she didn’t know it then, she was right.
Lennon felt a kind of stirring, a trembling pressure that built behind her sternum, like the drone of bumblebees or a phone ringing on vibrate. It spread through her chest and into her limbs, numbing them, then traveled to her head, thrumming incessantly behind her eyes until her vision doubled, both Dante and the figurine standing on the desk in front of him duplicated, then tripled. Her nose began to bleed again, more profusely than it had the last time, spattering the desk, which was shuddering violently, both chair and table rattling in unison. But then she realized, with mounting horror, that it wasn’t the desk that was shaking…it was her .
Somewhere down the hall, or in the distant recesses of her own mind, she swore she heard the chime of an elevator’s bell.
Dante’s fingers twitched. He flexed them.
The seizing grew more severe, and Lennon feared she would be sick, or scream, or lose herself to the throes of a passion so complete she wasn’t sure she’d survive it. Passion turned to pain. Her ears began to ring, and she realized that this was the pain that Benedict had warned her of. She kept shaking and gripped the edges of the desk with white-knuckled desperation to keep herself from being thrown out of it.
Dante’s hand shifted across the desk, inching toward the figurine, and Lennon gritted her teeth so hard she thought the molars at the back of her mouth might crack. Her vision came back into focus and her shaking dulled to a tremor as she gazed into Dante’s eyes with silent urging. The intangible force of her will moving across the classroom.
The rain came down harder.
Dante’s hand peeled away from the desk and hovered, shaking, a few inches above the pig, then he seized it in a jerky motion reminiscent of an arcade claw machine fastening its metal fingers around a stuffed toy. He lifted the figurine a few inches above the desk, his eyes on Lennon, then dropped it abruptly as though it had burned him.
The pig bounced twice, struck the floor—its snout breaking on impact—and rolled across the classroom, stopping just short of Lennon’s sneaker. She leaned out of the desk to pick it up. It was heavier than it looked, and the scorched clay was rough to the touch.
Lennon raised her gaze to Dante again, parting her lips to ask him whether she’d passed the exam, but her tongue remained, limp and useless, like a small dead animal at the basin of her mouth. The exhaustion hit her then and she collapsed back into her chair, dizzy and utterly spent.
Dante eyed her for a beat longer, then nodded, first to himself then at Lennon, as if to admit defeat. In his eyes, something close to contempt. “Congratulations on your acceptance to Drayton.”