An Academy for Liars

Chapter 13

Lennon woke to the gentle crackling of a fire. From somewhere off in the red-washed dark, hushed snatches of conversation: “The elevator appeared out in the garden. According to Sawyer, she said it was for her, walked through the doors, and they closed behind her.”

“How long was she gone?”

“No more than fifteen minutes. Sawyer beat on the doors, called for help, but they wouldn’t open. I did the same. Then at random the elevator bell rang, the doors parted, and there she was, slumped against the far wall of the cabin. Barely conscious.”

“You did the right thing,” said Dante. “Bringing her here to me.”

“She could’ve gotten herself, or someone else, killed.”

“I know,” said Dante. “But we can address that. How many people know what you know? How many people saw?”

“Well, there was Sawyer, Kieran, me, Blaine. A couple people at the party may have seen as well. I don’t know. It was all happening so fast.”

Lennon’s head felt too heavy to lift. She shifted her gaze left and saw two figures standing in the shadows near the hearth, just beyond the reach of the flame’s light. There was Emerson with a crust of blood beneath her nose, squinting at Lennon through the bright glare of her glasses, and Dante standing close beside her.

“Give me a moment alone with her,” she heard Dante say.

“Sure.” Emerson left the office, and Lennon could have sworn she heard the soft click of the door locking shut behind her.

Lennon managed to sit up, bracing a hand on the back of the couch. The room pitched, this way and that, in a sickening wave of vertigo. Dante strode out of her line of vision and returned a few moments later with a small metal wastebasket. He set it on the floor between her feet.

“I’m fine,” said Lennon, waving him away. “I’m not going to—”

She retched acid, gagging so violently her throat hurt. Bile spattered the bottom of the trash can.

“Where did you go?” Dante asked, crouching at her feet.

Lennon straightened. Her memories filtered back to her, out of order. She remembered the elevator doors parting open. Emerson dragging her half-conscious from the cabin. She remembered seizing in the corridor with her classmates gathered in a ring around her—a lot of people shouting for nurses and room to breathe and someone who could do CPR, even though she was quite aware of her heart punching furiously at her sternum. Then she remembered the boy and his moth in Logos House. The sprawling campus, the grass crusted with frost.

“I don’t know where I was. It was like Drayton but not.”

“How was it different?”

“It was cold. There was frost on the ground.”

Dante, for his part, looked deeply troubled. “Did you see anyone there?”

Lennon nodded. “There was a boy. A little boy.”

Dante stiffened, his jaw locking tight.

Lennon squirmed under his gaze. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on or—”

There was a knock at the door.

“Not now,” said Dante.

The secretary’s voice came through the closed door. “The vice-chancellor’s on the phone.”

“Tell her to hold.”

“She says it’s urgent.”

“Have Emerson handle it. Tell her to stall.”

Dante’s attention shifted back to Lennon. “What did the boy look like?”

“He was Black…maybe nine or ten. Skinny.”

“And where did you see him?”

“In Logos House.”

“Did this boy speak to you?”

Lennon shook her head. “He never said a word.”

Dante caught her by the chin, tilted her head slightly downward, so they were staring at each other eye to eye. “This school, this place is not what you think it is. It’s not a haven or a refuge. And what is about to happen next is going to be ugly. So I’ll need you to keep a cool head.”

“I’m scared. I want to go home,” she said, without really knowing where home was anymore. She couldn’t bear to return to Wyatt, even if he would take her back, and she hadn’t spoken to her blood relations in many months. For the first time Lennon understood the solemn concept of her own aloneness.

“Home won’t shelter you from this,” said Dante. “Now listen to me. There’s going to be a trial—”

“A what ?”

“They’ll call it a disciplinary hearing, but make no mistake: what you say—or neglect to say—will dictate your future.”

“What do I need to do? What should I say?”

“Tell them everything short of the truth. Tell them about the elevator. But leave out the bit about the boy…and the cold too. Keep those details to yourself and you’ll be all right.” As he said this Lennon felt a peculiar sensation, similar to lightheadedness. The memories of her encounter in the elevator scrambled then faded. She shut her eyes, tried to remember, to bring the boy’s face into focus, but she couldn’t. It was all so terribly fuzzy, like a dream half-forgotten.

“I—I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“You don’t have to if you just do what I’m telling you to do. The explanations, the understanding, that’ll all come later. My focus now is making sure you live to see that day. Do you understand?”

Emerson entered the room before Lennon had the chance to answer.

Dante turned to look at her. “Well?”

“Emergency hearing,” said Emerson.

“When?”

“Now, according to Eileen.”

Dante hung his head. “Fuck.”

The hearing was to take place in Irvine Hall. Lennon and Emerson walked there together, Dante staying behind to tie up loose ends, whatever that meant. It was a foggy evening, and Lennon felt like the two of them were wading more than walking to Irvine. They were silent until they reached its doors and Lennon, turning to Emerson with a pit in her stomach, asked the question she’d been holding back. “Am I going to be expelled?”

“I doubt Dante will allow that to happen,” said Emerson.

“Does he have the power to prevent it?”

“If it’s put to a vote…perhaps not. But you should know by now that he’s incredibly convincing. You don’t have anything to worry about. You’ll be okay.”

Upon entering Irvine, they were ushered up to an oblong conference room on the second floor of the building. It had no windows. There was an oval table at the center of the room. Seated around it were most of Drayton’s tenured professors—Dr. Lund from meditation; Dr. Ethel Greene, who presided over Lennon’s Art and Ego course; Benedict from Lennon’s entry interview, who smiled tightly at Lennon. The vice-chancellor, Eileen, sat at the head of the table. There was a glossy black rotary phone in front of her.

Eileen gestured to one of two empty chairs at the table. “Have a seat, Lennon. Make yourself comfortable. Emerson, you can go.”

“But Dante—”

“Is not the one leading this hearing. I am.”

Emerson looked at Lennon, gave an apologetic shrug, and left the room. When she was gone, Eileen turned on her. “Perhaps we ought to begin with a verbal account of exactly what it was that you saw after exiting the elevator.”

“But Dante isn’t here,” said Lennon, feeling trapped, like at any moment she might accidentally say something damning. “I was under the impression he’d be present.”

“I can’t account for his absence, nor can I afford to wait for him. Now answer the question: What did you see after exiting the elevator?”

Heeding Dante’s warning, Lennon kept her answer short and simple. “I saw Drayton when the doors opened.”

There was an ensuing volley of questions.

“What time of day was it?” Ethel Greene demanded.

“It was night.”

Eileen deftly twirled a pen with a ripple of her pale fingers. “Did you see anyone?”

“No,” said Lennon, delivering her first lie of the hearing in a careful deadpan.

“And did the campus look the same way you remembered it?” Eileen inquired, pressing for more, but more of what Lennon didn’t know. Was she trying to catch her in a lie? Or was there something specific she was fishing for?

“Everything looked the same to me. It’s just that I was in one part of campus and the doors opened to another. It was really nothing more than that.”

The questions came faster after that, delivered with the urgency of someone trying to squeeze out their last words before a trigger was pulled.

“How did you open that gate?” Dr. Lund inquired from down the table.

“I—I don’t know.”

A woman Lennon didn’t recognize spoke from beside him: “You don’t know, or you won’t say?”

“I won’t say because I don’t know. It just happened.”

The professors exchanged long and worried glances. Lennon wondered what she’d said or done to make their moods sour even more.

“Nothing just happens,” said Ethel Greene. “You must’ve done something.”

“I didn’t. I mean, well, I did have some shrooms—”

“So, just to clarify, you did do something? You were under the influence of a contraband substance during this encounter.”

“I…yes. I guess?”

“Would you have described yourself as high?”

“I mean, I was a little high,” she said, an understatement stretched so thin it tore and became a lie.

“Allow me to get this straight.” Eileen leaned forward, steepling her fingers. Her gaze cleaved down the middle of the table to Lennon. “You were under the influence of a psychedelic drug when the elevator appeared?”

Lennon’s cheeks warmed. It had been a long time since she’d felt this small and ashamed. “That’s right.”

Benedict took over, his line of questioning decisive and cutting. “Is there any possibility that you may have—while under the influence of this substance—mistakenly made a choice to call that elevator? Perhaps some part of you wanted it to appear?”

“I don’t think so. But I’m not sure.”

“What are you sure of, Lennon?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Let me phrase the question more succinctly: What did you know to be fact when the elevator appeared? We’ve already established that you were under the influence of a mind-altering substance. But I’d like to know a bit more about your emotional state at the time of the elevator’s appearance. What were you feeling?”

“I…I guess I was peaceful? I was out in the garden with Sawyer.” She wondered then if it was a mistake to say his name, to drag him into this mess. “We’d been talking about how we came to Drayton. All of these hopes and dreams, and I don’t know if it was the shrooms, or if I was just sleepy, but when I felt most relaxed the elevator appeared where the door of the garden shed had been, just moments before.”

Benedict smiled, as though she’d finally done something right.

Just then, the door opened, and Dante stepped into the room. “Forgive my lateness,” he said, draping his coat on the back of the empty chair across from Lennon’s. He sat down. “I assume we’re done with introductions?”

“I warned you to be on time,” said Eileen.

“And I warned you that this hearing was a farce. But here we are.”

“Dante,” said Eileen. It was the hushed and contemptuous tone of a mother just before she begins to yell.

He raised his eyebrows mockingly. “Eileen?”

“If there’s something you’d like to say or argue, you have the floor. Lennon is your advisee, after all.”

“I’ll keep this brief. Lennon is an asset to this school. Frankly, you’re all lucky that your brief tenures have overlapped with her attendance here, because she’s the first natural gatekeeper we’ve had in more than a century.”

There was a swell of noise, everyone speaking at once—contradicting Dante, whispering among themselves, a handful of professors who argued for everyone else to be quiet and thus contributed greatly to the noise themselves. The commotion reminded Lennon of a startled flock of chickens.

“What’s a gatekeeper?” Lennon asked, but they either didn’t hear or chose to ignore her.

Only Dante registered that she’d spoken, his gaze softening some as it met hers. When he spoke across the table, the rest of the room went quiet. “Gatekeepers can open gates, at will, to different places. The last one who lived was Irvine, who first built the confines of this school and shielded it from everyone else.”

“Drayton’s prodigy. From convocation. I remember.”

“Then you may also remember that Irvine gave his life to defend this school,” said Eileen, not looking at Lennon, or anyone really, her eyes trained on some random point near the center of the table. “He weighed his own life against the interests and well-being of this school and chose the latter.”

“But he was also a student,” said Dante. “He learned to hone his gift, and when it came time for him to lay down his life, that was a decision he made himself. A willing sacrifice. Not something that was forced upon him.”

Eileen waved him off. “She isn’t worth the trouble. Irvine was a prodigy. He’d been taught in the ways of persuasion for years. Whereas Lennon—”

“Hasn’t had the opportunity to prove herself,” said Dante, cutting her off. “All I’m asking is that you give it to her. Under my instruction—”

“ Your instruction?” Eileen looked incredulous—baffled, even.

“All right, if not mine, then Ben’s. Let him show her the ropes. She has promise, Eileen. The least you could do is give her the chance to prove it.”

But Eileen shook her head. “I’ve heard enough. Let’s put this to a vote and be done with it. Shall we?”

“Lennon hasn’t done anything dangerous. All she did was open a gate to another part of campus. That’s hardly a capital offense—”

Eileen ignored him, turned to address the rest of the room. “All in favor of expulsion?”

All the professors around the table, save Benedict and Dante, raised their hands.

Lennon’s heart seized. Just that quickly, with a few raised hands, she had lost everything . “W-wait please—”

Eileen stood up, collecting her papers. “Well, that decides it. Dante, as her advisor, I’ll leave you to handle this situation in whatever way you see fit. Just make it clean, will you? You know how messy these things can become when a memory is left half-intact.”

But Dante didn’t move or speak. His gaze homed in on the rotary phone, just a split second before it started to ring, a shrill tinny sound that silenced the room—the murmurings of conversation and the shuffling of papers, the heartbeats and ragged breaths, the buzzing of the bulbs in the old chandelier that dangled above the table—it was a sound that seemed to suck up every other.

Eileen, along with the rest of them, stared motionless at the phone for a few rounds of ringing before—as if emerging from a trance—she picked it up, snatching the receiver from its cradle, holding it to her ear. “Yes. Yes, sir. No. Of course.”

Dante locked eyes with Lennon and smiled.

Eileen pulled the receiver from her ear and placed three fingers over the mouthpiece. “Lennon, the chancellor would like to speak with you.” She passed the phone down the table, the coiled cord stretching almost taut.

Lennon took it, raised the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”

“You will continue your studies here at Drayton.” The voice crackling over the line was the same one that Lennon had heard, weeks prior, when she’d first received word of Drayton. A voice like all of the voices of everyone she had ever known together in horrid synchrony. Her mother, her sister, Wyatt and Sawyer, Sophia and Dante, Blaine and Benedict, the childhood friend with whom she hadn’t spoken in more than eleven years, the clerk at her favorite grocery store. And then—perhaps the loudest voice of all—her own. “You will train under Benedict to hone your skill as a gatekeeper, in the service of this school. Do you understand, Lennon?”

A muscle in Lennon’s clenched jaw jumped and twitched. “Yes.”

There was a rattling sound—like loose change in a cup, or perhaps the clearing of a throat through a storm of static. “I wish you the best of luck with your future studies.”