An Academy for Liars

Chapter 47

That night they celebrated on the back porch of the house with small glasses of champagne and a lobster boil. The air was thick with humidity, but the sky was clear of storm clouds, and there was a red sun setting into the ocean.

“My sister used to say sunsets like this one made the ocean look like it was on fire,” said Dante, staring out at the waves. He was drained from all of the energy he’d siphoned into Lennon that day. His nose had only just stopped bleeding, and he had deep bags beneath his eyes, as if he hadn’t had a full night’s rest in weeks. But he looked happy as he spoke of his sister, relaxed. The last time Lennon had seen him like this—so open and at peace—had been weeks ago, the day they’d camped on the island.

“I didn’t know you had sisters,” said Lennon, surprised, a little hurt even, that he hadn’t told her.

“I have two.”

“Any brothers?”

“No,” he said.

“Are you the oldest?”

“The youngest, actually. But not by much. My mom had all three of us back-to-back, no more than fifteen months between us.”

“Trying for a boy?”

“For better or for worse,” he said.

“Do you see them often? Your sisters, I mean.”

“Not anymore.” He paused. She thought that he wouldn’t continue and was surprised when he did. “My oldest sister died of colon cancer four years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

He waved her off. “The last time I saw my other sister, she was curled up asleep below an overpass. High out of her mind.”

“Oh my god.”

“She struggled. She’d been struggling for some time, and for years I tried to help her. Get her clean and stable. On my last attempt to get her off the streets, I…well, I bent her mind to my will, brought her here. She was angry, of course, but I managed to talk her down, subdue her, or at least that’s what I thought. I kept her safe in the house, mostly, but sometimes we’d walk along the beach or run errands around town. I thought I was saving her; I thought that I could. She was as happy as I had seen her in a long time. She’d put on weight. Got sober, even. And then, one night, I woke up and she was gone. I found her a few miles down the road and forced her to come back to the house, where we fought. I told her that she was going to get herself killed and she told me that that was her right. And I don’t know…that unlocked something in me. I think I realized that night that the greatest gift I had to give her wasn’t sobriety, or safety: it was freedom. The choice to live her life on her own terms even if that meant I would lose her. So I let her go.”

“Do you know where she is now?”

“No,” he said. “And I think that’s the way she wants it. I can’t blame her, given what I did.”

“You were trying to save her life,” said Lennon. “I’m sure she knows that. You could always reach out to her—”

“No,” he said. “If I do that, I’d have to let go of what I have left. The good memories, they get tarnished by the bad. I’ve got this image of my sisters I really want to keep. They’re young, we’re all young. It’s summertime and the sun is half-set, its light shining through the breaks in the buildings along our street. Someone’s pried open a fire hydrant, and my sisters are running through the spray, hand in hand. That’s how I want to remember them both.”

“That’s a good memory to hold on to,” said Lennon.

He nodded. “One of the few.”

They were sitting close now, their arms almost brushing, so that Lennon could feel the heat of him, and all she wanted was to be closer. But once again, Dante pulled away, leaning back into his seat with his eyes on the water. His sudden withdrawal might’ve stung, if not for what he said next: “If we’re going to do this, at the very least, we should talk about it first.”

A thrill skated down her spine, as if she’d been grazed by the edge of a razor. “Okay. Let’s talk.”

“I don’t think you understand the way things will change if we do this. Likely for the worse.”

Lennon fought the urge to roll her eyes. “You keep acting like I’m a child, and I keep telling you that I’m not.”

“I know you’re not,” he said. “But you are someone that I’ve been entrusted to care for, and to pretend like our…affiliation wouldn’t in some way compromise that is na?ve.”

“The way I see it, we’ve been caring for each other. It hasn’t been one-sided.”

“I didn’t say that it has been. But I have a responsibility that you don’t, and it would be wrong—”

“In the conventional sense—”

“Wrong,” he repeated again, “if I engaged you.”

“Well, I think it would be wrong if two consenting adults denied ourselves the chance at something that could be good, great even, if we let it. Why doesn’t that count for something? Why doesn’t the pain of our own denial factor into your moral assessments?”

“I feel like you want something from me that I’m not sure I can give you.”

“Then give me what you can,” said Lennon.

And so he did.

Dante cupped the side of her neck, his fingertips carefully aligning with her artery. When they kissed, it didn’t feel like the first time. He lifted her out of her seat, splitting her thighs apart, and hitched her firmly onto his hips. As he carried her to the bedroom, Lennon kissed that moth tattoo on the hard plane of his neck, the corners of his mouth, and the soft hollow below his jaw.

On the bed, he fitted himself between her open legs and she pushed up his shirt as far as she could and then he tugged it off the rest of the way. He was even more heavily tattooed than she’d realized. The moth imagery carried down from his neck, became something of a swarm across his chest and sternum. There were other images too: a hand with a dagger pierced through it (a nod, she assumed, to the Logos initiation process) and another with an open eye embedded in the palm. Lennon spotted the ouroboros of Logos House. A spread-winged starling with an arrow through its head. But it was a small tattoo along his rib cage that caught Lennon’s attention. It read: August.

Claude had said that word months ago: It would be August all over again.

She’d thought he was referring to the month. But she realized now that it was a name.

“Something wrong?” Dante asked, peering down at her, sensing, from the feel of her body alone, the shift in her energy. That was how enmeshed they’d become. That he could feel her emotion, even when she kept her expression contained.

“No,” she said, pushing all of the thoughts of Claude out of her mind. She didn’t want them here, haunting her. Not now. “I’m fine.”

From then on, they did what they did in silence punctuated only by the rhythm of the headboard beating against the wall. As Dante moved within her, his hip bones bruising against her own with each thrust, she kept her hand clasped tight over that August tattoo on his side, as if the name were an open wound and she was trying to staunch the bleeding.