An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson

Author:Alexis Henderson [Henderson, Alexis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

There was no memorial service for Benedict. No mention of his death apart from a small, framed obituary posted on the same bulletin in Irvine Hall where all of the students’ grades were announced. It was short and mostly devoid of emotion—detailing in large part Benedict’s contributions to the school and his love of gardening. Fittingly, students placed flowers beneath the posting until the arrangement spilled out into the middle of the corridor. No cause of death was mentioned in the obituary, but rumors about how and why Benedict died were thoroughly disseminated across the campus.

A long weekend followed Lennon’s return to Drayton. Classes were suspended for the week of Thanksgiving break, and many students returned to their homes for the holiday. Lennon was not among them, though she did call her mom in one of the phone booths scattered around the campus to tell her she was okay and busy with her studies.

“Are you sure you can’t come home?” The sound of her mother’s voice was enough to make Lennon’s throat clog with tears. “Not even for the day? We’ll be making all your favorites. Mac and cheese, yams with mini marshmallows burnt dark the way you like.”

“I’m sorry, Mom, but I’m too busy. I have to study.”

This was a lie.

The real reason that Lennon didn’t fly home for Thanksgiving was Claude. He was utterly inconsolable, and in the days after Benedict’s death he drank himself violently ill, to the point where Emerson poured every bottle of spirits on his bar cart down the toilet, just to avoid him poisoning himself. With his supply cut off, Claude took to wandering the campus and sometimes even venturing beyond it, sourcing his drinks from convenience stores in Savannah proper by way of the Logos elevator, which allowed access to a floor on the riverfront downtown. Claude’s drinking became so extreme that he couldn’t be left alone, so the members of Logos divided his care into shifts that lasted all day and stretched on deep into the night, when Claude was most prone to his drunken tantrums. One moment he’d be despondent in his chair, and the next he would rage, throwing things and toppling tables and cursing.

They should’ve taken him to the infirmary, but when Lennon suggested as much, the cold looks she received from Emerson, Kieran, and even Sawyer were enough to shoot that idea down dead in the water.

“If you take him to the infirmary in this state, they’re sure to expel him,” said Kieran sharply. “We have to give him a chance to grieve and sober up on his own terms. He’ll be fine with time.”

But Lennon wasn’t so sure.

Things came to a head on a particularly terrible night when it was her turn to watch Claude. He’d been abnormally subdued that evening, and Lennon was beginning to suspect that there was something seriously wrong—that he was succumbing to liver failure or some other malady caused by alcohol poisoning—when he sat upright in bed and looked at her.

“You know…Benedict never much cared for Dante.

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