An Academy for Liars

by Alexis Henderson

And not just for him, but for everyone who is beginning to grasp what I’ve known since the day we first met.” “And what is that?” “You’re dangerous.” Dante was one of many men who’d said this to her. The first time she’d heard it, she was thirteen, and walking home from school. A man had winked at her and said just that—“Well, aren’t you dangerous”—and men had been saying that to her ever since. When they said dangerous, Lennon knew they meant she was jailbait, a guilty pleasure, a potential homewrecker, someone who could derail their life. But Dante said it differently, without smugness or innuendo. When he called her dangerous, it was stated like a simple fact. Her eyes were hazel. Her hair was curly. And she was dangerous. It was as simple as that, and yet Lennon found that she liked the way he said it, so much so that she almost wanted to ask him to say it again, just so she could watch his lips move around the words.