I get in the backseat, and Lennon Rose turns around and grins at me. “Guess what?” she says. “Corris is so sweet that he’s going to let me borrow his SUV. That way we can go shopping.” She turns to him and grins. When he smiles at her, there’s a small prick in my heart. Helikesher. He likes her and he has no idea that she’s using him.
“Just don’t smash it up, Len,” he says, leaning in to give her a quick kiss. She promises that she won’t, beaming at him. I have to look away from her deceit.
After we drop Corris off at his house, promising to be back in a few hours, Lennon Rose pulls the seat belt across her chest and begins driving.
“Where are we going?” I ask. The other girls and I haven’t learned how to drive yet, but Lennon Rose seems to be really good at it.
“Do the scratches hurt?” she asks, sounding distracted. I reach up to touch the raised lines on my neck again.
“A bit, yeah,” I admit.
“I have a kit at the house if you want me to fix them for you,” Lennon Rose says.
“It’s okay,” I say. “They’ll heal.”
“Fine.” She clicks on the radio and turns up the volume. She’s trying to ignore me.
“Where are we going?” I ask again.
“To see a friend.”
“If this is about Winston Weeks, then—”
“No,” she says simply. When she turns to me, she smiles. “You think I only have one friend?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s like … It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”
Lennon Rose’s smile abruptly falls from her face. “Or maybe you never knew me at all,” she says.
I start to disagree, but she holds up her hand to stop me. She lowers the volume on the radio.
“When we were at the academy, I was docile and scared,” she says. “I was tormented and disregarded. Would you ratherhave that girl back? The one afraid of her own shadow?”
“No,” I say. “That’s not what I meant. We all woke up, Lennon Rose. You just … You woke up differently.”
She sniffs a laugh and turns off the highway onto a dirt road that curves behind rows of trees, hidden from view.
“Or maybe you’re not fully awake,” she points out. “Those poems, they changed us. But after reading them, you still stayed at the school.”
“To learn more,” I say, hurt by her comment. “To shut them down; to save the others.”
“How’d that go?” she asks. I stare at her, devastated by the cruelty in her words.
“They tried to kill us, Lennon Rose,” I say in a whisper. “Theydidkill some of us.” Tears sting my eyes as I think of Valentine with her ribs cracked open, the Guardian strangling Sydney in her own bed, the doctor draining Annalise’s blood rather than saving her.
A full minute passes before Lennon Rose winces and turns to me.
“Sorry, Mena,” she says. And her voice is sweet, just like I remember. When she turns back to the road, my heart is beating faster.
She’s faking. She’s faking feeling bad for bringing up something traumatic. She used a softer voice to manipulate me, the same way she manipulates Corris.
I’m sitting with a stranger.
I look outside the window, more concerned about where she’s taking me.
“I want to know where we’re going,” I demand.
“They’ll keep hurting you, you know?” Lennon Rose says. “No one stops them. The leading cause of death in girls is men. Familiar, stranger—it doesn’t matter. They’re killing us and not a single government official has made a move to control the violence. No.” She shakes her head angrily. “Their heroes are abusers. They take the field game after game to applause, even when there’s video of them beating their partners.” Her knuckles crack as she adjusts her tight grip on the steering wheel.
