Yolanda stared at him as he spoke, inwardly groaning at his attempts at lying. Whether he knew it or not, his forced neutrality of an expression only made his unconscious tics more obvious. Her mother had taught her how to read a person a few months before she had left on her travels.[i] "Just so you know whether someone is trying to cheat you."[/i] Her mother had said.

She went over the statements again in her mind, replaying how Baylen's mouth had moved around the words, looking for hesitations between words. She smiled at him, though it was less a friendly gesture and more a thinly veiled sneer. "You're a fucking bad liar," Yolanda commented abruptly. "You're not an alcohol person. What are you into, shrooms? Weed? Yeah. Anything but alcohol."