# THOMPSON-HAYES: BLOOD MONEY
## Chapter Seven — Cole at the Table
She taught two full periods.
She stood in front of thirty-one students and talked about unreliable narrators in the specific way she always talked about them — not as a literary device, as a life skill. She said: *an unreliable narrator doesn't know they're unreliable. That's the point. They're telling you the truest version of the story they have access to. Your job is to read what they can't see about themselves.*
Second period asked better questions than she expected. A girl named Priya in the third seat of the circle said: *so how do you know when you're the unreliable narrator?* And Mia said: *when the story you're telling requires everyone else to be wrong.*
She drove home at noon.
Nathan was in her parking lot.
