Liars, Inc.

by Paula Stokes

  WHEN THE WEEKEND ROLLED AROUND, I did my usual detention and then met up with Parvati and took her to the overlook.

  “What are you doing tonight?” she asked as I pulled the car into the lot.

  I paused for a second, not wanting to lie to her, but not wanting to betray Pres’s trust either. “Camping,” I said finally, parking close enough to the edge of the cliff that we could look out over the churning water. “On the beach. I’m meeting up with Pres.”

  “Cool.” She nestled her head under my chin. She smelled different. Like cinnamon. Maybe she was using a new shampoo. “Ouch.” She pulled her face away and I could see the beginnings of a shark’s tooth indent on her cheek.

  I tugged the pendant over my head and tossed it into the center console. “Sorry.” I stroked her cheek with one hand, but she didn’t respond. I was kind of surprised she hadn’t started groping me yet. If there was one thing I could normally count on, it was that Parvati would make the first move. “You okay?”

  “Why? Because I haven’t pounced on you?”

  Did I mention she was a mind reader? Just one more CIA-worthy skill.

  She tilted her head up so she could look at me. “Maybe I’m bored.” Her lips twitched. I knew she was messing with me.

  “You saying you’re not into me anymore?” I gave her my best pathetic look. “I figured it was too good to last.”

  She smiled—not the slanted lips she gave people at school, a real smile that made her eyes get a little crinkly. “Do you know why I like you, Max Cantrell?”

  “Because your dad hates me?”

  She laughed out loud. “No, that’s why I used to like you. Now it’s because you’re just you. You’re not fake.” She brushed her lips against mine. “And you like me, not some bullshit fake me you need me to become.” Her voice tightened. “Nothing is ever good enough for my parents. Last week, they threatened to ground me because I got a C on a calc test. I swear I’d lose my mind if it weren’t for you.” She exhaled deeply. It was like watching a balloon deflate.

  “Well, no worries, because I’m not going anywhere.” I petted her soft hair, and she leaned her cheek against my chest again. I wanted to say something more, make her feel better, but in a lot of ways I couldn’t relate to her life. Darla and Ben probably wanted me to go to college, but they’d never pressured me about it. Lately, they didn’t seem to expect much at all, aside from the occasional babysitting shift.

  “It’s like sometimes I forget how to be happy,” Parvati said.

  Now that I understood perfectly. Except mine was more like I was afraid to be happy. Life had a way of coming in and screwing shit up whenever things started going good. My mother had died in childbirth, but I remembered being happy with my dad when I was younger. He was the one who had taught me to surf. We took trips all up and down the West Coast together. But then he had a heart attack. Age forty-one.

  He had never even been sick.

  As the paramedics bent over him in our living room, I prayed for the first time in my life.

  It didn’t do any good.

  There weren’t any relatives who could take care of me, so the state gave me to foster parents who lived in Los Angeles. They were nice, and eventually I was happy again. Right up until the night I heard them talking about how they were going to give me back. I didn’t want to end up placed with some other family who would play with me until they got bored and then return me to the store like a defective video game, so I ran away.

  For almost a year, I alternated between living under bridges and living on the beach, begging for change and eating from Dumpsters. Eventually, someone reported me and I got caught. The cops handed me back to child services, who took me to a nearby children’s center. That’s how the Cantrells found me. They were there the day the social worker dropped me off.

  Darla and Ben seemed cool from the start, but I never really let myself get close to them, just in case. Sometimes it amazed me that I let myself care so much about Parvati. She owned me, and I was okay with that. I was still trying to figure out how I’d gotten so lucky.

  “Do you know why I like you?” I asked her.

  She turned to me and arched her eyebrows suggestively. “I can think of a few reasons.”

  “Well, there’s that.” I grinned. “And the fact that you’re the hottest chick I know. But mostly I like how you’re different from other girls. You don’t even try to fit in.”

  Her smile faltered. “I used to try. It was painful.” She paused. “My mom has told me stories about how ostracized she felt when she started dating my dad, because no one close to her could understand why she would do it. I feel like that too sometimes, not because of you, but because I don’t want the same things as most girls I know.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m just weird like that.”

  “You are weird in the best possible way.” I kissed the top of her forehead. “And I think it’s cool that you don’t like all that boring girly stuff.”

  She snuggled in close to me again. “I like some girly stuff. I just don’t expect you to like it too.”

  “I swear it’s like you have some manual of exactly what to say.”

  “Likewise,” she said.

  We sat curled together for the rest of our time, listening to the water pound against the rocks, listening to each other breathe. I didn’t even miss hooking up that day. It was a new kind of closeness for us.

  After I brought Parvati back to her car, I headed home, still thinking about the way her hair smelled and the heat of her body next to mine. I spun the Escort around the corner and onto my street a little too fast, nearly slamming into a gray SUV that was going the opposite way. I whipped the steering wheel to the left and hit the brakes hard. The SUV glided past. I expected the driver to honk or give me the finger, but the figure behind the tinted glass didn’t even glance in my direction.

  Inside the house, Darla awaited me with her usual resigned look. Her hair was pulling loose from her ponytail and she had something green and oozy dribbled down the front of her flowered shirt. At her feet, my eight-month-old, newly adopted twin baby sisters, Ji Hyun and Jo Lee, were busy trying to untie her shoelaces. My other sister, Amanda, was engrossed in an episode of some gory cop TV show.

  “I have to go help Ben at the store, Max,” Darla said. “Will you watch the gang for a few hours?”

  Darla always said that the bond was strong in our family because destiny had brought us all together. Every time someone asked her about the adoptions, she told the same story. She and Ben had been observing another boy at the group home when the social worker dropped me off. I was tangle-haired and covered with sand. I refused to speak to anyone. Darla was immediately drawn to me, and she and Ben came back a few days later for a visit. The social worker told them I was angry and suffering from PTSD, that I’d been living on the beach, that I would be “a problem child.” I didn’t say one word to anyone during the whole session, but the Cantrells didn’t care. They just asked for the adoption paperwork to be started, and a couple of weeks later they took me home as a foster kid while they waited for everything to be processed. Apparently, it was similar with Amanda and the twins. It was fate, Darla always said. She didn’t choose any of us. Life chose us for her.

  It sounded nice, but if you ask me, Darla just liked fixer-uppers. Ben was a decent-looking guy with a laid-back attitude, but he was still a high school dropout with a tacky souvenir shop. I was a slacker with no clue what to do after graduation. Amanda had cystic fibrosis and spent a couple of hours each night strapped into a percussion vest. The twins? Other than being slightly demonic at times? They probably had heart defects or some special Asian illness Darla hadn’t told us about yet.

  “I’m supposed to be going camping with Preston,” I said. “Isn’t Mandy old enough to watch Ji and Jo?”

  “I’m only eleven,” my sister informed me, as if I had forgotten. “Watching the twins is a big responsibility.” She was no doubt parroting something she had overheard my parents say.

/>   “I really need you here. Just until six thirty, okay?” Darla said. “Thanks, Max,” she added, grabbing for a navy sweater that was tossed over the back of the sofa.

  “Like I had a choice,” I mumbled, but she was already gone.

  Ji Hyun tugged at the cuff of my jeans with smudgy green fingers. She babbled something that might have been Korean or might have been a mixture of Klingon and gibberish.

  I reached down and unclamped her fingers from my jeans. I gave her the closest thing I could find—a rolled-up newspaper still in its plastic wrapper—and she curled her chubby hands around it. “I’m only eleven,” I mimicked Amanda, as I plunked down next to her on the sofa. “And yet you’re old enough to watch mutilated corpses on television.”

  “Hey. Focus on Forensics is educational.”

  I watched for a minute as they showed a dead body trapped beneath the surface of a frozen lake, one ghost-pale hand splayed out against the ice as if the victim was reaching out for help. “Sure it is.”

  Jo Lee pulled a tiny vial out from under the sofa and held it up in the air with a squeal. Amanda looked down and squawked in protest. “Max, Jo Lee has my nail polish.”

  “I care,” I said.

  “She’s going to try and eat it,” Amanda said in a singsongy voice.

  “No, she isn’t. She is not that stup—” I reached down and pulled the bottle of pink sparkly polish out of Jo’s grubby fingers just before she could put it in her mouth. She started to wail at the top of her lungs. Immediately Ji started screaming too. God, they were the most lethal tag team ever. For a second I thought about the other kid, the one Ben and Darla almost adopted before they fell for my broken-down, ten-year-old, problem-child ass. He probably never had to babysit. “That kid dodged a bullet,” I muttered. The twins screamed even louder.

  I wrestled the remote control out of Amanda’s hand and turned up the volume. I flipped through the channels and feigned interest in a hockey game. I didn’t really like watching sports, but I loved torturing Amanda.

  “Maaax,” she whined. “This is boring.”

  “Why don’t you go play tea party with Ji and Jo,” I suggested. “Preferably in the street.”

  Amanda’s face crumpled, and for a second I thought she was going to cry. I felt like the world’s biggest dick. Sometimes I forgot my sister was just a kid and talked to her the same way I did to Pres and Parvati.

  “Jeez. Only kidding, Mandy.” I flipped the TV back to where she’d had it.

  Her lips turned back up so quickly that I wondered if I’d just gotten played. “I know,” she said. “Cool. This is the one where they find that girl everyone thought ran away to join a harem.”

  “That’s a girl?” The soggy blob being hoisted from the water didn’t even look human.

  “Yeah. You remember the Prom Queen Killer, don’t you? Supposedly she was his first victim.”

  “Doesn’t this stuff give you nightmares?” I hoped the twins weren’t going to grow up to be serial killers from seeing shit like this.

  “Nope,” Amanda said.

  I pulled my phone out of the side pocket of my cargo pants and sent Preston a quick text telling him I wouldn’t be able to meet him until after six thirty. I wanted to text Parvati too, but her parents were known to monitor her cell phone, and she’d catch hell if they saw a text from me.

  It was right before seven when I pulled my car into the overlook parking lot. The lot was empty except for the Jacobsens’ van and Preston’s BMW.

  “Hey.” I slid out of my car. “Sorry I’m late. I had to babysit.” I rolled my eyes.

  “No worries.” Preston smiled slightly as he slammed his car door behind him. “I wish I had some siblings I could corrupt.”

  I started to reply but then caught sight of his backseat. His whole car was packed full of camping gear. “Wow. You actually packed all that? You’re really taking this alibi seriously.”

  “I didn’t want my mom to find my tent and sleeping bag in case she goes snooping around in my room,” Pres said. “Besides, I figured you might want to use my stuff. I know your little two-man piece of crap leaks.”

  I looked up at the night sky. Stars stared down at me, winking in a weird sort of synchronization. The moon hung low and heavy, a hair away from being full. “Is it supposed to rain?”

  Preston had turned his back to me and was looking out at the ocean. “No, but you know how fast things can change around here.”

  I followed his gaze, watching the waves crest and break against the rocks. He seemed unusually pensive. Maybe he was just nervous. “You sure you know this girl well enough to go visit her?”

  “Probably not.” He turned and walked along the edge of the cliff, stepping carefully past unstable places and loose rolling rocks that might give way under his feet. “You ever feel like you don’t know anyone?” He looked out at the water again. “Or like no one knows you?”

  I inched closer, trying to decide if I could grab him if he started to fall. “What are you talking about?”

  “I figured you’d understand, being adopted and all. You grew up with random strangers. How fucked up is that?” Preston held out his arms as if he could fly, like he was daring the wind to sweep him off the edge of the cliff. I leaned back, away from the drop-off. Below us, the tide had come all the way in and the ocean slammed viciously against the rocks. “Pres, come on,” I said. “You’re making me nervous.”

  “Don’t be such a girl.” His tone was light, but I sensed a weird undertone of hostility that had swirled up from out of nowhere.

  “Is this about your dad?” We had just elected a Republican president, and Senator DeWitt was the front-runner to be appointed Secretary of Labor. DeWitt had originally gotten rich as CEO of DeWitt Firearms, and his pro-gun viewpoint didn’t sit well with many of California’s hippie pacifists, so now his political opponents were jumping at the opportunity to rip him to shreds. Pres didn’t seem to be upset by the internet headlines that had started cropping up, but maybe he just hid it well. It had to be hard seeing his family name dragged through the mud, especially when many of the accusations about his dad were probably true.

  “What he does doesn’t reflect on you,” I said. “You’re not the same person.”

  Preston stared downward, past the crags in the rock face where the ravens nested, earning the cliff its name. “I don’t know who I am.” The black water churned and sprayed.

  “Dude, you’re kind of freaking me out.”

  Preston turned away from the cliff. When he saw my expression, his face relaxed, his lips turning up into a slow smile. “Sorry, Maximus. I didn’t mean to get all heavy. I think I just need a break from everything.”

  I forced a smile in return. I hoped this Violet chick was cool, that she and Preston really hit it off. Part of that was selfish, like maybe if he had a girlfriend too then everything would go back to normal with him and Parvati. I had never really been that interested in making friends, but now that I had some, I didn’t want to choose between them. “I’ve got stuff for barbecuing. You want to head down to the beach and have a hot dog or four before you head off?”

  Preston shook his head. “Nah, I don’t want to run into the Jacobsens. I lost on the UCLA game, and Jonas will be looking to collect. Besides, it should only be four hours to Vegas. I’m hoping to get there by eleven or so.”

  “Does this chick live with her mom?” I asked.

  “She’s a little bit older. Has her own place.”

  I nodded, again wondering if Violet was a stripper or a showgirl. Preston’s parents would absolutely die. “Why didn’t you go last night?”

  “Dad wanted to parade me around at some holiday brunch thing today,” Preston said. “Besides, this way if Vio turns out to be crazy I don’t have to make excuses for not staying a second night. I’ll be home late tomorrow, in time for school on Monday.”

  He popped the locks to the BMW and pulled out his designer tent. It was beige with blue cloth trim and had a detachable rain fly
and gear overhang. “Here,” he said.

  I glanced up at the sky. “I don’t think I’ll need it.”

  “Take it just in case.”

  I shrugged but went ahead and loaded Preston’s tent and sleeping bag into my trunk. “You really did think of everything, didn’t you?”

  “You can’t be too prepared,” he said. “You want help carrying stuff down to the beach?”

  “Nah, I got it covered.”

  “All right. Be safe.” Preston thumped his fist twice against his chest and then hopped back in his BMW, waving as he peeled out of the parking lot in a cloud of gravel dust.

  I watched him leave and then grabbed my frame pack out of the backseat. I debated for a second, but then I bungee-corded my own sleeping bag and tent to the bottom of the pack. Pres’s stuff was nicer, but I had never pitched his tent before. I camped all the time with my own gear and could easily set up my tent in the dark. Weaving my way back and forth down a series of switchbacks, I made it to the beach just as the tide started going out.

  I hiked through the shallow surf until I found an area of dry sand and dropped my gear near one of the fire pits that lined the beach. I threaded the flexible rods through the rigging of my tent and staked it deep into the sand. Then I searched the beach until I found a handful of dry driftwood pieces. I arranged them into a wobbly pyramid. At the base I shook a small pile of Aztec Dust, an easy-to-light kindling that my parents carried at the shop. Using my body to block the wind, I struck a waterproof match and lowered it gently onto the kindling. The match went out. It took a couple more tries, but eventually the kindling flared up and the nearest piece of driftwood caught fire. When the whole pyramid was safely ablaze, I jabbed a stick through one of the hot dogs and held it over the flames.

  I downed half the package and threw the leftover hot dogs out on the beach for the birds to eat. Then I crawled inside the tent and nestled down in my sleeping bag. My rain fly had gotten lost last summer, so there was nothing but sheer nylon above my head. The night had turned clear; not even the whisper of a cloud lingered in the sky.