Liars, Inc. (6 page)

December 5th

THE NEXT DAY I AWOKE
to someone gently shaking my shoulder.

“Max.” I opened one eye. Darla was standing over me, her hair hanging down in tangled clumps. She smelled like baby wipes as usual. My eyes flicked over to my alarm clock. Jesus Christ, it was only five forty-five. I didn't need to be up for an hour.

“What?” I asked, not bothering to cover up the hostility.

“It's Preston.”

Okay. Now I was awake. Had he gotten stuck in Vegas? Had he done something stupid and gotten arrested?

The side of my mouth was wet with drool. I wiped at it with
the sleeve of my T-shirt. “What about him?” I rubbed my eyes.

“You saw him yesterday, right?” Darla's voice sounded uncertain, the way it did when she was having trouble telling the twins apart.

“Yeah.”
Hopefully.
I was going to have one hell of a time explaining how Preston and I were surfing together if it turned out he spent the night in a Las Vegas jail.

“Claudia DeWitt is on the phone. She wants to talk to you. Apparently, Preston never came home.”

AND THAT'S HOW I ENDED
up in one of those rooms like you see on TV. An interrogation room. Plain metal table, folding chairs, two-way mirror cut into the upper half of one wall. The air reeked of chlorine, which made me wonder what kind of mess they'd needed bleach to clean up. I plunked down in a chair at the far end of the table, leaving as much space between me and the detectives as possible. No, not detectives. FBI agents. Apparently when the kid of a senator goes missing they bring in the top dogs.

The taller one went by Gonzalez, but he had pale skin and green eyes and couldn't have looked less Latino if he'd tried. He was skinny and square-faced, with hair that stuck straight up in places. He paced back and forth, muttering to
himself and doing nervous things with his hands.

Gonzo's partner had introduced himself out in the lobby, but I had already forgotten his name. He was bigger, with shoulders like a linebacker and a belly that had seen a few too many cheeseburgers.

“So take us through your camping trip with Preston, from the beginning.” The big guy's voice was low, gravelly, like he should be outside chain-smoking instead of sitting here busting my balls. Man, Preston was going to owe me big-time whenever he crawled back into town. I could only imagine what sort of debauchery he had gotten up to in Vegas that made him decide coming home was optional.

Big Guy loosened his tie and apologized for the room temperature, which was somewhere between sweltering and broiling. I leaned in to catch the name on his ID badge. Special Agent James McGhee.

“When did you and Preston DeWitt arrive at the—” He mopped his forehead with the cuff of his dress shirt as he glanced down at his notepad. “Ravens' Cliff Overlook?”

“Well, I had to babysit until six thirty,” I said slowly, staring at the sweat stains underneath his armpits. “So it was about seven when we met up.”

McGhee jotted something down on his notepad. I couldn't read it from where I was sitting. “And then what?”

I glanced around. Were Ben and Darla watching from
the other side of the two-way mirror? They had insisted on coming in the room with me, but the agents assured them I “was in no trouble” and “not under suspicion of anything” and “would feel more comfortable speaking freely without parents around.” It had made sense at the time, but now the walls felt like they were closing in. The second hand on the clock seemed to accelerate before my eyes, ticking faster and faster—like a bomb eager to detonate.

“And then we pitched the tent, built a fire, and sat around bullshitting until we got tired and went to sleep,” I said.

“Bullshitting,” Gonzalez repeated, as if I'd slipped up and given something away. He slid into the chair across from me, tapping one foot repeatedly under the table. “Did that involve drinking?”

“Maybe. Big deal.” It hadn't actually, but one thing I learned when I was homeless was that you had to give authority figures a little bit of what they were expecting. Otherwise they wouldn't believe anything you said, even the stuff that was true. Plenty of adults had seen me wandering the beach by myself and pegged me as a homeless kid. I always admitted it and told them my mom was standing in line to get us a bed at the shelter and had sent me looking for something to eat. That kept do-gooder types from calling social services, and it usually scored me a few bucks or some free food too.

McGhee nodded to himself and waited for me to say more.

I didn't.

That would have been the time for the whole truth—Liars, Inc., the alibi, Violet, Las Vegas—but I couldn't do it. For one, both agents were looking at me like I was some delinquent who accidentally killed his best friend in an alcohol-induced rage and dumped the body in the ocean. I didn't know how much they knew about my past, but if they'd already made up their minds that I was guilty of something, explaining that I headed up a shady business selling lies to my classmates probably wouldn't have persuaded them to cut me a break. Not to mention, if I'd told them about Liars, Inc., they would have shown up at school and started interrogating the students. And then discovered that Parvati was involved.

My parents would have sighed and looked disappointed if they found out I was forging permission slips and providing cover stories. Her parents would have sent her to military school several thousand miles away.

What I should have done was just confess to the alibi. Tell them my buddy wanted to go hook up with a girl and needed someone to cover. I could have done that without ever mentioning Liars, Inc. or Parvati. But when you put someone in a small stuffy room that's eighty-five degrees and reeks of bleach, they stop thinking clearly. I panicked. Everything became black or white. Lie or tell the truth. Keep to the alibi and assume Preston was fine or confess the whole fucking deal.

“So you make a fire, have a little booze. Then what?” Gonzalez prompted.

“Then we went to sleep.”

“Alone?” McGhee asked.

“Huh? We were in the same tent, if that's what you mean.”

“He means was it just you two or were there girls there too?” Gonzalez said, his hands twitching.

“Just us.”

“What happened when you woke up?” McGhee asked.

“I went surfing,” I said.

McGhee raised an eyebrow. “And Preston?”

Shit. My first screwup.

“I mean,
we
went surfing.”

“Did anyone see you guys?”

“I don't know.” I faked a cough. “Can I get some water?”

McGhee gave Gonzalez a look. “Grab a pitcher for all of us, would you?”

Gonzalez swore under his breath but rose up from the table. He stormed through the wooden door, letting it slam behind him.

“Sorry about him,” McGhee said. “He's tightly wound.”

And there it was. The whole good cop–bad cop routine. “No shit,” I said.

“What did you and Preston do after you went surfing?”

I didn't know if it was the tiny break or just the absence of
Gonzalez that calmed me down, but I sensed an opening to squeeze in a little bit of the truth and took it. “He split early, actually. Said he wasn't feeling well.”

“About what time was that?”

I shrugged. “Didn't look at my phone. Maybe nineish.”

Gonzalez came back with a pitcher of water and three glossy paper cups. I accepted my drink with a polite thank-you and then guzzled down half of it in one swallow.

“Max was just telling me that Preston left the beach early on Sunday. Apparently he wasn't feeling good.”

Gonzalez made a face like I had just taken a dump in my pants. “Oh yeah? A little too hung over to surf?”

It didn't sound like a real question, so I didn't answer him.

“Do you know if he went straight home?” McGhee asked.

I sipped my water. “I figured. But he didn't say.”

McGhee nodded to himself again. “Did you and Preston take a walk along the top of the cliff on Saturday night?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was fooling around by the edge. Pretending to fly, stuff like that.”

“Did you guys argue?” McGhee asked.

“What? No.” Preston and I never argued. I had known him over a year and couldn't remember a single fight. “Why would you ask that?”

“Just following up on a tip. Probably irrelevant.” He flipped his notebook closed. “I think that's all the questions we've
got for now, Max. But if you think of anything else, please give me a call.” He slid a business card across the table.

I slipped it into my wallet behind my health insurance card, back in the section of stuff I almost never looked at. “Thanks,” I said.

Gonzalez stopped twitching long enough to give me one more glare. I stood up, unsure if I was just supposed to leave or if I had to wait for one of the agents to walk me back out to the front.

“Isn't it kind of early to assume something bad happened?” I asked. “I thought you had to wait forty-eight hours just to file a missing persons report.”

“That's actually a myth perpetuated by TV shows,” McGhee said. “There's no required waiting period in California. And it's been over forty-eight hours since either of his parents saw him.
You're
the only one who has seen him in the last couple of days.”

I nodded. I wished I hadn't brought it up.

“We don't know anything for certain,” McGhee continued. “But we need to consider the possibility that Preston's disappearance is politically motivated until we can rule that out.”

“What? Like . . . terrorism or something? Don't you think that's a little unlikely?”

“A high-profile senator's son disappearing right after an
election? We're just trying to stay ahead of the curve,” McGhee said. “Which reminds me. We'd appreciate it if you didn't talk to anyone about what we've discussed this morning.”

I nodded. “Am I done? Do you know where my parents went?”

“I'll show you where they are.” McGhee pushed his chair back and stood up.

I followed him out of the room and back down the hallway, past the desk sergeant and out into the police station lobby. Darla was chewing on her lower lip as she paced back and forth across the scuffed floor. Ben sat in the chair nearest to the door, his canvas sneakers crossed at the ankles. He was flipping through a sports magazine and swilling down a cup of coffee. Man, talk about opposites attracting.

“Max.” Darla headed over to me, arms wide, like I'd just woken up from a coma.

“Jeez, Darla.” I wriggled out of her grasp. “I was only gone for twenty minutes.”

“I know. It's just the thought of your friend missing . . .” She trailed off.

“Have you ever met him?”

“Not officially, but I've seen you two surfing,” she said. “Just because you don't bring your friends around doesn't mean I don't care about them. I can't even think about what I would do if it were you.”

I resisted the urge to tell her she could always replace me with another broken child. Maybe upgrade to a nice amputee, or a blind kid. “I'm sure he's fine,” I said. “He probably just needed to get away from all the political stuff going on at his house.”

“You think so?” McGhee asked. His voice made me jump. I didn't realize he had stopped at the desk for a moment and could still hear me. “Did he ever say anything about taking off?”

“He said something about Vegas not too long ago,” I hedged. Maybe I could dole out the truth in tiny pieces that, once assembled, would make a picture that resembled a reality in which I hadn't done anything wrong.

Darla put an arm around me. She cleared her throat meaningfully, and Ben looked up. “We all done here?” he asked. Reluctantly, he returned his magazine to the basket in the corner. The three of us headed for the door.

“One more thing, Max,” McGhee said. “Did you and Preston both park at the overlook?”

“Yeah,” I said, without much thought. “Why?”

He flipped his notepad open again and made a quick notation with his chewed-up pencil. “Just a routine question.”

I MADE IT TO SCHOOL
just in time for lunch. After tossing my backpack in my locker, I checked in at the attendance office and then headed for the cafeteria. I passed a group of freshmen arguing loudly about football, two boys in college sweatshirts pushing and shoving across the table as they made a friendly wager.

It made me think of Preston, how he hadn't wanted to surf because he was avoiding Jonas Jacobsen. I scanned the caf. Jonas's brother Jared stood in the salad line, fiddling with his puka shell bracelet while the cashier made change. He took his tray to the condiment station and then headed toward the lobby. It looked like he was going to eat outside. I
used to do that too, before Preston transferred to Vista Palisades.

I followed Jared through the glass doors and out into the sunlight. “Hey,” I said, plunking down on the front steps next to him. As usual, his nose was peeling a little, new pink skin emerging from beneath his perpetual tan. The wind whipped his blond dreadlocks around his mouth, obscuring part of his expression.

“What's up, Cantrell?” His eyes flicked around the parking lot and then back to me. He picked up a shrink-wrapped vegan cookie and popped the package open.

“How much money does Preston owe your brother?”

Jared set the cookie down on his tray next to a wilted spinach salad. He shook his dreads back from his face. “What makes you think DeWitt is doing business with Jonas?” he asked slowly.

“He told me he was avoiding your brother because of the UCLA game.”

Jared blinked twice. “I don't know what to say, brah. As far as I know, DeWitt hasn't
invested
with Jonas in months. Maybe he found better odds elsewhere.” He shrugged and turned away, his tan fingers snapping the hard cookie into pieces.

“But that doesn't make sense,” I said, more to myself than
to him. “Why would Preston tell me that if it wasn't true?”

Jared swallowed hard, watching as the breeze stole a few pieces of spinach from his tray and sent them dancing toward the parking lot. “I guess you don't know your friend as well as you thought you did.”

“Guess not,” I mumbled. I went back inside and glanced around for Parvati. She wasn't in our usual spot. It looked weird, those empty seats at the end of the long table, like a seesaw with only one rider. And something else was off too. There were usually about twelve kids at the table, sometimes more if Astrid or Preston felt like inviting someone else over. But today there were only six. A couple of the football players were missing. Astrid glanced up and caught me staring. She held my gaze for a few seconds, her tan face slightly reproachful, as if it were my fault that the All-Stars had lost half their members.

“Max.” Parvati snuck up on me from behind. “What's going on? Where have you been all morning? Where's Pres?”

I skipped past the first two questions. “I don't know. Did you eat?”

“I've been collecting fees for Liars, Inc.,” she said with a grin. She opened the pouch of her tiny silk purse to show me a wad of twenties. “I was going to grab a protein bar from my locker and then work on something for the newspaper. It's
not like I want to eat with
them
by myself.”

“Yeah. Me neither.” I could still feel Astrid's eyes on me as I turned away. Parvati and I headed down the main hall to where all the seniors had their lockers.

“A hundred of this is yours, by the way,” she said.

I barely heard her. I spun my combination lock and opened my locker. Then I pulled my phone out of my pocket. No texts. No missed calls. “You haven't heard from Preston today, have you?”

She shook her head. “No, but some kid named David caught me after second hour and was freaking out about his calculus exam. I had to refund him his money. Pres was supposed to swap tests with him today.”

“Yeah. So weird.” I rattled off a quick text:
Dude. Where the hell are you? Everyone is freaking out.

“Are you all right?” A mass of wrinkles formed across her forehead. “You're acting kind of strange.”

I glanced down at my phone again, even though I knew Preston hadn't responded in the last five seconds. “I need to talk to you in private.”

“Ooh, secrets.” Parvati smiled. “I know where we can go.” She kicked my locker closed with one of her boots and led me through the halls past the gym to the Olympic-sized indoor lap pool. One girl was swimming in the far lane. It
looked like first-team all-American breaststroke champion Cassie Rhodes.

“Seriously?” I asked. “You want to talk here?”

“It's not like
she's
going to hear us.” Parvati took my hand as we started circling the pool, carefully navigating the wet spots. “Tell me what's going on.”

“I set up an alibi for Preston,” I admitted. “He wanted to go to Vegas this weekend.” I paused for a second. Parvati was still moving forward but she had her head turned, staring at me. “He never came home. I've tried calling him like a million times.”

Cassie Rhodes broke the crystal surface of the water. She pushed her wet hair back from her face and then used the side of the pool to propel her body out of the deep end. With trails of water streaming from her arms and legs, she padded barefoot across the painted concrete to the low diving board where she had left her towel. Parvati waited until Cassie had toweled off and disappeared into the locker room before continuing.

“Vegas?” she asked. “How come I didn't know about this?”

“Pres wanted it to be top secret,” I said. “He went to hook up with some girl.”

Parvati used one hand to brush imaginary dirt off the lowest level of bleachers. She sat down, just the faintest sheen of
sweat glistening on her forehead. I sat next to her.

“What girl?” she asked.

“Violet something.”

Parvati made a face. “Are you sure she's real?”

“I never heard him talk about her before,” I said. “He said he met her playing online poker, and that she seemed cool and invited him to go hang out.”

“So then what's the big deal if he's a little late coming home? Senator Dad making a federal case out of it?”

“Literally. I got questioned by the FBI this morning.”

Parvati whistled under her breath. “That's heavy. Did you tell them where he was?”

“Not really. I didn't want anyone to get in trouble for lying. I basically told them he left the beach early and I didn't know where he went.”

The ends of her hair bobbed up and down as she nodded. “Maybe his phone is dead or he's just having too much fun to call anyone back. I'm sure he's fine. He's Preston, you know? Pretty street-smart for a spoiled little rich kid.”

As usual, she made me feel better. “Like someone else I know.” I nudged her in the ribs.

Parvati made a mock offended face. “Hey. I come from humble origins. The daughter of an immigrant and a hardworking military man.” Her eyes sparkled. “Hopefully Pres
will be back today and everyone can quit overreacting. It would suck if he bailed on your birthday.”

I had almost forgotten that the next day was my birthday. I shrugged. “It's no big deal. I don't have any major plans.” Or any plans, for that matter.

“I wish I could spend it with you.” Parvati glanced up at the clock on the wall. “You know, Coach Raymond will be in here to set up for the freshmen any second.”

“So?”

“So this.” She tilted her neck up and pulled my head down to hers. Our lips met. I wrapped my arms around her back, threading my fingers together. She teased the inside of my mouth with her tongue and I almost slid right off the bleachers.

I broke away. “Enough. Or I'm going to have to take a cold shower before next period.”

“That's kind of sexy.” She winked.

“Really?”

“No.” Parvati took my hand with a smile, just as Coach Raymond appeared from the locker room in a plain black racing suit with a pair of canary-yellow gym shorts over it.

It was definitely time to go. Teachers in swimwear—generally an epic fail.

Parvati and I walked back to our lockers together and then
I headed to fifth period. My acting teacher paced back and forth as she talked about the play
Arsenic and Old Lace
. It sounded halfway interesting, but I couldn't focus on pretend mysteries when a real-life one was brewing right under my nose.