My muscles went weak. I sank deep into the soft mattress, like it was an ocean and the current was pulling me under. My breath caught in my throat. I was drowning, in a good way. Nerve cells fired across my body, little fireworks that made my arms and legs twitch. Parvati slowly worked her way back up, landing soft kisses on my abs and chest until we were eye to eye and I was staring into those dark hollows again. She tugged her slippery dress over her head, and the heat of her body made my heart stutter. Blood pulsed hot in my veins. I muttered something, a combination of words that didn’t make sense together.
She laughed her tinkly little laugh. I grabbed a condom from my wallet, and we quickly lost the rest of our clothes.
Parvati took the foil package from my hand and opened it. “I got this.” I watched her for a moment, my eyes taking in every inch of her bare skin. Then I pulled her tight against me. Her thick hair fell around my face like a tiny cave. The room disappeared as we started to move together.
Time passed. Slowly. Quickly. I had no idea. Wave after wave crashed down on me. I just kept moving. Faster and faster until everything blinked hot. I exhaled forcefully and Parvati collapsed on top of me a few seconds later, her body slick with sweat.
We lay there, motionless, for several minutes. “God, you are so amazing.” I buried my face in her hair.
“You too,” she said, lifting up so that I could see her face. Her eyes were shining; her mouth curled into a wild smile. “Still feel tense?”
“Maybe a little.” I grinned. “Why? Are you up for a replay?”
She dragged one fingernail down the middle of my breastbone. “Pres said his mom won’t be home until after midnight.”
“Oh yeah?” Fake or not, this was going down on the books as Preston’s best party ever.
About twenty minutes later, Parvati and I got dressed and then laughed at our failed attempt to remake the bed. The comforter hung crookedly over one side and was lumpy where I had tried to tuck it underneath the row of feather pillows.
She shook her head. “I hope Pres has Esmeralda on speed dial. It’ll take someone trained in the fine art of bed-making to fix this.”
“I know, right?” I said. “Let’s go find him and see if he’ll share those enchiladas. I’ve kind of worked up an appetite.”
Preston was still downstairs, the television now muted. He was typing out an email, his fingers rattling the keys with machine-gun-like ferocity. When he saw us, he minimized the screen. “I trust you guys didn’t break anything?” He scanned both of us up and down. “Nobody needs medical attention?”
“The pillows might need a little fluffing,” Parvati said.
Preston snickered. He slouched back in his chair, relaxed, like he’d fixed whatever was bothering him. Or maybe he was just drunk enough not to care anymore.
“I owe you one, Pres,” I mumbled, slicking my still-damp bangs back behind one ear.
He smirked. “Wait until you get the bill.”
It made me think about Liars, Inc. again. About alibis. I wasn’t the only guy in school who struggled to be alone with his girlfriend. Would I have paid for the opportunity Preston just gave us? Hell yeah. Suddenly the idea of coming up with cover stories for classmates in the same situation made a whole lot of sense. After all, it wasn’t like we’d be hurting anybody.
FIVE
SO WE DID IT. WITH Preston’s and Parvati’s help, it took only a few days to spread the word about Liars, Inc. across the entire junior and senior classes. They were an unbeatable team when it came to publicity work. Because of her office assistant and newspaper connections, Parvati knew the head of every clique. As the new football captain and host of the school’s biggest homecoming party, Preston knew just about everybody. I handled the leftovers—detention regulars, special-edders, a handful of juvenile delinquents from the alternative wing. PR wasn’t really my gig. I was the man who got his hands dirty.
By the beginning of December, I had set up two alibis and was “under contract” to sign a number of semester failing notices. Parvati was developing a specialty for calling kids in sick. She had the perfect fake-mom voice, altering it to be a fake aunt or fake grandmother as the situation called for. Preston was more of a marketing and promotions guy, but he had a regular customer from his calculus class who paid in advance to trade quiz papers, since “he couldn’t get a grasp on differential equations,” whatever the hell that meant.
Liars, Inc. was on pace to make over two thousand bucks before Christmas, and I knew exactly what I was going to spend my windfall on: an awesome present for Parvati. She had bought me a new surfboard for our three-month anniversary, and I wanted to surprise her with something equally amazing. If I had any money left over, I’d pick up something for Pres too. Then again, what could you buy for the guy who had everything?
“How do you feel about camping?” Preston asked, startling me out of my reverie. We were in the cafeteria. The whole area was decorated with garlands and paper snowflakes, even though Vista Palisades never got any snow.
The usual crowd of jocks and pom-pom girls turned toward Preston when he spoke, but they went back to their own conversations just as quickly when they realized he was talking to me. Across the room, Parvati was chatting up a table of sophomore tennis players, probably spreading the word about Liars, Inc. As I watched her, I wondered if things were getting out of hand. Sophomores were young and dumb, and the more people who knew about us, the better the chance that a teacher would find out.
“You want to go camping?” I asked dubiously, dipping a trio of limp french fries into a puddle of ketchup. I was pretty sure Preston never did anything that might take him outside the cell service grid. Especially lately. I hoped he wasn’t gambling away his inheritance as we spoke.
Pres looked up from his lap. “No, but what if we say I did?”
I blotted my mouth with a greasy napkin. “Huh? I don’t follow.” I could still see Parvati, leaning over the table, her barely-there miniskirt exposing several feet of tawny skin. How did girls know exactly how far they could bend over without flashing the really good stuff?
“I’m saying I need my own cover story.”
That got my attention. “For what? Your parents are never home.”
Preston dragged a single fry through his ketchup, leaving a bloody trail across the bottom of his cardboard tray. “Dad’s back from D.C. for the holidays. And I want to go to Vegas this weekend.”
I coughed into my hand. “Do you really think Vegas is a good idea?”
Pres stared down at his fry with distaste. “I’m not going to gamble, Max. I can do that anywhere. I want to go see a girl.”
“What girl?” I wanted to believe him, but it seemed unlikely that the poster child for Gamblers Anonymous would just happen to meet a girl who lived in the gambling capital of the world.
“Who cares what girl?” Then, seeing my look, he added, “I met her online, if you must know.”