"Yes, hi, this is Aaron Stevens," came a husky female voice as she spoke over the telephone. "I’m calling from Non-bottled Wine Beverage Monthly; a new publication. I was just calling to inform you…" she paused for a second to think of what next to say. "uhh.. to inform you that your product has been selected as the best boxed wine on the market."

She smiled broadly as the person on the other line started to talk, "Yes, that’s right! So all of us here at the magazine thought…you should go ahead and send over a fuckin’ shitload of it."

She waited a moment again to let the other person speak before resuming her flow of speech. "Oh, we love it. It’s so good. What do we like?"

She turned in her chair to look at her friend, her perfectly sculptured eyebrow raised high in questioning.

"Merlot," Her friend whispered back, a devilish smirk on his face as he and a third party paid close attention to the conversation taking place.

"We love the merlot." She dead panned, her voice husky and low. "You’re the best, Cindy. You always have been. Thank you."

"How was that?" She asked as she hung up the phone, completely spinning her chair around to face her friends.

"Shane, that was freaking nuts," the boy said as he smiled at his friend, all the while clapping his hands together in approval.

"Mark, what do you expect? Shane’s all about the scam," said the other occupant in the room, her smirk just as wide as the other two.

"And like you’re not, Alice?" Shane retorted, her right eyebrow raised high in rebuttal.

*** 

"Alright, guys." Mark cheered, pumping up his friends. "We’ve done this before. Let’s do it again." He ran through the specifically organized plan once more before setting a time to meet back at their place of residence. "Okay, let’s meet back here in twenty minutes.

Simple, easy, by the book. Berkeley University. This was our territory…and here we were. Seventy-two days away from a diploma…that would open doors for the rest of our lives. We’re onestep closer to the American dream. That is … after today’s scam.

Just as Mark had planned out, the scam was in full effect. Sitting backwards atop a motorbike in a pair of ripped denim jeans, a dingy grey sweatshirt, and a borrowed florescent orange vest, with a video camera attached to her right hand, was Shane. In front of her, steering the bike in a borrowed beige jumpsuit and a matching florescent orange vest, curtsey of one of Berkeley’s janitors, sat Mark, both of them watching as the varsity track team stretched.