How to Win at High School (6 page)

The whole class groans. They hate these assignments. Sara Bryant's got her hand up. “Sir?” she says. “Do we
have
to work with our lab partners? Why can't we just partner with our friends?”

Across the room, Jessie McGill takes up the cause. “Mr. Powers, this is unfair.”

Sara's making these doe eyes at Mr. Powers. Batting her eyelashes. Licking her lips. Jessie McGill's doing the same. Adam figures he's got about a minute and a half before the old perv blows his wad and caves to the girls' demands. Crumbles like a cardboard cruise ship.

And Adam doesn't want that.

Adam
wants
to work with Sara Bryant.

Adam has a plan.

“Wait,” he tells Sara. “I'll do it myself.”

Sara frowns at Adam. “One sec,” she says. She turns to Powers and bats her lashes again. “Sir?”

“Sara.”
Adam goes to nudge her. Bails at the last second, as he contemplates the horrendous social ramifications of touching Sara
freaking
Bryant without her permission.

“Just listen to me,” he whispers. “I'll do the whole project
myself. You don't have to do a thing. I'll just do it, okay?”

Slowly, Sara puts down her hand. Turns to stare at him. “What, you'll do the whole thing?”

“And I'll get an A,” Adam says. “Swear to god.”

Jessie McGill is frowning at Sara from across the room, trying to get her attention. She still has her hand sky-high. She's wearing a low-cut top. Powers is going to melt in her hands.

“Fuck it,” Adam says. “I'll do Jessie's, too.”

Jessie McGill's lab partner is a quiet Iranian girl named Nadja. She's unconvinced.

“You're just
doing
Jessie's assignment?” she says to Adam when he catches up to her after class. “She's not even your partner.”

Adam gives her a grin like,
Don't ask questions
.

Like,
Everything will be fine.

“I know,” he says. “It's weird. Just work with me.”

Nadja shakes her head. “I'm supposed to work with Jessie. She's my lab partner. I don't get it.”

“You don't have to get it,” Adam tells her. “Let's just do the damn assignment and be done with it.”

“I don't think so,” Nadja says. “I'm going to do it myself. This is weird.”

Whatever.

Nadja can do her own thing.

Adam busts his ass on Sara's assignment, anyway. Figures Nadja and Jessie can work out their own arrangement. Figures it's probably for the best he's just doing one assignment.

Between Pizza Hut and Sara's homework and sleep, he doesn't have time for much of anything else.

He manages to make time to watch hockey with Sam, though. “I'm working on something,” Adam tells him. “It's going to be big.”

So, okay, Friday.

Adam rolls into class with the finished assignment. Finds Sara and Jessie waiting for him. “Where's our stuff, Pizza Man?” Sara wants to know.

Adam hands Sara the assignment. “Voilà.”

“Is it good?” Sara wants to know.

“Better than anything else we've done this year,” Adam tells her.

“What about me?” Jessie says.

Adam gestures across the room to where Nadja is unpacking her backpack. “Your partner wouldn't work with me,” he says. “I'm sorry.”

Jessie frowns. “So what does that mean?”

“I don't know. Ask Nadja.”

Jessie spins on her heels. Marches over to Nadja. They exchange a few words and then Nadja takes her own paper out of her backpack. Hands it to Jessie. Jessie reads it. Nods and smiles.

Nadja glares at Adam across the room. Adam grins back.

Assignment complete.

Win.

Physics class, Monday morning.

Powers walks the aisles, handing back the assignments. Drops Adam and Sara's paper on their workstation. “Great work, you two,” he says. “Good to see you're finally putting in some effort.”

Sara reaches for the paper. Adam snatches it away. Scans it. Flips to the mark: 91 percent. A solid A.

“Holy crap,” Sara says. “You crushed it.”

“Not bad, huh?” Adam says.

Sara picks up her iPhone. “Nice work, Pizza Man,” she says. “I owe you one.”

“She said she
owes you one
?” Sam says. “And she's really hot?”

“So hot,” Adam tells him. “Like, smoking hot. Tall and blond and, like, stacked. She's going to be a movie star someday.”

“Holy shit.” Sam grins at him. “And you're in, right? You're in.”

Adam grins back.

“Yeah,” he tells Sam. “I'm in.”

Value: demonstrated.

Sara Bryant: impressed.

Mission: accomplished.

Brian shakes his head.

“Won't work,” he says. “Won't ever work.”

Adam takes the joint from him. “Why not? She owes me. She said it herself. Plus, she knows I'm a nice guy now.”

“Girls don't like nice guys,” Brian says. “That's the first thing you gotta understand.”

It's Wednesday. Adam and Brian are hanging out behind Pizza Hut, stealing a joint, hoping the manager doesn't come out and catch them. Adam's been coasting ever since Monday morning.

Except now, Brian's seriously killing his high.

“Come on, though,” Adam says. “She failed the first two assignments. I'm saving her ass.”

Brian pulls out his iPhone. “What'd you say her name is?”

“Sara Bryant,” Adam tells him.

Brian brings up Sara Bryant's Facebook page on his iPhone. “Yeah,” he says, shaking his head. “You're screwed.”

Adam frowns at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“A girl like this?” Brian turns his screen so that Adam can see Sara Bryant's profile picture.

Her headshot.

Professional.

Model-esque.

“A girl like that?” Brian says. “Every guy in the school wants to do her a favor. She's like a movie star who gets all her clothes for free because she's famous and shit. You hand her a T-shirt, you ain't getting noticed, man. You're busting your ass for nothing.”

Adam thinks about it.

Realizes Brian's right.

Shit.

“So what do I do?”

“What I've been telling you.” Brian finishes the joint. “Show some balls.”

Show some balls, huh?

Okay.

The next time Mr. Powers hands out a lab assignment, Sara Bryant doesn't beg and plead to work with Jessie McGill.

No.

She flashes Adam that all-American smile and bats her eyelashes. “So, Pizza Man,” she says. “You want to handle this?”

Adam looks her in the eye. Takes a deep breath.

(
Show some balls.
)

Here it is.

“Yeah,” he says. “I'll do the assignment.”

Sara nods like she knew it was coming. Like she's already counting on the A. “Thank you so much,” she says. “You're the best.”

“I'll do it,” Adam says. He's not finished yet. “But you're going to pay me for it.”

What?

Sara Bryant's smile disappears. She cocks her head. “I beg your pardon?”

Adam holds her gaze. Inside, he's dying. Outside, though, he's cool.

Really cool.

Ice-freaking-cold.

“Think about it,” he tells her. “You know I do good work.
You don't want to do the assignment, but you want the A, don't you?”

“I'm not going to fucking pay you to do my homework,” Sara Bryant tells him. “Who the hell do you think I am?”

“Ten bucks a page,” Adam replies. “And a twenty-dollar bonus if I get us another A.”

Sara's glaring at him now. No more flirty smiles. No more big, blue doe eyes, filled with the promise of fantasies brought to life, if only you'll do Sara Bryant—

(Sara
motherfucking
Bryant)

—this favor.

No. She's glaring at him now. She's
pissed
. “Are you retarded?” she says. “I'd never—”

Then the bell rings. Catches Sara in mid-rant. Throws her off. She looks around, helpless. Disbelieving.

Adam stands. “Think about it.”

And he walks away.

Boom.

Balls.

Adam walks from that physics classroom fully aware of three things:

        
a)
 
There's a good chance he's just turned Sara
freaking
Bryant into an enemy for life.

        
b)
 
Money for homework is the kind of crazy scheme that gets kids suspended.

        
c)
 
What happened in that classroom is the ballsiest thing he's ever done. One way or the other, he's going to make a name for himself (and it ain't gonna be Pizza Man).

Adam works harder on that assignment than he's ever worked before.

It isn't easy.

He's a smart enough kid, but it's not like Adam was a model student before he came to Nixon. He spent the bulk of his time getting high. And it's not like the Higgs residence is a sanctuary devoted to academic rigor.

Adam's family has a fifteen-year-old computer sitting smack in the living room. Five feet away, Steph is watching
Gossip Girl
reruns.

Chuck Bass is hooking up with two underage debutantes.

It's distracting.

Still, he works hard. Busts his ass. Steph peers at him from the couch. “You never do homework,” she says. “What's your game?”

“No game,” he tells her. “Just a little experiment.”

He slaves away on that paper. Stays up all night. Polishes it off and brings it in on the due date. Sara Bryant, for once, is there early. She watches Adam walk into the classroom—

(blue eyes fixed on him the moment he walks through the door).

“You do the assignment?” she asks him.

Adam shows her the paper. “Uh-huh.”

Sara Bryant visibly relaxes. “Good work,” she says. She smiles at him. Almost—

(but not quite)

—the all-American smile. “I knew you'd come through.”

“Best paper I ever wrote,” he tells her. He shows her the title page. Keeps it just out of her reach.

Acceleration, by Adam Higgs
, it reads.

Sara frowns. “What is this? Where's my name?”

“Figured I did all the work, I should get the credit, right?” Adam tells her. “Five pages times ten bucks a page is fifty bucks. You ready to deal?”

Sara stares at him. The smile is gone. “This is extortion,” she says, glancing at Mr. Powers's desk. “This is bullshit. This is—”

“This is capitalism,” Adam tells her. He's struggling to keep the shake from his voice. “You don't want to do the work, and you know it. I can get you the grades. You can spend your time doing whatever it is that you do. It's a win-win. Think about it.”

Sara looks around the room again. She looks:

helpless

frustrated

mad.

“Let me see the paper,” she says. Adam hands it over and she flips through. “You swear this is good stuff?”

“Better than a zero,” Adam tells her.

“You know you're a real asshole?”

He shrugs. “Whatever it takes.”

She flips through again. Hands it back. “Five bucks.”

“What?”

“Five bucks a page.”

At the front of the room, Powers starts picking up the assignments. Adam gives Sara his poker face. “Ten bucks a page. Plus twenty dollars for the A.”

Sara says nothing. Sara thinks it over. Sara watches Powers coming up through the aisles.

This is it
, Adam thinks.

She takes the bait

or

she rats me out.

He waits. Can't breathe. Watches Sara as Powers gets closer.

Come on
, he's thinking.
Come on, come on
.

Powers is two desks away. Sara swears. “Fine,” she says. “Ten bucks a page, you little shit.”

Adam doesn't flinch. “Cash,” he says. “Now.”

Sara glances at Powers again. Reaches into her purse and pulls out three twenties. Shoves them into Adam's hand. “Happy? Put my fucking name on the fucking paper, Pizza Man.”

Adam takes another copy of the paper—this one printed with Sara's name—from his backpack. Hands it to Powers in the nick of time. Then he takes out his wallet and pockets the
twenties. Hands her a ten-dollar bill. Gives her his best approximation of an all-American smile.

“There you go,” he tells her. “Thank you, come again.”

Balls.

Balls or no, Adam sweats that assignment.

Adam's terrified.

What if Sara Bryant rats him out?

What if Powers somehow grows wise to the scheme?

What if?

What if?

What if?

Mr. Powers hands the assignment back. “Even better than the last one.” He lets his eyes wander down Sara Bryant's body. “Glad to see you're waking up, Ms. Bryant.”

Sara gives him that smile, thanks him, waits until he's moved along. Then she checks the grade on the paper. “Holy shit.” She flashes Adam the grade.

Holy shit is right.

92 percent.

Holy shit.

“Twenty bucks,” Adam tells her. He's earned that bonus. Sara's smile wavers a little, but she reaches for her purse.

“Two things,” she tells Adam as she hands over the money. “One, you don't tell anyone we're doing this.”

“Duh,” Adam says.

She pauses. “One more thing.”

“I'm not taking you to prom,” Adam tells her.

Sara makes a face. “That's not actually funny.” She looks down at the twenty. “We do this again next time, okay? Same deal.”