She's So Money (13 page)

“How come you were coming over here and suddenly you turned around?” Sarah asked as I unwrapped my sandwich. Drat, so she’d seen me.

“Uh, I forgot . . . my . . . lunch in my locker,” I said lamely, eliciting a quizzical look from her as she munched her way through a carrot stick.
Ugh
. Why couldn’t I have said “the bathroom” or something simple like that? My brain was apparently even more fried than I thought, so I was glad when Cat decided not to eat her Skittles, instead passing the bag across the table to me. I took a handful and gave the rest to Jonny, who pounced on them with relish. I ate mine slowly, hoping for enough of a sugar rush to get me through the rest of the day awake, if not actually alert.

That afternoon after the last bell, Camden loped up to my locker and then broke into a grin when I took his wrist and yanked him toward the student parking lot.

“Wow, I’ve been fantasizing about this forever,” he said, purposely resisting for a second before falling into step beside me.

“Shut up,” I said, dropping my hand from his arm.

“This is just better discussed out of the hearing range of the entire school, that’s all.” In the hallway, Dave Markley passed by us, low fiving Camden on the way while completely ignoring me.

“Still taking Double D to the Fling, dude?” he asked.

“As a friend, yeah,” answered Camden.

“Friend with benefits?” Dave smirked. He was now a few feet down the hall from us and walking backward.

“Do I have any other kind?” Camden called over his shoulder after him, and they both laughed. “What?” Camden asked me, noticing that I was rolling my eyes.

“Nothing,” I said. “Well, you disgust me, but other than that, nothing,” I added, shaking my head as we reached the parking lot and got into his car. Camden just laughed, then stuck the key in the ignition and started rolling down the windows. It was a warmish day finally, sunny and in the mid-forties—practically T-shirt weather for me, and apparently for Camden as well. He pulled his sweatshirt up over his head and chucked it into the backseat.

“Close the windows,” I said.

“Of course. All the better to steam ’em up.” He yanked down on his green and gray ringer, which had ridden up during the sweatshirt removal, then jokingly reached toward me. I smacked his arm away.

“See aforementioned disgust,” I said, shoving the backpack on my lap slightly to the left in order to act as a barrier between us. “I just don’t want anyone to hear what we’re talking about.” I shrugged my jacket off and put it on top of the backpack for good measure.

“Because you’re gonna talk dirty?” Camden asked cheerfully. He hit the button that started rolling the windows back up.

“You have a one track mind,” I said.

“Half a track,” he replied. The windows were now closed, and he twisted in his seat slightly, leaning back against the driver’s side door and looking at me. “So are we just gonna sit here, or did you want me to drive somewhere?”

“Uh, drive, I guess. It’s weird if we just sit here.” People were already looking at us through the windows, and at least one guy had pointed, although whether it was at us or at the sight of two dance team chicks in tank tops and yoga pants inexplicably doing heel stretches by the station wagon next to us, I wasn’t sure. I wondered whether I was starting any new rumors just by being seen talking with Camden. Probably.

Camden started the car, and I took a deep breath as we pulled out of the parking lot and into the street. “Okay,” I said. “All your friends who want me to do their homework for them? I’ll do it. Whoever you’ve got. All of ’em.” There.

It was out in the open.

“I thought you said you didn’t have enough time,” he said, gunning past a school bus, onto the bridge over the river where our crew team was practicing, and then hanging a right.

“I’ll make time,” I said.

“Because you know, you’re right. You look kinda trashed lately,” he went on, hanging a left. He appeared to be driving totally at random; at first it had seemed like he was heading downtown, but after the last turn, I’d lost track of where he could be going.

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“You might wanna try wearing makeup,” he added.

“I’ll look into it.”

“Or get some Botox.”

“I’ll borrow your mom’s. So do we have a deal, or what?” I looked at him impatiently.

Camden took another random turn. “No deal. You already said before you were too tired to do that much work. he said. “You’re kind of slipping up already, frankly.”

“I am not slipping up!” I said defensively.

“I got a D minus in Algebra the other day, and you’re supposed to be aiming for a C minus,” he pointed out.

“Frankly, I should get some money back or something.”

“Whatever,” I said. “That’s not a big deal. I’ll average it out on the next assignment—”

“Forget it,” Camden said, turning randomly yet again.

“I’m not gonna tell my friends to pay good money for a lousy product.”

“Camden, please,” I said quietly. I could hear the desperation in my own voice . . . and when he pulled the car over to the side of the road, put it in park, and fixed his gaze on me steadily, I knew he’d heard it too.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice low.

I sighed and closed my eyes. Camden sat there silently, waiting, watching as I steeled myself for what was about to happen. Finally, I opened them—and told him. Told him everything. About my parents leaving me in charge at the restaurant, about what I’d done that weekend, about the Health Department fine. About the fact that there was no freaking way my family had the money to cover it. About the fact that if my parents found out what had happened, I would be shipped off to boarding school in Thailand for sure.

“Not that you care,” I said finally, my voice breaking a little. “But . . . that’s why I need to make money. I know I’m tired. I know I’m starting to slip, and I’m sorry. I’ll drink more Red Bull. I’ll eat nothing but coffee ice cream for the next month. But please . . . seriously. If any of your friends want in, let me do it. Okay?”

Camden sat there silently. A long moment passed.

“No,” he said.

I drew my knees up to my chest and leaned my forehead toward them, not caring that I was putting my shoes on his fancy black leather seats. I made a truly valiant effort to keep from beginning to cry.

“You shouldn’t do it,” Camden continued. “What you
should
do is get some of your nerdy friends to help you out.”

“What?” I asked, lifting my head to look at him. He wasn’t actually suggesting that I—?

“Your friends,” he repeated, eyeing my shoes but not saying anything about it. “You’ve got friends, right? That scrawny little guy? That alterna-girl? That fat chick?”

“Sarah is not fat,” I snapped. She isn’t. She just isn’t anorexic like all
his
friends.

“Of course not, she’s a healthy woman of today,” he said, not missing a beat. “Seriously, though, that’s what you should do. Get your friends to do it. Pay ’em like, seventy five bucks each, and pocket the rest. You’ll pay off that fine in no time.” He was sitting up straighter now, and his eyes were beginning to flash with a smidge of excitement.

“I can’t do that!” I exclaimed. “I can’t do that to my friends. That’s disgusting!”

“Okay, then don’t.” Camden shrugged. “Have fun in Thailand. Although I doubt your parents would actually ship you off, by the way.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t all have nice parents who let us do whatever the hell we want,” I snapped.

“My parents aren’t nice, they just aren’t ever around,” he retorted. “That’s the only reason I can do whatever I want.”

“That and all the money they throw at you,” I said.

“Maybe my dad’s just a better businessman than your dad,” he snapped. My jaw dropped open, and for a split second Camden actually looked sorry. We sat in silence for a minute, each of us realizing that we’d totally gotten to the other one.

“Well,” I said finally, too tired to start a shouting match.

“Your idea is technically a good one, but it’s evil. I can’t be that evil.”

“Sure you can. You need to pay off that fine, don’t you?”

He had a point.

“I mean, what are you gonna do,” he added, “just let your family’s restaurant go down in flames?”

He had a very, very good point. I stared out the window with a sigh, clutching my knees to my chin. I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe as the past several days of depression and exhaustion condensed in my stomach, then twisted, then slowly turned into a tiny knot of resolve.

I turned back to Camden. “Let me talk to my friends.”

Camden smiled. “Good girl.” He reached out and punched me ever so lightly on the shoulder, then looked around. “Where the hell are we, anyway?”

“I don’t know. You were the one driving,” I said. I couldn’t tell where we were either; outside the window it just looked like a bunch of trees with no houses in sight. No street signs, either.

“I was driving randomly,” he said. “
Huh
. I have no idea what just happened.” He started up the car again and pulled into the road, then decided to make a U-turn. Another car came barreling toward us from over a hill, and Camden started to try and get quickly in front of it. He probably could’ve made it, but at the last second he thought better of it and backed up a little instead.

“Sissy,” I said.

Camden didn’t respond, but when I glanced over, I saw he was smiling.

Half an hour later, after Camden had finally figured out that he’d somehow driven us onto the service road of the University Botanical Gardens, I set foot in the tutoring office for the first time in almost two weeks. Jonny was in a room with Hilary, Cat was in a room with a giant football player whose name I didn’t know, one of the other rooms was occupied by some sophomore Physical Science study group, and Sarah was in the main room with Leonard, working on what appeared to be a Biology outline; they probably had a couple students who were in the same class. As I walked in, they both looked up at me, surprised.

“Maya! Long time no convo! You look hot,” Leonard said.

“Yeah, uh . . . what’s up,” I said, giving Sarah a wave and dropping my backpack on the floor.

“I finished that new song,” Leonard said, fidgeting with the twine necklace he was wearing, which looked jarringly out of place against his button down shirt. “Wanna hear it? I don’t have my guitar here, but I could probably do it a cappella.”

“Uh . . . I’ll wait for the guitar,” I said, taking a seat at the table.

“You sure?” asked Leonard.

“One hundred percent certain,” I said, exchanging an amused glance with Sarah.

“Hey there,” she said. “What are you doing here? Did Camden suddenly—”

“Camden King? Hey, did you really hook up with him?” Leonard interrupted. “Because I heard he got like, six girls pregnant last year. So you might want to get yourself tested, or start double bagging it, or both—”

“I didn’t hook up with him,” I snapped, scooching back in my chair. “Whatever you heard, you heard wrong. I’m just killing some time until I gotta go to work, and I didn’t feel like doing it in the library, okay?”
Ugh
, why was Leonard even there? If he didn’t leave soon, I was going to have to get Jonny, Cat, and Sarah to follow me somewhere else, which would look totally suspicious. I picked up my backpack off the floor and threw it onto the couch, then followed it, pulling out my French textbook to get started on next week’s composition. (I’d taken to doing my own homework in any pocket of free time I had, even if it meant jumping ahead to stuff that wasn’t even due yet.) Then I waited for the longest forty eight minutes of my life, aside from that day freshman year when I forgot to put on my regular bra after taking off my sports bra at the end of Gym class. Not as big a deal for me—literally—as it would’ve been for, say, Stacey Ray, but it was still majorly uncomfortable as I waited for the bell to ring so I could rush back to the locker room. Finally the Physical Science study group and Leonard all finished up what they were doing and left, Leonard waving energetically at me on his way out, and I mustered enough energy to give a halfhearted half wave back.

Okay. There was nobody in the tutoring office except for me and my friends; Mrs. Hunter had taken off early, and Jonny’s and Cat’s respective students were on their way out the door too.

“What now, ladies?” asked Jonny. He and Cat came out of their study rooms and plunked themselves into seats at the big table where Sarah was sitting; I got up off the couch and moved over there too. “Maya’s gotta work in a few, but does anybody wanna do something?” He used his shirtsleeve to polish his glasses as he talked. “Mall? Pleasant stroll downtown? Unpleasant stroll uptown?”

“Do we even have an uptown?” asked Cat.

“Unpleasant stroll downtown?” Jonny amended. Sarah and Cat both gave him a bemused look, and Cat playfully reached out to muss his blond spikes.

“Hey, guys,” I interrupted. Loudly.

They all looked at me and I took a deep breath. “All right, I’m not really tutoring Camden King.”

“Big surprise there,” Cat and Jonny said at the same time. They turned to look at each other and grinned. Sarah didn’t say anything, but she’d gone a little pale and her eyes were very nearly taking up the entire top half of her face. I tried to avoid her gaze as she nervously scrunched her hands into the sleeves of her pale blue sweater and then rested her chin on them. She stared at me, silently waiting.