She's So Money (19 page)

“Damn, woman, you can move,” Dave said, flailing his arms around and then leaning in really close to me; his breath and striped button down both reeked of beer.

“That’s something I never would’ve guessed about you.”

“And you dance like a total white guy,” I said, keeping my tone playful even as I tried to discreetly inch away. “Which I absolutely would have guessed about you.”

“Oooh, smart chick, you’re gonna pay for that!” Dave grabbed me in a ballroom dance grip and dipped me back dramatically, almost so my head touched the floor, before swinging me back up and twirling me around. Okay, despite the beer breath, that was kind of fun.

I was in the middle of laughing hysterically when I heard Camden’s voice saying, “Now, is that any way to treat a lady?” He had appeared out of nowhere and was standing next to us, eyebrows raised at Dave.

“Dude, I’m kinda wasted. I don’t know,” said Dave. He draped his arm over me, mostly to hold himself up, and I staggered under the weight.

“I’m fine,” I said to Camden. “My head actually cleared the floor by like, half an inch there, so I’m totally fine. . . .” It didn’t matter—Camden had already latched on to my arm and was ushering me away from Dave. It was probably a good idea, because Dave looked like he was about to fall down—he had wandered off to the side and was literally leaning against the wall at this point, his cheek buried against Derek’s living room drapes—but on the other hand, it wasn’t like I couldn’t have done a perfectly good job of rescuing myself if I’d felt the need to. I turned to Camden as we crossed into the kitchen and gave him a playful bump in the chest with my shoulder.

“Jealous?” I teased, looking up at him.

“Completely,” he said. And I couldn’t breathe for a second, because for the first time, he wasn’t smirking.

chapter thirteen

“Okay, so Lara O’Connor needs an A on the history thing
so fifty buck surcharge there . . . okay, and—wait, will you have time to—”

“No problem, Bella will handle it.”

“Cool, and Derek and I both have this stupid Chem lab thing—”

“Jonny’s on it. It can suck, right?”

“Duh. What else? Anything else besides the usual?”

“Nope. Nate still hasn’t paid for last week, so you should—”

“Oh, yeah, he gave me like, ten of his old Xbox games, so I’m just gonna—”

“Oh, you’re gonna cover it? Okay then, that’s it for today.”

“Sweet.”

“Sweet.”

It was early April. As had become our routine, Camden and I were in his car after school; he was giving me a ride to work after I dropped off the day’s assignments with our “employees” at the tutoring office, which provided me with, well, a free ride to work, as well as providing both of us with a spy free environment in which to discuss whatever we needed to discuss, businesswise. It also made the cash handoffs a lot less sketchy—the stares we got in the hallways the first few times that envelopes changed hands made me feel hilariously like a drug dealer, but after a while, paranoia won out over amusement. Now, we were very careful not to arouse any suspicion; people still wondered how we had become friends, but once Angel Redford got pregnant and decided to have the baby, and then found out that baby turned out to be twins, the rumors starting focusing elsewhere. Thanks, easily distracted high school students! And thanks, Angel and her boyfriend’s laissez-faire attitude toward condoms.

“Here’s good,” I said, as Camden pulled up to the little driveway around the corner from our restaurant; it was on the way from the bus stop, so if my parents were bothering to look, it would seem like I’d still come from that direction.

A few days a week, Nat and I were on the same schedule, so he’d raised an eyebrow the first day he saw me get into Camden’s car instead of riding the bus, but all I had to do was mouth, “Star,” at him, and I knew he wasn’t going to be mentioning anything to our parents, accidentally or otherwise. I walked over to the mailbox and opened it as Camden started turning his car around to go home . . . and then stopped dead in my tracks and gasped when I saw what was in the mail.

“What?” Camden asked through his car window. He craned his neck to see what I was holding.

“Letter from Stanford,” I said, my hands shaking. I could barely get the words out.
Please let this be an acceptance. Please let this be an acceptance.

“That thing’s pretty big,” Camden pointed out. “You probably got—”

“Shut up!” I squeaked, unwilling to jinx anything by making assumptions. I shrugged my backpack off and let it drop to the ground, then closed my eyes and clumsily opened the envelope blind. I pulled the contents out, nearly giving myself a paper cut, and then opened my eyes again. “We are pleased to inform you . . .
Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!
” I screamed.

“Christ, what the hell?” asked Camden. He’d left his car idling and had gotten out, and was now standing next to me.

“I got in!” I whooped. “I got in!” I jumped up and down, laughed hysterically in delight for a few seconds, and then, impulsively, I threw my arms around Camden’s neck and hugged him.

He let me.

And after a few moments, he gently took my face in his hands and kissed me.

I let him.

It went on for a while, which either surprised the hell out of both of us or didn’t surprise us at all. I didn’t really know; I was too busy not thinking.

“Uh,” I said, finally pulling away. “Sorry about, uh . . .or, I mean, not sorry. Or . . . I didn’t mean to—”

“Shut up,” he said, his hands now on my waist. “And congratulations.”

“Thanks,” I laughed. It occurred to me that I might want to take a look around and see if Nat or anyone else was looking at us, but for some reason I couldn’t tear my eyes off of Camden’s face.

“So this means you’re headed pretty far away next year, huh?” he asked.

“You’re damn right I am,” I answered with satisfaction.
California, here I come!

“Bummer,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it.

He looked at me steadily with those blue, blue eyes. I looked back at him. It was silent for a moment.

“Anyway,” I finally said, as the comfortable silence started to edge up on uncomfortable. “So, uh, I should probably get to work.”

“Probably,” he agreed, nodding slightly. I tried to take a step back but couldn’t; he’d purposely tightened his arms around me.

“It’d be easier if you’d let go,” I pointed out. Not that I should’ve been talking—I was the one standing on my tiptoes to be closer to him.

His witty comeback was to kiss me again.

“Okay, seriously,” I said, disentangling myself a few moments later. “Work. Is there. Waiting for me. To also be there.” Had I suddenly developed asthma? I could barely breathe . . . except that I knew I must be breathing, because I could smell the clean, soapy scent of Camden’s hair and skin, and the pleasant detergent smell on his clothes . . .

“Okay, okay,” Camden said, stepping away from me slowly, his hands lingering on my waist, then my hair, before he finally backed off fully. He got back in his car. “See ya tomorrow.” He smiled at me, holding my gaze for several seconds before hitting the gas pedal and driving off.

“Okay, ’bye,” I said, my stomach doing jumping jacks. I watched his car disappear down the street as I bent over and picked up my Stanford acceptance, and the rest of the mail, off the ground from where it had fallen when I’d thrown my arms around Camden. I started reading the letter again and leafing through the information booklet that came with it, basking in the glow of having my future all settled while simultaneously trying to shut down the little voice in my head asking me,
Did you just add yourself to the looong list of Camden King conquests? Did you just sign yourself up for getting totally screwed over?
My God, had I? Whatever, I’d just gotten into Stanford—I should be thinking about sunshine and redwood trees and mild winters, not anything else, and I certainly shouldn’t be worrying. But this kiss had been . . . it had been so . . . oh man, what was he going to say about me at school the next day? Anything? Nothing? Was he going to pretend it had never happened? Should
I
pretend it had never happened?

My phone beeped with a text.
BTW I xpect a discount on tonights hw. :)
Okay, he clearly wasn’t pretending it had never happened. I smiled at the text, then frowned. Wait a minute, what did he mean? Was this a good thing or a bad thing? He wasn’t serious, was he? I couldn’t figure it out. Time for a lighthearted, noncommittal answer. I was in the middle of texting back,
In your dreams,
when, from out of nowhere, Leonard appeared behind me.

“You probably just contracted herpes,” he said.

“Oh my God!” I jumped, nearly dropping my phone. “What the—how long have you been there?”

“As they often say in these situations, long enough.” Leonard put his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the outside wall of the restaurant, staring at me coolly through his glasses.

“Did you
follow
me?” I asked. I looked around frantically, trying to figure out where he’d been hiding.

“Not technically. It’s not like I didn’t know you work here. I just showed up where I knew you’d be.” He rocked back and forth on his feet, looking a little bit shifty and a lot self satisfied.

“Well, what’s up?” I asked, trying to sound chipper. So he’d caught me making out with Camden. That meant that it would definitely be all over school by tomorrow morning, but whatever, maybe it wasn’t a big deal. Oh my God, no. It
was
a big deal. Would people think we were dating? Had he hooked up with anyone else lately? Would he deny it all? Should
I
deny it all? A flood of questions about Camden rushed into my head, and I struggled not to think about them. I had to calm down.

“I know you’re doing people’s homework for money,”

Leonard said.

Nope. I had to panic.

“What? No, I’m not,” I said. My voice cracked on the word
not
.

“Oh, right, you’re not anymore. You’ve got other people doing it for you,” he said. He crossed his arms and grinned an evil little grin at me.

Oh my God.

I didn’t say anything further, just clasped my cell and the mail I was holding tightly to my chest and waited to see what was about to happen—I knew it wasn’t going to be good, so I wasn’t about to speed it up. Trying not to throw up, or faint, or let my face shift from the carefully neutral expression I currently had pasted onto it, I listened as Leonard detailed what he knew about the cheating operation—which, somehow, was almost everything.

“So that about covers it,” Leonard said finally, and very cheerfully. “Man,” he added, “if you’d just told me about this weeks ago, this could’ve all gone down so differently. Oh, and by the way, Maya . . . it’s one thing to cheat in school. I mean, you might get expelled, which already sucks. But then you go for
that
guy? Do you know where he’s
been
? He uses girls and chucks them out. I thought you were smarter than that.”

I felt my whole body turn to ice. He was obviously lashing out partly because he was jealous—that was undeniable—but there was also truth to what he was saying. Hell, I’d gone to school with Camden for almost three years and had witnessed it myself—but I wasn’t about to let Leonard see me cringe.

“What do you want?” I asked coldly. “Do you want in?

Because we can always use more people—”

“Oh, so
now
you start being nice?” he snapped, before turning on a dime to smile at me. “Actually, that’s exactly what I wanted—for you to be nice. But I wasn’t thinking so much in terms of you inviting me in on your little scheme. You guys are gonna go down eventually, and I’m not messing up my perfect record to go down with you. I was thinking”—he paused dramatically—“more along the lines of you being my date to the Spring Fling. And your prom,” he added for good measure.

“What? No way!” I said automatically, backing away from him with a grossed out twitch of my shoulders. Then I caught the look of hurt that flashed across his face and instantly regretted it. Leonard narrowed his eyes.

“Well, if you don’t want to buy my silence that way,” he said, “then you’ll just have to buy it with cash.” He uncrossed his arms and shook them out for a moment, then crossed them again. “I’ll take five thousand to start.”

My eyes widened as I felt my throat close in fear. “Are you blackmailing me?” I whispered.

“Well, you do seem to like guys with money,” he answered icily.

I stared at him, furious that he would dare to suggest that I only liked Camden for his money, more furious at myself for just admitting in my own head that I liked Camden, and deathly, deathly afraid of what my life was about to become. I tried to form words, any words; I tried to form my hand into a fist; I pondered picking up my backpack, with its load of heavy books, off the ground and clocking him with it. I was completely unable to do any of those things.

Leonard, tired of waiting for me to react, shrugged and stood up straight. “You’ve got two weeks to pay me. And then, I tell the principal,” he said, turning around and starting to trudge in the direction of the bus stop. I watched him go, still completely unable to move. My feet were stuck in place on the sidewalk, even though the wind had started up and was in the process of turning a pleasant spring afternoon into a chilly one.

I stood there for what seemed like a long time.

Nat came around the corner, dressed in his Pailin shirt and apron. “Dude, what’s taking you so long?” he asked, then saw the envelope from Stanford in my hand and the stricken look on my face. “Are you okay? Oh no, did you get rejected?” He took the letter out of my hand and read it, as I suddenly remembered that ten minutes ago I had been kissing a hot, if sketchy, guy and celebrating getting into my dream school. Oh, how quickly things change.

“Dude, you got in!” Nat whooped, shoving my shoulder so hard that I almost fell over. “That is awesome!”

“What?” I asked. “Oh, yeah. Totally. Sorry. I think, I think I was just, uh, in shock,” I stammered. I cast my gaze downward, to avoid catching his eye, and saw that my hand was still clutching my cell phone so tightly that my knuckles were white. For a moment I dimly remembered that Sarah must’ve gotten her letter too, and I wondered if I should call her to see if she’d also gotten in, but the thought slipped from my mind as I remembered Leonard’s words.