She's So Money (20 page)

“Well, get out of it. You gotta tell Mom and Dad!” Nat gathered up my stuff and the rest of the mail, then dragged me and my acceptance letter into the restaurant and, ignoring the fact that there was already an extremely early pair of diners chilling at Table Two, ran up to my mom at the cash register and shoved the letter in her face. Her eyes lit up and she joyfully covered her mouth with her hand as Nat ran back to the kitchen to get my dad, and before I knew it, my parents, Nat, Krai, and the two random customers formerly sitting at Table Two were surrounding me, yelling various forms of congratulations and toasting one another with freshly opened bottles of Singha beer. My mom doesn’t even drink beer, and she was drinking beer, and while I was doing my best to smile and look totally psyched—and a tiny part of me
was
totally psyched—most of me was about three seconds away from absolute hysteria.

“Hopefully we do good business tonight,” my mom joked, looking around the room and beaming. “We’ve got Maya’s Stanford tuition to pay!” She and my dad merrily clinked beer bottles, and my dad actually took his baseball cap off and threw it in the air, and suddenly the hysteria hit.
Aaah!
Everything I had been doing was to pay off that fine. I was already killing myself just to keep the restaurant afloat, and now, because of that stupid little punk Leonard . . .
argh! Now
what? What was I going to do?

We were already doing work for all of Camden’s friends, and even his giant social circle had finite edges. How was I suddenly going to make the extra five grand? How did I know Leonard wouldn’t turn us in anyway? I had been planning on stopping all of this madness the very second the fine was paid off, but what if Leonard kept on asking for money?

Was I going to have to do this for the rest of the year, just in order to keep him quiet? Was I going to have to do this
forever
? Christ! What the
hell
was I going to do?

Well, step one was to tell Camden. I excused myself, leaving my family to their laughter and celebration, and went to the employee bathroom, locking the door and quickly splashing some water onto my face. I then took my phone from my pocket and restarted the text message to Camden that I’d begun almost an hour ago. I punched the clear button, erasing what I’d typed before. The new text:
We r *DEAD.*

chapter fourteen

I didn’t run into Camden at all the next day at school,
which was just as well because almost every class began with people asking “Where’d you get in?” and then, depending on the situation, reactions of ecstasy or anguish. It was mostly ecstasy for my friends—Sarah, Cat, and Jonny had all gotten into their first choices of Stanford, Brown, and M.I.T., respectively—but, as people congratulated me on my own Stanford acceptance, the most I could muster was a weak smile. I had bigger things to think about—much, much bigger things.

I’d tried to explain the Leonard story to Camden in a frenzy of late night texting after I’d gotten home from work, but had given up after my fingers cramped. The last text I saw before drifting off into a panicky, nightmare filled sleep (in which an eight foot tall Leonard with vampire teeth sucked both my parents dry before taking me to the prom and somehow orchestrating it so that my dress suddenly became transparent) was
Dont worry c u at car 2morrow. Everything will be fine.
I wished I could believe him.

I met Camden at his car after school and the first thing he did was wrap his arms around me and bend down to give me a quick kiss. That made me feel a little better. Until, after realizing that half the crew team had seen us and were elbowing one another going, “Oh, dude, WHAT?” I felt slightly worse. But there wasn’t any time to worry about stuff like that. The mystery of whether I’d somehow managed to acquire a hookup partner (maybe?) or a boyfriend (possibly?) was big, as was my sudden desire to find out whether or not Camden was still taking Dani to the Spring Fling, but the Leonard problem was bigger. Way bigger.

Camden and I got in his car, and he pulled out of the parking lot and started driving randomly as usual. “Okay,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. “Here’s why we’re completely and totally screwed.”

I told him what had happened yesterday with Leonard. He’d managed to sort of glean part of it from my panicky texts, but most of it he hadn’t, and when I got to the part with the word
blackmail,
he slammed on the brakes, hard and angrily.

“WHAT?” he yelled. Behind us, two more cars screeched on their brakes in order to avoid rear ending Camden’s Escalade. There was a frenzy of horn honking, and I scrunched down in my seat as Camden reached his left hand out his window and flipped off everyone behind us. After a moment, he put his foot on the gas pedal and got us going again, then changed his mind and let the car drift onto the side of the street and come to a stop.

I finished the story as calmly and quickly as I could, watching as Camden’s grip on the steering wheel grew tighter and tighter.

“Christ,” he said when I was done. He finally let go of the steering wheel, shaking out his hands. “Well, that’s easy. I’ll just kick that kid’s butt.” He shook out his hands some more and then started cracking his knuckles.

“You can’t do that,” I said. “If you do, he’ll tell the principal right away and then we’ll
really
be screwed.”

“He can’t tell anybody if I break his jaw.”

“He could write it down.”

“And his hands.”

“They could hook him up to one of those eye scanner things.”

“Fine, I’ll just kill him. Can’t be too hard. Derek and Brad could help. And Dani. She’s got a serious vicious streak.” He leaned to the side in order to grab his cell phone out of his pocket.

“Camden . . .” I said.

“Seriously, this one time back when we were dating, this other chick was kinda flirting with me, and Dani took her nail file and—”

“Camden!” I said.

“I know, I know, not helping. Sorry,” he said. He agitatedly drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then started up the car again and slammed on the gas with a vengeance, screeching us forward into traffic and nearly clipping a passing Jetta. Another lengthy horn honk was sent in our direction, provoking another lengthy show of Camden’s middle finger to the world at large. “Okay, look,” he said, pulling his hand back into the car and accelerating until we were going a good fifteen miles above the speed limit. “I’ll just ask my parents for the money.”

I emphatically shook my head. “No. No way. You can’t ask them for five grand!”

“Sure I can. I doubt they’ll give it to me unless I come up with a
really
good lie, but it’s worth a shot.” He pulled into a side street and stopped the car again; this time we were parked in front of a random house.

“I can’t take your parents’ money,” I said. “I mean, for one thing, I just can’t, and for another, do you know how long it would take me to pay them back?”

“You wouldn’t have to pay them back,” Camden shrugged, then, glancing over and catching the look on my face, he repeated it more emphatically. “You wouldn’t!”

I turned to look at him, then reached out and moved his face so that instead of staring out the front window, he was looking directly into my eyes. “Camden. I’d have to pay them back.”

He sighed. “Fine. I’ll steal it from them, then you can owe me instead. And I’ll let you work it off in sex.” He smirked at me. “I’m only half kidding.”

“And at any other time I might’ve found that half funny,” I snapped, “but right now, I’m too busy
panicking
!” I threw my head back against the headrest, covering my eyes with my hands and taking a deep breath.

“Hey.
Hey
,” said Camden. “Everything’s gonna be fine, okay?” He reached toward me and gently started to move a lock of my hair behind my ear.

“Maybe for you,” I said, smacking his hand away. “Some of us are gonna be living out the rest of our lives in a rice paddy wearing a big hat.”

“Wow, you get racist when you’re panicky.”

“Shut your pathetic, useless mouth.”

“And bitchy.”

I was bored of having my head back. I slammed it forward onto the dashboard instead.

“Okay, look,” Camden said, his voice now calm and logical. “We just have to figure out a way to make the extra money. That’s all. Let’s not worry about anything else right now, okay? Let’s not overthink it. We’re just gonna figure out a way to make five grand in two weeks. Got it?” He studied me, his face encouraging.

I took a deep breath, then let it out. “Got it.”

“How much money do you have in your bank account?”

“Don’t have one,” I said. “How much do you have in yours?”

“Uh . . . not so much,” he answered.

I looked up at him, surprised. “Isn’t your allowance like, a couple hundred a week?”

“Dude, I
spend
that,” Camden said, giving me a “duh” glance. I opened my mouth a little in disbelief, and he glared at me.

We sat in silence for a while.

“I’ve got it,” he said suddenly. “We rob a bank.”

It was my turn to glare at him.

“Hey, they’re not all gonna be winners,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just trying to keep the juices flowing here.”

I sighed. “You know, I almost wish that all the teachers at school would suddenly go nuts and assign twice as much homework. I mean, we’re pretty much doing every single assignment for every single kid at our school who can afford it right now, but if they suddenly had more work—”

“Huh,” Camden said thoughtfully. “Well, we can always get more work.”

“No, we’re pretty much maxed out. That’s the whole thing. That’s what I just said.”

“No, we aren’t.” Camden was beginning to sit up a little straighter. “We’re not the only school in town.” He looked like the wheels were beginning to turn in his head.

“Wait, do you think you know enough people at other schools?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said, sounding excited now. “I went to Greenbrook for a semester, remember? Before I got thrown out.”

“What for?” I raised an eyebrow.

He grinned at me. “Cheating.”

Figured. I put my head back down on the dashboard as he started up the car again; it was almost time for my shift, and I needed to put on my happy waitress face . . . or at least take off my stressed out, “I hate Leonard” face.

“Dude, that’s it, though,” Camden said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and speeding on his way to the restaurant. “That’s it, that’s perfect. Give me a few days and I guarantee you I can round up some clients from Greenbrook. Then all you have to do is make sure you have enough people to do the work.”

“Oh, I’ll have enough people,” I said. “I’ll do it myself and not sleep for the next two weeks if I have to.” I heard the edge in my own voice and I knew he heard it too—I meant it.

“Okay, then. Well, that’s what we’re gonna do.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

“Good,” I repeated. We were at the restaurant, parked around the corner as usual. I made a move to get out of the car and he hit the automatic door locks on me.

“Nice try,” he said, grabbing the edge of my jacket and pulling me into a kiss.

Well
, I thought, melting into his arms and breathing in the now familiar clean scent of his hair,
if I’m gonna get expelled for cheating and go to hell for screwing over my parents and friends, I might as well have a good time on the way.

I spent most of the next day wondering how much to tell the other people in the cheating ring about why we were suddenly expanding (I decided on as little as possible), and worrying what would happen if they were all happy with the amount of money they were already making and didn’t feel like doing any more work (I was only able to put that scary thought out of my mind sometime toward the end of fifth period, when the fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate for half an hour, even though it turned out to be some burned popcorn in the teachers’ lounge microwave). I texted everyone and told them to meet me in the library after school. With just over two weeks until I had to pay both the Health Department and Leonard, this operation needed to be kicked up a notch A.S.A.P. Hopefully, if we went into one of the study rooms, we would just look like a study group. A huge one. A huge one where, for some reason, everybody was in different grades and carrying different books.

Sigh
.

After school, our cheating ring employees—Cat, Jonny, their sisters Bella and Jill, and Bella’s friends and Science Olympiad teammates Darren and Lucas—gradually filtered into one of the library’s study rooms in the back corner, with a big, rectangular table and a few uncomfortable wooden “Don’t you dare fall asleep here” chairs. Feeling weirdly like a gang leader, I took a suspicious look around the library to make sure that nobody was paying attention to us, then stepped inside and shut the door, sat down at the head of the table, and explained the bare bones cover story I’d decided to give—that there was a
lot
of money to be had because private school kids were even richer than the rich kids at our school, and that therefore we could charge them even more for the same stuff. And while it would suck for the next few weeks because I was expecting Camden to have rounded up a
lot
of clients, hey, it was worth it to try it out, right? I barely avoided saying a perky “So, who’s with me?” at the end of what I hoped was a rousing speech. Instead I just sat there, fiddling with my sleeves and waiting to see what would happen.