She's So Money Page 7

  “What?” he asked, looking down at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Nothing,” I said. My face began to redden, although I wasn’t sure why. It might have had something to do with the fact that I’d just noticed that his blue eyes exactly matched the color of his shirt.

  Camden looked at me with interest. “Paranoid ’cause you got a boyfriend or something?” He looked me up and down like he had when we’d first met the week before, but for some reason it felt different this time.

  “No.” My face was completely red now, and I started slowly inching away from him.

  “Have you ever had a boyfriend?” His tone was curious, not judgmental, but it still made me nervous.

  “Uh . . .” I started toying with my hair. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell him no—there’s no shame in never having had a boyfriend. Right?

  “Huh. Have you ever even kissed anybody?”

  “Uh . . .” I looked away from him, at the lockers, at the STUDENT CAR WASH! posters in the hallway, at someone’s backpack as it passed through my line of vision, at anything. Camden studied me for a moment. Then he took a step forward, bent his head, and gently kissed me.

  “Now you have,” he said.

  And after smiling and handing me two books, he walked away.

  Oh. My. God.

  I suddenly realized that several people in the hallway were staring—some quizzically, some bemusedly, this one chick rather jealously—so I ducked into an empty classroom and shut the door. Everything I was holding tumbled to the floor as I leaned against the wall and pressed my hands to my forehead. What had just happened? Ew! Ew! Except . . .not ew? Except . . . eeewww! He—I—we—what?

  My first kiss—not something I’d pondered that much, but certainly something I’d imagined—had come out of nowhere.

  And it had been with Camden King, of all people.

  Which was disgusting.

  Or maybe not.

  I sank to the floor, pulling my knees up to my chin, then glanced down and looked at the books Camden had given me. It was another Algebra assignment and a Chemistry problem set, with a Post-it note stuck on top that read, $200. A quick mental calculation told me that after this assignment, I would be three percent of the way to my $10,000 goal. Great. Awesome. Not nearly fast enough, but it was a start. I’d earn the money, pay the fine, save the restaurant, and save my college fund. No problem.

  It was doable. It was totally doable.

  I thought about Camden kissing me and felt my face go red again.

  It was just going to be a little more complicated than I’d thought.

  chapter seven

  I had two things to hide from my parents that evening when they got back: the fine, and the fact that I had now been kissed. The second one would be effortless; lying by omission in order to avoid being yelled at was not really a new thing for me. In fact, it dated all the way back to when I was eight and the toilet had overflowed, and I’d opted not to tell them that I’d thrown half a nectarine in there to see what would happen. But the first one . . .

  “Whoa, you got the mail? How’d you get the mail? You never get the mail. You don’t even have a key.” I practically tackled Nat, who was standing outside our restaurant mailbox with several envelopes and a catalog in his hand. It was shortly before we were due to start work for the evening—our last kickoff of the dinner shift by ourselves before our parents got back. He raised an eyebrow as I snatched the mail away from him.

  “I got here just as the mailman was leaving,” he said, lazily leaning back against the wall.

  “Oh, hahaha, you guys got here at the same time. What a crazy coincidence, huh? Tiny world,” I said, rapidly flipping through the pile of envelopes. Bills . . . junk mail . . .nothing from the Health Department. I mentally high-fived myself—it was highly unlikely that they would send another notice only two days after leaving the first one, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “You order something?” Nat asked.

  “What?”

  “What are you waiting for? It’s still like, a full month before you find out from Stanford, isn’t it?” Nat propelled himself off the wall and into an upright position, then noticed his shoelace was untied and bent over to fix it.

  “Oh! Oh, right. Yeah. I, uh, I thought it was April already,” I said lamely.

  Nat looked at me weirdly. “Okay, I know we joke about this, but are you actually doing drugs? Because if you are, I might have to say something to Mom and Dad about it.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m a crack addict. It’s a cry for help. Please tell our parents before I hurt them and myself.”

  He looked at me for a second and then laughed. Phew. I followed him as he stood up and went around the corner to the restaurant door. He opened it for me as we both walked in and started hitting light switches and straightening place mats, as usual. Since it was Wednesday, the dinner shift was pretty dead; only a handful of tables over a span of three hours. Soon after, my parents got back, with very little fanfare, their car rolling slowly past the front window before turning the corner into their usual parking spot. I saw them come in the door from my post at the cash register, both of them looking weary from their ten-hour trip and a little damp from the never-ending spring rain. I caught my mom’s eye, waving with my left hand as I cradled the phone on my shoulder and took down a takeout order with my right.

  She waved back and smiled as she and Dad both looked around to see customers eating, Nat refilling water, everything calm and smooth and under control. They both beamed. Yes!

  “Everything good?” Mom asked, coming around behind the bar and dropping her bag on the floor. I nodded as Dad patted me on the head and Nat on the shoulder, then unbuttoned his coat and headed back toward the kitchen.

  “Chocolate,” Mom said, handing me a cute little boxed favor from the wedding. I opened it up and crammed both pieces—it was chocolate covered dried mango—into my mouth right away. Nat devoured his as well, and as my dad disappeared through the swinging kitchen doors, I crossed my fingers that everything in there was going as well as it was out here.

  “Maya,” Dad’s voice called out from behind the kitchen door a few moments later. I couldn’t tell if his tone was angry or not.

  “Yeah?” I squeaked. I looked at my mom, who was now sitting with her accounting book and reading glasses as if she’d never left, and she nodded permission for me to leave the phone. I walked back toward the swinging kitchen doors and poked my head through.

  “Yeah, Dad?” I looked at him nervously. He was wearing his Michigan baseball cap again and, like my mom, seemed like he’d totally been there for the past five days.

  “Please remind me to get a new metal shelf,” Dad said. I caught my breath. Was he psychic? Did he know about that part of the fine? “This wood one looks like it is about to break,” he continued, jiggling it to demonstrate how wobbly the little legs at the bottom were. A can of bamboo shoots rolled off of it, and he caught it in his hand.

  “Nice catch,” I said.

  Then I waited.

  My dad smiled and put the bamboo can back on the shelf, but didn’t say anything else. I waited a little longer. If he were somehow psychic and had managed to figure out that our wonky wooden shelf was just one tiny part of the much bigger problem I’d created while they were out of town—but no. Dad gave the shelf one last experimental tap, then moved on to checking out what Krai was stir-frying on the stove. Okay. He didn’t suspect anything. Guilt was clearly making me paranoid.

  “Okay!” I said brightly, finally responding to his request. “Don’t worry. I’ll remind you.”

  “Thank you,” he said. He ruffled my hair and stepped inside the fridge to do a supply check. I collapsed against the wall in relief.

  “You asleep again?” asked Nat.

  I stood up straight and made a face at him. “Nope, just glad they’re back,” I said. “Now I can go back to being irresponsible.” Nat grinned and piled a rice bowl, a plate of Pad Thai, and a bowl of Masa
mun Curry onto a tray, and we both walked back through the swinging doors to the dining room. I looked around. My mom was cheerful. My dad was cheerful. Krai hadn’t said anything about the health inspection, and the restaurant was under control. Everything was awesome.

  A party of twelve walked in and my mom sat them in my section. Ugh.

  “She works hard for the money!” my brother singsonged in my ear.

  A party of eight walked in and my mom sat them in his section.

  “So does he,” I said back to him.

  That night, I barely slept, what with finishing my own homework, and Camden’s, and reliving the whole kissing thing over and over again in my head, no matter what I did to get my mind off of it. My hours of unconsciousness totaled three—most of which I spent having nightmares about giving grisly birth to a half-Asian daughter who, in addition to being a spoiled brat and a colossal slut, would, when she grew up, set a bunch of roaches free in my parents’ restaurant and then get on a massive citywide P.A. system to announce to the world that the blame should be laid on her mom—me. The next day, I pondered skipping school, but I figured that now was not the time to start messing with my perfect attendance record. Besides, that fine wasn’t going anywhere; if I was going to keep making money off of Camden, I was just going to have to deal with whatever consequences yesterday’s kiss wanted to throw my way. Step one of dealing: Pretend it never happened.

  “Hey, hot lips.”

  Or not.

  “Morning,” I said, in what I hoped was a perfectly neutral tone of voice. We had only a few minutes before the first-period bell rang, but I waited until Camden moved off of my locker door of his own accord instead of shoving him out of the way so I wouldn’t have to touch him. Then I fished his homework assignments out of my backpack as quickly as possible and held them out to him with two fingers.

  “These are done,” I said.

  “Cool.” He took the papers. He was wearing a slouchy gray long-sleeved T-shirt and dark blue cords—an outfit that coordinated just a little too well with my own gray sweater and dark jeans combo. Coincidence, of course, but yuck.

  “So . . . that’s two hundred,” I said, deliberately moving away from him.

  “Sweet,” he said. He reached into his wallet and started to hand me some cash, and then stopped. “Wait. Don’t I get a discount?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The hookup discount,” he said, smirking.

  “Don’t you mean the hookup bonus for me for having to suffer through that?” I shot back. If he wasn’t going to let me ignore it, I sure wasn’t gonna pretend I enjoyed it.

  “Oh, please,” said Camden. “You so wanted it.” He edged toward me.

  “I so did not,” I said, growing more furious by the moment. I snatched the cash out of his hand and pocketed it.

  “Liar,” he said. “That was the best three seconds of your life so far.” He was now leaning in close to me, and I could see the edge of his cell phone sticking out of his pants pocket.

  “Wrong,” I answered. “This is the best three seconds of my life so far.” In one quick motion, I grabbed his cell out of his pocket, threw it in my locker, slammed the door shut, and walked away.

  “Do you have something to tell me?” Cat demanded later that morning in English, as soon as I sat down next to her.

  “You’re having a bad hair day,” I offered.

  “Bitch,” she said, pulling her battered camouflage hoodie up over her unruly waves without missing a beat. She lowered her voice. “No. Do you have something to tell me about a certain Camden King?”

  Christ. Had she heard?

  “What about him?” Sarah asked, sliding into the seat behind me. At the front of the classroom, Ms. Flannery started energetically writing the words TROILUS AND CRESSIDA on the board. She screwed up the spelling on Cressida and went with Cresida and Cresseda before going back to her original. Then she finally noticed that she’d written the entire thing on a slant, erased it, and started all over.

  “Nothing about him,” I said lightly, casually flipping my hair over my shoulder. “I’m his tutor, he’s annoying, that’s pretty much the end of that story.” I made a big show of opening up my notebook and taking out a pen, in order to start copying down what Ms. Flannery was writing, but before I even put the point to paper, Cat reached over, took the pen out of my hand, and seamlessly passed it to Sarah, who held it out of my reach. Damn them.

  “Really?” Cat said. “Because I heard you made out with him in the hallway yesterday.”

  “What?” Sarah screeched.

  Ms. Flannery, who had just written, 10 PAGES, DUE MONDAY, on the board, turned around and said, “You’re seniors, this is A.P., ten pages is nothing, and yell that loud again and you’re getting detention.” She turned back to the board. Sarah blushed bright red and ducked so that her hair fell into her face, then switched to writing in her notebook, which she shoved at me.

  WHAT??? she wrote.

  I desperately wanted to tell her the truth. My first kiss, despite the insanely sketchy circumstances surrounding it, was something I’d always envisioned sharing with her right away. But I knew that if I did, I’d end up spilling the stuff about the homework cheating as well, which she would undoubtedly be less understanding about. Nothing, I scribbled back. Just a rumor.

  Cat leaned in and interjected with her spidery handwriting. I heard it from like, 4 different people.

  Well, they heard wrong!!!! I wrote. Because GROSS!!!

  No kidding, wrote Sarah. Plus, that would be sooo shady cuz I heard he just asked Dani Davis to the Spring Fling.

  I stared at what she’d written for a moment. Camden asked Dani to—but they weren’t even dating! If they were dating, everyone at school would know; they’d been together for a month or so our sophomore year, and it had been big news when they broke up. Wait, if he was dating Dani again, why would he kiss me? Maybe they were just going to the dance as friends? Maybe they were dating and he was totally cheating on her? Maybe they were dating but had an open relationship? Maybe they weren’t dating, but he wanted to be, so he was using me to make her jealous?

  Forget it. I shook my head. I had to stop thinking about it.

  Good! They deserve each other, I wrote in Sarah’s notebook. I nudged it back toward her, and she and Cat both leaned over to read it.

  Totally, Sarah wrote, and then drew a smiley face.

  You better not be lying, slut, wrote Cat. But she followed it up with a smiley as well.

  We couldn’t have continued our back and forth anyway, because as soon as the bell rang, Ms. Flannery asked Cat what she thought of Pandarus’s role in Troilus and Cressida’s affair. Cat’s answer of “He was a pimp” got a laugh from the class, even though she was actually being dead serious, so I was saved by the teacher . . . for now.

  Of course, if my friends, who weren’t exactly in the loop at our school, had already heard rumors, there were bound to be more. I don’t know who I’d been kidding, thinking I could pretend nothing had ever happened. Several people in the hallway had seen me and Camden kiss for at least a split second, and while most people didn’t know who I was, everybody knew who he was. Plus, there was apparently the Dani drama in the mix as well, making him even more of a man-slut than I’d thought. He’d probably just kissed me to mess with my head. Well, I wasn’t going to let him. I was going to get past this as quickly as humanly possible. As the tabloid hoes like Lindsay Lohan lived, so would I—I’d been caught doing something I was ashamed of, and now I had to deny, deny, deny.

  Which I ended up doing a lot of at lunch.

  “Oh my God, Maya! Did you kiss Camden King in the hallway yesterday?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Hey, are you Maya? Did you really make out with C.K. yesterday?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hey, you’re that nerdy chick who somehow got Camden King to feel her up, right?”

  “What? Ew, no!”

  “Hey, you! Asian gir
l. Camden King said he nailed you.”

  Okay, that was it.

  After school, I walked right up to Camden at his locker and smacked him upside the head. He didn’t even flinch, just turned and glared down at me. “What’s your problem?”

  I crossed my arms and glared right back up at him. “Are you starting rumors that you had sex with me?”

  “What? Why would I do that?” He rolled his eyes at me dismissively. “You’re hot, but you’re a total dork.”

  I blushed with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. What the hell kind of a compliment was that? What the hell kind of an insult was that? “So how come people have been coming up and asking me about you all day?” I demanded.

  “Dude, how should I know?” A text beep told him that his cell phone was now in the outside pocket of my backpack, so he reached over my shoulder, unzipped the zipper, and got it back. I didn’t bother stopping him; it wasn’t like I’d been planning on keeping the thing. “You know this school,” he continued, scrolling through all the texts and calls he’d missed all day while he was phoneless. “People like to make a big deal out of nothing.”

  “Yeah, well—” I stopped. Wait, us kissing was nothing? Fine. I mean, of course it was. He was right. Duh.

  “Yeah, well,” I said again, “the last thing I need is for half the world to be convinced you gave me herpes, so if you could do me a favor and just deny everything if anyone asks you—”

  “You sure?” Camden asked, looking up from his phone. “You’d probably be a lot more popular if people thought you hooked up with me.”

  “A risk I’m willing to take,” I said flatly.

  “Fine. I’ll deny that I hooked up with the crazy Kabbalah girl.” He flicked at the white string bracelet on my right wrist.

  “Those bracelets are red. This is a sai sin I got from a Buddhist monk,” I said. “It’s for good luck.”

  “Yeah? How’s that working out for you so far?”

  “Well, lately? Not so great.” I glared at him again.