She's So Money (10 page)

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 girl. 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.

He sighed. “Okay. Fine. Are you done flipping out? Can we get down to business already?”

Right. Business. $9,700 to go.

“Yeah,” I said, my shoulders sinking a little. “Whatcha got?”

“Algebra, some Government crap, and this Chemistry problem set and lab, although the lab’s not due until Monday. . . .” He piled a bunch of books into my arms. “And Dani’s got the same Algebra, plus—”

“Wait a minute. What?” I stepped away from him so that he couldn’t hand me anything else and quickly glanced around. The hallway was emptying out; kids with only six periods had taken off for the day, kids with seven were due in class in—the bell rang—zero seconds. It was safe to talk, but I motioned for Camden to lower his voice anyway.

“Dani Davis,” he repeated, quieter. “She’s in my Algebra class. She’s got the same problem set as me.”

“Yeah, I know who she is,” I said impatiently, “but since when am I doing her work too?”

“Since I told her this morning how awesome you are at it, and she wants in.”

“You told her? Are you crazy? You can’t tell other people! She’s the principal’s daughter—we’re gonna get caught!” I stared at him in disbelief.

“No, we’re not,” he said smoothly. “We haven’t so far.”

“It’s been two days!” I exclaimed.

“Well, were you suddenly planning on doing something different or stupid?”

“No,” I said.

“Okay, then that means we’re going to continue to not get caught.” He put another book on top of the pile I was holding.

“What if
Dani
does something different or stupid?” I asked.

“She won’t. She’s awesome,” said Camden.

“She’s got the words
Easy Rider
tattooed on her lower back,” I said.

“That’s after the pony she got for her tenth birthday present.”

“That’s even
more
disturbing.”

“Look, Dani’s totally cool. She’s one of my best friends, okay?”

I quashed the urge to ask him if by “best friend,” he meant “girlfriend.”

Camden continued. “She’s not gonna tell. So come on, do us both a favor? And yourself?” He waved Dani’s assignment sheets in front of me. I sighed and nodded. “Great,” he said, plunking all of her stuff into my arms, as I struggled not to wilt under the weight. “She’ll pay the same,” he said, “even though technically, since it’s the same questions, I feel like we should work out some sort of a deal—”

“No deal,” I said quickly. “I have to do hers differently than yours anyway, or else we’d get caught. Hundred bucks or forget it.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Camden said.

“I drive lots of hard things,” I snapped. Wait a minute.

Camden laughed appreciatively. “Well, quit being so paranoid about getting caught, and we’ll be golden,” he said.

“Sorry, but being suspended isn’t that high on my list of priorities,” I said.

“I’ve been suspended four times,” he said cheerfully.

“Being like you isn’t one of my priorities either,” I pointed out. He just grinned and handed me even more books.

“And here’s Stacey’s stuff,” he said. He topped the pile off with a sparkly purple notebook.
Stacey Ray
was written on it in Day-Glo pink puff pen.

“Oh my God, how many people have you told?” I asked. The purple notebook started sliding off the top of the pile, and I tilted back ever so slightly to save it from falling.