She's So Money (15 page)

“Okay,” he continued, aggressively switching lanes. “So, here’s the thing. We’re the ones running this operation, right? You and me. Nobody else.”

“Right,” I said. I winced as he got close to sideswiping another car, but nothing happened.

“So we should be the only ones who ever really know what’s going on,” he continued, slowing down and beginning to make a random series of lazy turns. “You know? I’ll get assignments from clients, I’ll give ’em to you, you and your nerdy friends will do ’em, then you’ll give ’em back to me. Money changes hands only between us. You take your cut, I’ll take my cut—”

“Wait, you’re taking a cut too?” I asked. He hardly needed the extra money.

“Finder’s fee,” he said smoothly. “Not from my friends. Their price will stay the same, but any new clients? A hundred and twenty five per assignment, at least. We can mess with the numbers, whatever, use a sliding scale. Don’t worry about it—I’ll handle that side.”

I stared at him, mouth agape. He’d really thought this through.

Camden noticed my shock, grinned at me, and continued. “No contact between our friends, in case they decide to start independent contracting. We don’t want anyone going around us. Plus, the fewer people who know what’s really going on, the smaller the chances are that we’ll get caught. I’m not that worried, but risk minimization is probably a good idea at this point.” Camden took a right, and suddenly we were back on the University Botanical Gardens service road. At least this time, we both knew it.

“Risk mini—wow,” I said. “You’ve thought about this a
lot
.” I couldn’t help it; I crossed my arms and leaned back against the passenger side door, staring at him in grudging admiration.

“Please, I’ve been thinking about taking this operation big time ever since we started—it’s just that you were too tired.” Camden honked at a pickup truck in front of us, which was taking way too long at a stop sign. “But now, since you’re cool with expanding . . . you know, given your little situation . . .” He glanced over at me, then returned his eyes to the road.

“You were thinking about expanding since we started? What for? You don’t need the money,” I pointed out.

“Mostly to torture myself by hanging out with a chick who’s a bitch ninety five percent of the time.” He threw me a playful glance.

I raised an eyebrow. “What am I the other five percent of the time?”

“A crazy bitch?”

“Right you are,” I said. “Seriously, though, what are you doing this for?”

“What are you?” he threw back.

“You know perfectly well,” I said. “To avoid getting killed by my parents long enough so that I can get into Stanford and get the hell out of this town.”

“Why, they have a really cool campus or something?”

“What?” I asked, momentarily taken aback.

“Stanford. What’s so great about it?”

Huh?
“It’s . . . it’s Stanford!” I exclaimed. “It’s in California, so it’s far away from here, and I’ve seen all the pictures on their Web site, and it all looks awesome, and—”

“Wait, you haven’t visited in person? How do you even know if you’d like it there?” Camden asked. He looked genuinely curious.

“We couldn’t afford to go college visiting,” I said flatly, somewhat annoyed that he kind of had a point. “And I don’t see how you’ve managed to turn this around from me asking why
you
wanted to get us into this whole cheating mess.”

“Hey, I found a useful service, I wanna share it with my friends,” he said lightly. “I just don’t wanna share it for free.” He had turned the car around and was now driving us back to school.

“Yeah, about that . . .” I started. There was a tiny bit of nervousness hopping around in my stomach.

“About what?” he asked.

“I just don’t . . .” I sighed. “We have to make
absolutely
sure that my friends don’t find out we’re taking a cut, okay?”

“Calm down. We’ll make sure,” said Camden. “Anyway, even if they do find out, it’s not like it’s actually unfair. Think about how much work we’re gonna be doing, organizing all this stuff. We gotta get paid for that somehow.”

Well, he had a point there. A shady point, but a point nonetheless. I sighed again, shaking my head this time. “You’re right.”

“Don’t I know it.” Camden grinned as he pulled back into the now nearly empty school parking lot. “Well, looks like we really are in business.” He parked the car across two spaces and held his right hand out to me. I was about to shake it when somebody tapped on the window behind my head. I jumped a mile. “Aaah!”

Camden laughed. “You sound like my ex during
The Grudge
,” he said, looking past me out the passenger side window. “Who’s that?”

I looked to see. Then sighed. Then rolled down the window.

“Hi, Maya,” said Leonard. “Hey, Camden, what up?” He waved at both of us, even though he was only like, three inches away.

“Hi,” I said. Camden ignored him.

“Whatcha doing?” Leonard asked. He stepped closer to me and I instinctively leaned back toward Camden.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” I said, struggling to sound polite.

“You guys going out?” Leonard peered into the car, enviously checking out the fancy, gadget covered interior.

“She wishes,” Camden said from behind me. I rolled my eyes.

“Leonard,” I said patiently, “did you want something?”

“Are you still tutoring him?” Leonard asked, looking past me at Camden.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Sort of,” Camden said at the same time. I resisted the urge to turn around and glare at him—while I was sure, from a practical standpoint, that Leonard couldn’t have heard what we were talking about, given that the entire conversation had been over by the time he tapped on the window, I was paranoid enough to think that it was still somehow possible.

“We’re actually going to the tutoring office right now,” I said, covering. “Wanna come?”
Ugh
, why did I say that?

“Nah, it’s my day off,” Leonard said. “Wanna hang out when you’re done tutoring? Get coffee? Or a beer?” He chuckled at his own half joke.

Behind me, Camden snickered. “As if,” he said.

Leonard looked slightly hurt but didn’t answer him. “Maya? Want to?” he asked again, bouncing up and down on his toes and fiddling with his backpack straps.

“Yeah, she really wants to hang with the Asian Harry Potter,” Camden said, giving Leonard a disdainful head to toe glance. I reached back and elbowed him in the ribs, then turned to Leonard, who was now self consciously toying with his glasses.

“Sorry, I can’t,” I said. I tried to sound apologetic but was pretty sure I didn’t.

“Maybe tomorrow?” Leonard asked hopefully. Camden muffled a laugh, earning him another elbow to the ribs from me, as I tried to say in as gentle a tone as possible, “Probably not, but thanks.”

“Okay,” Leonard said quietly, looking wounded. “See ya.” He wandered away, pausing to throw another hurt look back at us before turning around and leaving for real.

“That kid wants to bone you,” said Camden.

I elbowed him yet again. “Do you think he heard anything?” I asked, feeling slightly guilty at not having been particularly nice to Leonard, but mostly worried about our little scheme possibly being discovered.

“Other than his own perverted thoughts about boning you? No,” Camden said. “Calm down. You panic way too easily.”

“You’re the one who’s using terms like ‘risk minimization’!” I exclaimed. “This school is such a rumor mill. Do you realize the amount of people who will be gossiping about us if I’m seen in your car too much?” I glanced out his window, saw a few stragglers coming out of the school doors, and pondered ducking below the level of the window for a moment before deciding against it.

“Well, if you’re even scared of working from my car, where do you want to talk about this stuff when we really get it going?” Camden asked.

“Do we have to talk at all?” I countered.

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, I mean, obviously we have to every once in a while,” I said. “But for pretty straightforward stuff, can’t you just like, when you get assignments from whoever, just put ’em in my locker at some point during the day, and I can put them back in yours once they’re done?”

Camden studied me. “That involves us giving each other our locker combinations,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“Are we ready for that much intimacy?” he asked innocently.

I rolled my eyes as I disentangled myself from the seat belt and got out of his car. “We’re hormone addled teenagers. Aren’t we supposed to do it even if we’re not ready?”

The grin on his face told me he agreed.

There were a few assignments and xeroxed book pages in my locker the next day after school, with a Post-it from Camden explaining due dates and what grade or credit level needed to be achieved. He also put which assignments were for whom, although that was just for my own information; it certainly wasn’t anything I was going to pass down to Cat and Jonny, in the interest of keeping everyone besides me and Camden in the dark as much as possible. I finished packing my backpack, which was already heavy with one of Camden’s textbooks that he’d forgotten to xerox the pages for, and then headed to the tutoring office, where I found my friends. I dragged them into one of the study rooms and shut the door.

“All right, guys,” I said, trying to sound businesslike as I rifled through the relevant papers and books. “Here are your assignments. Cat, you’re doing some math for tonight and some Chem for Monday. Jonny, you’re writing an English paper, which is due tomorrow.”

“What’s it on?” he asked.

“
Leaves of Grass
.”

“Leaves of Ass,” he said instantly.

“Hilarious,” I said.

“Ain’t it?” Jonny smirked and high-fived his own right hand with his left one. I tossed Derek’s copy of
Leaves of Grass
at him and he thumbed through it. “Are you aware that the owner of this has drawn a flipbook across most of the pages?” He peered at the pages through his glasses, then slid them down so he could flip through it over their top edge.

“No,” I said. I took the book from him. There was a flipbook drawn in the corner of a pair of boobs that grew and grew until they finally burst in a shower of confetti.

“That’s not bad,” Cat said, reaching over my shoulder to flip the flipbook again.

“Yeah, I kinda gotta give the guy credit,” I agreed, handing the book back to Jonny. Wait, I’d just revealed that this particular customer was male. Well, whatever, no big deal there. The security didn’t have to be one hundred percent anonymous on all levels; it just had to be mostly that way.

“Anyway,” I continued, “Jonny, it’s all you. It’s five pages, and it doesn’t have to be any good.”

“Sweet,” he said.

“Your stuff can suck too, Cat,” I said.

“Awesome.” She grinned.

“Seriously, it if takes either of you any more than like, an hour, tops, you’re trying way too hard.” I leaned back in my chair and stretched, glad that everything was going smoothly so far.

“Oh, this won’t take me an hour,” Cat said, looking at the xeroxed pages of Stacey’s math book and smiling to herself. “Unless I get distracted looking at Stacey’s doodling.”

She showed me the papers—in between most of the math problems were loopy, flowery versions, in various handwritten fonts, of “Stacey Ray-Depp,” “Stacey Ray-Bloom,” and “Stacey Ray-Timberlake.” Oh, great. So much for security there. Well, as long as Cat and Stacey never spoke to each other, which they never would, everything would be fine.

Right?

Cat flipped through the rest of Stacey’s pages with a bemused look on her face, then showed me a heart covered “Stacey Ray–My Chemical Romance.”

“Either she’s really dumb, or she’s kinda funny,” said Cat.

We thought about that for a moment.

“She’s really dumb,” we said at the same time.

The next day, after Camden paid me for the homework, I handed Jonny and Cat seventy five bucks each, along with their new assignments.

“Thanks,” Jonny said, flipping through his stack of bills with relish. “It’s so cool that you managed to turn tutoring the biggest dipwad in school into something profitable.”