She's So Money (25 page)

“Save it,” Cat snapped.

I involuntarily took a tiny step back. “What?”

“She said save it,” Jonny said. “We
know
.”

My heart, already living somewhere in the soles of my feet for the past day and a half, sank even lower. The rest of me wanted to follow it; if I could have melted into the floor at that exact moment and disappeared from the planet, I would have.

“We know about the money,” Jonny continued, looking a tiny bit satisfied as my face went white. “We know you were skimming. We heard about it at the party, after you left.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again, then opened it again. “How did you—”

“People start talking when they get drunk,” Cat said flatly. “And there we were, feeling
sooo
bad that you just got cheated on, when you were cheating
us
the whole time.”

Oh my God.

I backed up some more, so that my entire body was pressed against my locker; I was pretty sure that I needed the support to remain standing. “I’m sorry,” I stammered, feeling somewhat like a deer in headlights but more like a deer that had already been thoroughly smashed all over the road by an SUV. “I’m so, so sorry . . . it’s just that—I mean, I—you don’t understand—”

“And we don’t want to,” Cat said, her voice as cold as ice. “You’re damn right you’re sorry, because you should be.” She and Jonny both stared daggers at me, then turned around and walked away.

The bell rang.

I didn’t move. I’d thought that seeing Camden and Dani making out in his basement was the lowest point in my life so far, but now I knew that there was lower. Way lower.

After a long moment, I felt a pair of eyes on me, and I looked up to realize that Sarah was standing in the hallway, only a few feet away, staring. She’d heard everything.

“Sarah . . .” I said hesitantly.

She walked away from me too.

Ten minutes later, when I’d finally gathered the strength to start trudging down the hallway toward history— detention slip in hand; a hall monitor had spotted me and wasn’t taking “Uh, my world just collapsed?” as an excuse—I was never more glad that Camden and I didn’t have any classes together, and never more sorry that Jonny, Cat, Sarah, and I did. It took most of my strength to keep from skipping the entire school day and hiding out in the bathroom until it was time to go to work, and the rest of it to keep from breaking down crying in class as I walked in and took my seat—inevitably one near Cat, or Jonny, or Sarah, or all three. I sat silently as they all ignored me and cheerfully, pointedly talked to one another; if it’s possible to radiate waves of icy hatred toward a person by simply smiling at someone else, that’s what they were all doing to me. It took me until fourth period to steel myself enough that I was able to plunk into my seat without having to blink back tears. I was resigned to making it through the rest of the year, and graduation, and the summer, without any friends, and I opened up my notebook in preparation to pay the closest attention in class that I had in weeks.

Although clearly I wasn’t paying attention
that
well, because a few minutes after Mr. Traynor started talking, I saw Camden walk by in the hallway, and that wouldn’t have happened unless I’d been staring out the classroom door window. He was skipping class as usual, I guessed, and I immediately had a horrible flashback to the hottub scene from Saturday night, while simultaneously picturing him dramatically throwing Dani down onto a Chem lab table and ripping off whatever tiny scrap of an excuse for a shirt she happened to be wearing. But a split second later I saw Principal Davis following him, and then Vice Principal Rooker. They all looked grim, and they were all heading toward the administrative wing.

Oh God. That couldn’t be good.

I fidgeted my way through the rest of the hour, then walked by Camden’s Government class before fifth period to see if he was there. He wasn’t, although maybe he was going to show up late, which wouldn’t be a surprise. Sixth period, I asked for a hall pass and swung by his English class for a casual peek in the window. He wasn’t there either. And after school, when I went out to the parking lot to check and see if his car was there, I could see that it wasn’t.

Something had happened. Something had definitely happened. Had he been busted for the cheating ring? Was that why he’d been yanked out of class by Principal Davis? Hell, if my friends had figured out what was going on, it wouldn’t be too surprising if the school had too. Was I just minutes away from going down in flames as well? Oh God, it was over. It was so over. Good-bye, Stanford. Hello, Thailand. My parents were going to ship me overseas so fast, I wouldn’t have time to kick myself any more than I’d already been doing. Of course, it didn’t matter anymore; all my friends had abandoned me anyway, and with good reason.

I nervously dug my fingernails into my own palms, realized it hurt, and kept doing it anyway as I spun away from the parking lot and walked toward the bus stop to catch my first non-Camden ride to work in weeks. It was a sunny day, but I didn’t bother to put on my shades—I wanted the torture of the too bright sky in my eyes. Was it possible that Camden had been busted for something else? I mean, he’d been dragged away to the principal’s office hours ago, and if it had been about the cheating ring, they would’ve certainly gotten to me by the end of the day. It had to be something else, right? Maybe there was some other business he had going on the side that I’d never known about . . . drugs, or gambling, or hookers? Okay, probably not hookers. Either way, he was a jerk. If he went down in flames, but somehow I got off scot free, that was fine. That would be the universe giving me a teeny tiny reward. All my friends already hated me, so there was no reason for me to have to get expelled and make my own life even worse. If I were found out, I would surely lose my Stanford acceptance, and now literally the
only
thing I had going for me was the prospect of getting the hell out of this town in August. Granted, I’d be going there having lost my best friend, but hey, starting over is what college is for. It didn’t matter that I had nothing left here. I’d just leave. Forget everything. Start again. Right?

The bus pulled up to the bus stop and I stepped onto it and settled into a seat. I clutched my backpack on my lap and stared out the window in the direction of the school, blinking back tears.

Suddenly, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t do anything.

And then, I knew exactly what I had to do.

chapter eighteen

“Mom? Dad? Can I talk to you for a second?” It was four
thirty and I had just gotten to the restaurant, after deliberately getting off the bus a few stops early in order to walk for a while and clear my head. My parents were up from their between shifts naps and were getting ready for dinner; Nat was at Science Olympiad practice and would probably be late. For once I was glad, instead of bitter, that I had to hold down the first hour of our shift solo—he didn’t need to witness what was about to go down, especially since afterward he was going to be an only child.

“It’s really serious,” I added, because my mom had merely nodded in my direction and then continued to putter around the dining room, putting out little standing ads for our new dessert—a lychee sorbet that my dad had recently perfected—on every table. She looked up at me and saw that I wasn’t kidding, and yelled toward the kitchen for my dad to come out. He did so, carrying a mortar and pestle filled with peanuts that he was crushing by hand, and they both sat down at one of the tables. My mom tucked her hair behind her ears, clasped her hands together, and visibly steeled herself.

“Did Nat get a girl pregnant?” she asked.

“What? No! I don’t think so,” I said, a little skeeved out. “Wow, you led with that instead of asking me if
I’m
pregnant?”

“You are more responsible than Nat,” shrugged my dad good naturedly, taking his baseball hat off and setting it on the table. “Besides, you can’t be pregnant. Can you?” He shot a nervous sidelong glance at me.

“No, I can’t,” I said. “And gross. It’s nothing like that.”

My dad visibly relaxed. “Okay, then what is it? You said serious.” My parents looked at me expectantly, Mom now absently polishing a fork with a corner of the little silk scarf she was wearing, Dad still crushing the peanuts. I started to sit down across from them and then thought better of it—I didn’t want to be within arm’s length of my mom and her fork once I got done talking. “Uh . . . remember when you guys went to Auntie Jintana’s wedding a while back?” I asked.

They looked at each other. “I told you she was too young to run the restaurant,” my mom said accusingly. “See? Something went wrong.”

“Just let her say whatever it is she’s going to say,” my dad snapped back at her. Great, they were already mad. I debated giving the panicky, “You’ve gotta help me” version of the story I’d told Camden a few weeks ago, or the “It wasn’t really my fault, so please feel sorry for me” version I’d given Sarah more recently. Then I thought about my friends, whom I’d horribly betrayed, and about Camden, trudging his way to the principal’s office, and I opted for the just plain truth.

And so, once again came the story, as simply as I could tell it: the chaos that weekend they went away. The two psycho bitch customers. Nat and me being zonked and skimping on the cleanup. The health inspector, the $10,000 fine—here, my mom took such a deep, sudden breath that I thought all the silverware on the table would be sucked into her lungs. My dad wordlessly held up a hand for me to stop talking, got up, took the top off of a Singha beer and handed it to my mom, got one for himself as well, sat back down, and gestured for me to continue. I did. I told them how afraid I was that they’d exact some sort of terrible punishment on me, how I didn’t want them or Nat to worry, how I didn’t want us to lose the restaurant. I told them about Camden’s offer to pay me for homework, and how we took that idea and built it into a business that eventually paid the fine, and Leonard’s blackmail. I told them that our cheating ring had been discovered and that Camden had probably gotten expelled, but that he didn’t appear to have taken me down with him . . . not yet, at any rate. I told them that I didn’t want to lie to them anymore, so I was telling them the truth, and that I was planning on coming clean at school, too. I deliberately left out all the personal stuff about me and Camden—it wasn’t technically relevant, and there was no point in getting them even more worried than they already were.

By now, my dad was on his second beer, although my mom hadn’t touched hers. “Why didn’t you tell your brother?” Mom asked. “He was there that weekend too.”

“You put me in charge,” I said. “It was my responsibility, not his. I didn’t want to worry him, either.”

As Mom and Dad exchanged a glance that I couldn’t read, we all heard a knock—a customer was at the door, where none of us had bothered to flip the lock or change the CLOSED sign to OPEN yet, even though it was now past five.

My parents both ignored the guy. I shot him an apologetic look through the window and shrugged, and he suddenly looked very uncomfortable and turned away. It was only then that I realized that I was crying. Well, not quite sobbing or anything, but my cheeks were streaked with tears that I didn’t remember falling.

“I’m sorry!” I said to my parents. “I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault. I let you down.”

“Why didn’t you just tell us when we came back?” asked Dad.

“Because I was scared!” I wailed. “And I didn’t want you to worry about it! It was all my fault, and—”

“Yes, it was,” my mom said.

“I know, and—”

“No,” my dad said. “Be quiet. Now we get to talk.”

I shut up. “Can I get one of those beers?” I asked, taking a lame stab at lightening the mood. To my dad’s credit, he actually hesitated before saying no. Then, he and my mom launched into a very long lecture that:a) I fully deserved, b) I knew was coming, c) I had just asked for, and d) was horrible to listen to anyway. They pointed out that what started as a small, routine problem with unruly customers had turned into a bigger one when we got lazy with the cleaning, which then turned into a bigger one when the health inspector showed up, which completely spiraled out of control when I decided to fix my original mistake with an elaborate one. They explained that this was why they were so strict all the time; they didn’t think they could always trust my judgment; they took a gamble that weekend and thought it paid off, but clearly it hadn’t. Then they hit me up with that tried and true parental classic—they weren’t angry, they were disappointed. “Well, okay, also a little angry,” my dad said, his chin on his hand, his mortar and pestle shoved to the side and forgotten. “But mostly disappointed.”

I looked at my dad, then at my mom, then back at my dad, then back at my mom . . . and then I started sobbing in relief. My mom came over to my side of the table and hugged me as I unfolded all four of the napkins I had carefully folded yesterday and shoved them into my face.

“Next time, tell the truth,” Mom said gently.

“I know,” I cried into the napkins.