She's So Money (5 page)

“Hey, I was just surprised that your friends were able to outdo you,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I just didn’t want you to spit in my food.”

I tried to keep a straight face and failed miserably. He stared at me for a second, then realized. “Oh, dude, you didn’t.”

“You’ll never know for sure,” I said, and smiled.

He glared at me. “I’m gonna tell everyone I know that your restaurant sucks and that they shouldn’t go there.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t care. I looked around quickly to see if anyone passing by had heard him, but aside from a random glance or two, nobody seemed to be paying much attention.

“You’re lucky we aren’t all going to sue,” he added.

“
You’re
lucky I didn’t call the cops when your friend tried to burn down the building,” I snapped.

“He was just having fun,” Camden said. “Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“Heard of it. Enjoy it. At the moment, not having it.” I turned to go. Camden took a step around me and managed to block my exit again.

“Hey, so were you gonna help me with my Algebra or what?” he asked, leaning sideways onto a locker door.

“I tried to do that yesterday,” I pointed out. “You took off.”

“Something came up,” he said. “I’m free right now, though. Want to do it now?”

“No,” I said. “Or ever,” I added for good measure.

“What, you’re quitting on me already? You can’t do that. Come on.” He grabbed the strap of my backpack and started pulling me down the hallway as I struggled to disengage myself. Several kids stared at us, including Dani Davis and Stacey Ray. You’d think since Dani’s dad is the principal, she would be
more
paranoid about showing that much torso on a school day, but it actually had the opposite effect; she was wearing extremely low rise jeans and a sweater that ended three inches above her navel. As for Stacey, who was wearing a miniskirt and sandals even though it was forty degrees outside, I don’t know what her excuse was. “Hey, C. K.,” they giggled in unison as we passed by them.

“Ladies,” Camden said, flashing them a smile. He glanced approvingly at both their belly rings, but he didn’t slow down.

I attempted to ground my feet on the floor to stop him. It didn’t work—not surprising, since he’s over a foot taller than me and God knows how much heavier—so I grabbed his fingers and started trying to pry them off of my backpack strap.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

He kept yanking me along, his long strides moving us quickly down the hallway. “If you quit now, we’ll both just have to go back to that stupid office and get stuck with someone even lamer—”

“Not sure if that’s possible,” I said.

“Anything’s possible,” he answered.

“No, seriously. I’m pretty sure anybody would be better than you.”

“Yeah, hilarious. I’ll pay double for this afternoon. How’s that?”

Ah, the language of money. “Fine,” I said, shrugging myself out of my backpack and beginning to follow him of my own accord. He was walking even faster now, and we were almost to the stairs that led down to one of the school’s back doors; I had to trot to keep up. “Let’s go to the tutoring office. I’ve got a few hours before I have to be at work, and—”

“The tutoring office is for pussies,” Camden said.

“The library?” I suggested. “We could use a study room.” Camden sped up yet again, so I had to as well. He was still holding on to my backpack strap.

“We’ll figure it out in the car,” he said, pushing me through the door to the student parking lot. I grimaced as the cold outside air hit me, and I wrapped my coat tighter around myself. “Besides,” he added, “you owe me for chucking my book bag into the trash yesterday.”

“I didn’t do that. . . . Okay, I totally did that,” I said.

“Exactly,” he answered. “So suck it up. We’re going where I want.” Which is how, two minutes later, I found myself standing next to Camden’s ridiculously over pimped gas-guzzler of a black Escalade, then sitting in it after he threw open the door and prodded me into the passenger seat. The interior was black leather, with a custom G.P.S. screen built into the dash, a flip down DVD screen in the ceiling, and multiple random gadgets I couldn’t identify. Through the cracked open window, I heard some guy walking by mutter to his friend, “Wow, is Cam King slumming with the nerd chicks now, or what?” I made a move for the door, and the locks clicked. Camden grinned at me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, giving up and fastening my seat belt. If I was going to get in trouble for being in a guy’s car, I figured I shouldn’t add injury to injury by smashing my face through the windshield.

“I dunno. My house, I guess,” he answered. He was fiddling intently with his iTrip, banging it several times against the dashboard before it finally started working. The stereo suddenly blasted Kanye so loudly, I could barely hear myself talk.

“My parents are going to kill me,” I shouted.

“What?” he yelled back, turning down the music.

“I said, my parents are going to kill me.” I reached up and pulled my hair out from where it had gotten pinned between my back and the seat.

“Huh? Why?” Camden asked. He looked genuinely puzzled.

“Well, aside from the fact that I’m supposed to either go straight home or straight to the restaurant after school unless I’m tutoring, they’re totally paranoid about me going to random people’s houses.” Outside the window, I saw Brad Slater walk by on his way toward his car. He did a double take when he saw that I was sitting in Camden’s passenger seat.

“Dude, that’s really freakin’ weird,” Camden said.

“You’re telling me.” Wait, I had just agreed with him. Ew. “But anyway,” I added quickly, “I’ll get in trouble if we go to your house. Can we just like, go to Starbucks or something?”

“You have a cell phone, don’t you?” he asked. I nodded and pulled it out of my backpack. “Well, the whole point of a cell phone is that when people call you, you can lie about where you are.”

“I don’t know. My parents are pretty good at figuring out—”

“Oh my God!” he exclaimed, rolling his eyes. “You’ve never even tried it, have you?” He looked at me, mouth slightly open in disbelief.

I suddenly felt very lame. Then I felt lame for feeling lame. Then my phone rang.

“It’s my mom,” I squeaked, not picking it up. A few months ago, Nat had changed the ring for her on both our phones to “Mama Said Knock You Out.” At the time, it had cracked us both up, but now it was striking fear into my heart.

“Good, now’s your chance.” Camden turned the key in the ignition, backed up out of the parking space, and gunned the car out of the parking lot. I glared at him as I flipped open my phone.

“Hel—hello?” I couldn’t hide my nervousness.

“What is all that noise?” my mom asked.

I frantically motioned for Camden to turn down his music even further. “Uh, nothing. Somebody just walked by with a really noisy iPod.” Camden turned the volume down, then turned it way up for a split second, then back down, this time all the way. I slapped his hand and glared at him. He grinned as he pulled out of our school’s back driveway and onto the street.

“Where are you?” my mom asked.

“The library?” I winced, looking out the window of Camden’s car at what was very much the football field behind the school and not the library.

“Okay . . . well, I want to go over the schedule with you again for when we are gone, so . . . see you at four thirty.” She sounded extremely suspicious, but at least she had hung up. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to see Camden laughing at me.

“You are the world’s
worst
liar,” he said. He turned the music back on and absentmindedly drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Thank you. I love being driven somewhere against my will and then insulted,” I said, looking out the window. The football field and track, then houses, then trees, then the bridge over the river and the golf course, all positively whizzed by—Camden was driving sixty in a forty zone. “Uh . . . do you have a radar detector in this thing?”

“Of course,” he said, speeding up to eighty for no reason before screeching to a halt at a red light, then slamming his foot on the accelerator again the second it turned green.

The area immediately surrounding Weston High is filled with smaller houses like mine, but Camden had been speeding so much that we were already miles away. Here the houses were bigger, the lawns more extensive, the garages three car instead of two car. He started to turn into a really fancy gated neighborhood called Arbor Pointe, according to the big granite boulder by the security booth, but then he stopped and kept the car going straight instead.

I looked at him. “What, did you forget where you live?”

“We need to make a few pit stops first.”

He started heading toward downtown, driving sixty all the way to EZ Wash, where we churned through a complete wash and wax. “Your car was like, perfectly clean already,” I pointed out.

“And now it’s perfecter and cleaner,” he answered, driving seventy all the way to McDonald’s, where he ordered himself a Value Meal, then told the woman working the window that she had “the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen” in order to score extra fries.

“That chick was like, fifty,” I said.

“And that’s why the line worked on her,” he answered.

After that we went to the drive through liquor store, where he bought a bottle of Maker’s Mark with a fake ID—although it didn’t seem necessary, considering that the tattooed guy with the shaved head at the window greeted him with a friendly “What up, C?” and the amount of cash Camden gave him was well over what the bottle actually cost. Finally, he turned the car around and appeared to be heading back to his house, albeit the long way; we were practically at the mall on the opposite side of town by now, and he looked like he was about to purposely wind around the streets of downtown instead of taking Main Street right through. I glanced at my watch. Great—I had to be at work in an hour. Maybe it was actually good that he was speeding like a maniac.

“Oh, dude, dude, dude . . .” Camden suddenly started braking.

“What now?” I asked, annoyed.

Camden slowed the car to a crawl and stared out the window. “Track chicks,” he said reverently.

I followed his gaze. Indeed, we were just outside the field of Pembroke, our rival high school, where the girls’ track team was lining up to start what looked like a sprint drill. They were wearing those very short track team shorts, although a few of them were still acknowledging the early spring cold by wearing spandex leggings underneath. The ones that weren’t lined up yet were jogging in place or stretching, and Camden was staring appreciatively.

“That’s it, I’m getting out of the car,” I said. I unbuckled my seat belt.

“Oh sure, you really have the balls to jump out of a moving vehicle,” he said, not taking his eyes off of the track girls.

“It’s not moving right now,” I pointed out, and reached for the door handle. He immediately stepped on the gas and moved the car two feet forward, then slammed on the brakes. My backpack and books slid off my lap and landed at my feet.

“Ow!” I take a lot of A.P. classes and let me tell you, the textbooks aren’t exactly the world’s lightest. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Just showing you that there’s no way you’re gonna pull off some sort of Lara Croft escape maneuver.”

I reached for the door handle again, but he immediately repeated his trick, causing me to slide forward and hit the dashboard.

“Ow! I could call the cops,” I said, rubbing my elbow. “This is kidnapping or something.”

“Please, like anyone would believe that,” he said, grinning. “Want me to kiss your wound and make it better?” He reached for my elbow and I shrank away.

“I have to be at work soon,” I snapped.

“Noted.” He stepped on the gas again as I struggled to put my seat belt back on, and before I knew it, we were pulling into the big circular driveway in front of his house. Or mansion, more like—my own house could probably have fit in his front hall, which showcased a huge, curving staircase, a marble floor, and a giant, intricate, very glittery chandelier. It was extremely warm inside; his family clearly had no problem jacking up the heat, whereas my parents always insist on setting the thermostat so low that I wear my coat inside the house half the time. I followed Camden to his kitchen, the entirety of which was a shiny, gleaming black, just like his car. He opened some cupboards and fished out bags of SunChips, Doritos, Oreos, and Pop-Tarts, all of which he held out to me. I shook my head.

“Okay.” He shrugged. “Let’s go down to the basement.” He pulled off his fleece and started out of the kitchen.

I didn’t move. “How do I know you’re not some kind of serial killer with a perverted sex dungeon down there?”

He grinned at me. “Well . . . I’m not a serial killer.”

“So says you.” I trudged down the carpeted staircase after him. “But Ted Bundy was apparently very popular in his day, and just so you know, I’ve got my keys in between my fingers right now, which means that if you try anything, I can totally punch you and stab you at the same time, and—oh my God, it’s like freakin’ Narnia down here!”

We were at the bottom of the stairs, and Camden had flung open the door to his basement. I glanced around and saw a glass enclosed workout room with a bike, an elliptical, a rowing machine, and about a zillion free weights; a pool table with a giant KING PROPERTIES, INC. logo in the middle; a door that was slightly ajar and through which I could see a few rows of home theater seats and a giant screen; a wet bar; a hot tub; and a guy taking his clothes off and getting into said hot tub.

Wait a minute.

“Uh, Camden?”

“Yeah?” he asked.

“What are you
doing
?”

“What?” he said. “I can’t study if I’m not relaxed. This relaxes me.”

Down to a pair of blue boxers, Camden got into the water. I noted the six pack and then mentally kicked myself for noting the six-pack. Then I noted the pecs and mentally kicked myself again. The arms, I’d noted before. I mentally punched myself in the head for that one.