She's So Money (9 page)

I was just putting the finishing touches on Camden’s problem set by randomly changing some digits when the phone rang. “Hello, Pailin Thai Cuisine,” I said.

“Hello, it’s Mom. Everything okay? Any customers yet tonight?”

I looked around the restaurant. “Yeah, it’s pretty good. A couple takeout calls, too.”

“Are you and Nat okay? You’re not scared to be staying in the house by yourself?”

I laughed. “No, we’re not scared.”

My mom chuckled as well. “Okay, okay. How’s Krai? Dad talked to him last night and said he sounded stressed.”

“What?” I sputtered, then closed my eyes and willed myself to remove the panic from my voice. I reached out and pressed the back of my hand to the side of a water pitcher, letting the cold from the ice calm me down a little.

“Why?” Deep breath. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “He’s fine. It’s just, you know, it’s really busy because he has to cook everything himself, what with Dad being gone.” Oh God. If Krai had told them about the letter yesterday even after I’d said it was nothing to worry about . . . if he’d gotten suspicious and said something . . .

“How’s the trade show?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Oh, good.” I heard my dad’s muffled voice in the background, telling my mom something. “Oh,” she added. “Dad says we might order some new silverware if we find some that’s not too expensive, and there are lots of booths with free food samples.”

“Oh, man. Nat would—”

“He would love that, I know. And of course, we love it too, because it’s free.” My mom chuckled to herself. “Okay, we’ll call back later tonight. ’Bye.”

“’Bye, Mom.”

I hung up the phone and closed my eyes, breathing a sigh of relief. When I opened them, a party of four was standing in front of me, and I pasted a smile onto my face and kept it there for the rest of the evening. Right before closing—that is to say, nearly two hours after he said he would—Camden showed up to collect his homework, and I met him outside the restaurant before my brother could see what was going on. Again, not that he would have, since he and Star were now
both
camped out at Table Twelve, quizzing each other on the periodic table for Science Olympiad and looking like they were actually having a really fun time doing it.

“Here,” I said, handing over the homework. “You’ll probably want to copy it over in your own writing.”

“Thanks,” Camden said. He had a coat on over his hoodie now; it was a cold night and the drizzle from the afternoon had turned into straight out rain. He folded the papers up and shoved them into his front pocket before they got too wet.

“Aren’t you even going to look at it?” I asked, shivering a little; I’d come outside in just my waitressing outfit. “Wasn’t that the point?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know whether you’d done it right or not anyway.”

“True,” I said.

“But if we don’t get caught, we’re in business. Okay? Because I actually took a shot at doing my government essay just now, and, man . . . I would rather pay you to do it.”

“Okay.” I nodded and ducked back into the restaurant as he got into his car and drove off.

The next afternoon, between fifth and sixth periods, I found Camden standing by my locker with a hundred dollar bill stuck to his forehead.

“We did it,” he said, grinning, holding out his hand.

“
I
did it,” I answered, shaking his hand.

“Same difference,” he said, taking the money off his head and handing it to me. “Not that I was worried. I didn’t even bother copying the whole thing you gave me and it still worked out. Now I can fire that Leonard kid and never go back to tutoring again. So, nice job.” He impulsively hugged me, and I instinctively backed away.

“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 Masamun 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.