Free She's So Money by Cherry Cheva

grinned. “Meet me in the parking lot after school and we’ll talk,” he said. He opened the door to his classroom and stepped inside. “And by the way?”
    “What?” I asked.
    “You’re late for class.” He slammed the door just as the bell started to ring.

    “Hey,” Sarah’s voice called out, as I stood at my locker, jacket half on, frantically throwing stuff into my backpack. Surprised, I jumped and spun around. It was the end of the day, and my state of controlled panic had turned into a state of un controlled panic. If Camden didn’t come through for me when I met him in a few minutes, I was either going to be dead when my parents found out about the fine and killed me, or screwed when they found out and shipped me to Thailand. Either way, I’d be college education–less when the fine shut down the restaurant and took my family’s livelihood and all our savings down with it. I felt sick to my stomach, and it took all my strength to greet Sarah back as if there were nothing, instead of everything , wrong.
    “Hey!” I said. “Hi there! Hi. I mean, hey.”
    “Whoa, you okay?” Sarah asked, searching my face. Yep, I’d failed to conjure up an even remotely normal voice.
    “Fine, fine,” I lied, nervously chewing on my thumbnail. I fought the urge to spill the entire story to Sarah immediately. It wasn’t like I didn’t trust her. I knew she wouldn’t tell, but she was also the type to encourage me to tell, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.
    She raised her eyebrows and peered at me through her bangs. “So . . . you wanna go?” she asked.
    I looked at her blankly.
    “You said you’d give me a ride home before you went to work?”
    “Huh?” I asked, pausing with my backpack halfway up on my shoulder. “Yes? No. Uh, I can’t. Sorry, I—Nat texted me during sixth period, and apparently we both have to go straight there today. Like, literally now, because, you know . . .” I trailed off, hoping that she wouldn’t notice that I had totally not given her a real reason.
    “Oh, okay. No problem. Oh, I should probably run for the bus then!” Sarah started buttoning up her coat.
    “Oh my God, yeah. Sorry, go!” I waved her in the general direction of the school doors.
    “Going!” Sarah took off down the hall, trotting at first and then switching to a run, or at least as much of a run as she could handle given her giant book bag and clunky Mary Janes.
    I yelled, “Sorry! Come by later and I’ll give you free food!” to her retreating back, made a mental note to ask Krai to fry up some extra Shrimp Tod Mun (her favorite) in case she did stop by, and then practically sprinted to the parking lot to meet Camden. This time I made sure to stay far enough away from his car door that he couldn’t lure me in and drive off someplace random; I was hovering about ten feet away from the Escalade’s fender as he walked up.
    “What are you doing,” he asked, “standing far enough away so I can’t lure you into the car and drive off someplace random?”
    Observant bastard. “Just paranoid that your STDs have jumping skills,” I said, covering. “So have you decided about this homework thing?”
    “Sure,” he said. “I’ve decided yes.”
    Yes!
    “Except . . .”
    No!
    “I’d need to see a sample of the work first, you know.” I stared at him. “What?” he asked. “That’s standard business practice. Don’t look so insulted.” He threw the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and yanked the strings—it was beginning to drizzle a little.
    “I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” I said. “If you’re rocking a D average right now, I’m pretty sure I could pump that up for you with both hands tied behind my back.”
    Apparently, somebody passing by only heard the last half of my sentence and started laughing uproariously. I stepped closer to Camden and lowered my voice. “Okay, so discussing cheating on homework for large sums of money probably isn’t the smartest thing to