"Wait!" Richard yells after him. "If he isn't getting charged for his extra fries, I shouldn't be either!" Several people at other tables turn to look at him.
Labrador freezes in the doorway, turns around, and flashes a strained smile. "Okay, no problem." He disappears into the kitchen.
"I thought you were acting like a rich person," I say to Richard.
He shrugs. "Just because you're rich doesn't mean you want to be overcharged. Do you?"
"We don't make a big deal over fifty cents, usually," Matt says, rolling his eyes at Charlie. "But I guess if everyone else was getting a discount, yeah, I'd want one too, even if I didn't need one."
"Again, can we get back to my problem?" Morgan says, her voice teetering on the border between whining and those sirens you always hear in bad sci-fi movies when the spaceship is about to blow up. Not that I ever watch bad sci-fi movies. Ever.
"Morgan, relax," I say. "Most vid sites take down any video that someone complains about. All you have to do is call them up and say you were recorded without your permission. They'll pull the video while they investigate, and then it will be permanently pulled once they verify you didn't sign a release."
"But by the time I know about it, hundreds or thousands of people will have seen it already," Morgan says.
A new thought occurs to me. "Have you actually seen the video?"
She frowns. "Well...no. I just noticed the file name. Why?"
"Well, Biff was probably busy at the time, right? And so were you." I shrug. "Odds are good he didn't even get your face. Take a look and see if it does show. If not, you have deniability. Besides, even if you don't, I don't see how they can refuse to admit you to medical school for that. I mean, sex between two consenting adults is not illegal. As far as I'm concerned, that just shows your knowledge of anatomy."
Morgan hunches down over her phone. Matt starts to lean over and look but she stops him with a glare that could freeze a seven-dollar cup of coffee. "Damn!" she yells, just as Claire arrives with our food.
"She's not talking to you," I assure Claire.
Morgan stuffs the phone back in her purse, pouting. "I'm not sure the dean of a medical school will see that as knowledge of anatomy," she says, after Claire leaves. "And it may not be illegal, but it's still embarrassing and not something any medical school would want associated with its students. What else do poor people do in this situation?"
"I hate to say it, but Matt was right," I say, dumping vinaigrette dressing on my salad. "Paying off someone for a sex tape is a bad idea. Besides, the way he described things, he really just wants to use it as leverage against you, anyway."
"So you don't think he'll use it?" Morgan asks.
I shrug. "No guarantee, but I'd say there's a good chance he won't. Besides, the way he was talking earlier, he doesn't think you have any money."
"He could always ask for something else," Tiffany says.
"Ask someone you're blackmailing with a sex tape for more sex? That'd take balls that I'm pretty sure the guy doesn't have. You didn't see his truck,” I add, for everyone else's benefit.
"I just don't know," Morgan says, staring miserably at her untouched salad. "I just can't stand that he has that video and there's nothing I can do about it! What if one of his friends found it? What if he got drunk and decided he didn't need an insurance policy as much as he needed to humiliate me? Maybe I should just concede the bet and go pay him off."
This brings a noisy table of people beating on ketchup bottles, slurping sodas and, in Charlie's case, quietly counting french fries, to a dead silence.
"You want to concede the bet on day two?" Richard asks.
Morgan shrugs. "The rest of you can stay in if you want. I'll pay Richard the money I agreed to and help him with whatever volunteer work he wants done."
I roll my eyes. "Morgan, I can't believe you're giving up so fast. You haven't even considered all the options."
"Yes, I have!" She picks up her salad fork and stabs it at her salad like she's reenacting the Scream movies. "The only way to be sure this doesn't haunt me for the rest of my life is to give the guy a big payoff."
Richard puts his burger down, wipes his mouth and stares straight across at Morgan. "I think you missed the whole point of the bet. It wasn't for you to pay out and do a few extra hours of charity work. It was for you to see how limited the options are for someone who doesn't have money."
"Which just proves my point, that money is important and something we shouldn't be ashamed to want," I jump in. Maybe I can get RIchard to concede instead of Morgan! That would look great on my vlog.
He shakes his head, looking at Morgan instead of me. "No, it's not. People who don't have money are forced to actually think about things, get creative, make new options. There are so many things that you will never know about yourself if you always have the money to pay someone off, Morgan. Not only will you never realize your own potential for thinking outside the box, but you'll be letting that jerk Biff get away with something he shouldn't. And that's not fair either."
"Fine," Morgan says around a bite of lettuce. She's so upset she doesn't care if she eats with her mouth full - or if she's chewing like she should have a brand on her backside. "I will continue to consider other options until midnight tonight. But if I haven't come up with something by then, I'm conceding the bet and paying that asshole off."
Chapter Nine
I don't tan. I do enjoy the heat, but my skin and sunlight mix like vodka and valium - a disaster. Twenty minutes in the sun and I go all Bill Compton, skin turning red and sizzling like bacon. So when I go to the beach, I go under a haze of SPF 5,000 and an umbrella. Once sufficiently protected from the sun, I can relax and sleep under a nice blanket of warm air.
Which is what I'm trying to do right now...but Morgan isn't letting me. "What do you think I should do?" she asks. "I don't want to prove Richard right. And it seems like Richard knows what the answer is, but he's such an ass he wants to make me figure it out myself. You have to help me figure out what it is!"
I groan but keep my eyes closed. "Is it your goal to make sure I get as little sleep on vacation as you usually get during finals?"
Morgan heaves a sigh. "I'm sorry, but this is a serious problem. And if you help me solve it, then I can leave you alone and you can sleep in your tanless cave all day."
"Okay, but I think better with my eyes closed." I turn over our lunchtime conversation in my head. "You're right, I think there is probably a moneyless solution here."
"The worst part is, I think he's right about Biff getting away with this," Morgan says, and I can almost hear her snarling. "I really, really hate to think that he'd get a monetary reward for screwing me over, and carte blanche to do it again to someone else."
I'm still thinking about another part of the conversation. "You know, we should focus on what else people - rich or not - do when they don't want to cave to a blackmailer," I say. "Matt's right - even rich people will eventually decide paying out isn't the answer in a situation like this. So what else do they do?"
"Steal the video back?" Morgan sighs. "That was probably easier years ago when they kept video on - what did they call those rectangular black things we used to watch movies on when we were really little?"
"Video tapes." I give up and open my eyes. "And I don't think that's it, either. Anyone who has anything they consider valuable will keep it safe. No, I think there's another avenue." I stare out at the ocean, which we can't swim in right now because of pollution or germs or who knows what.
"What do you mean?"
I think about Biff and his pissy attitude toward the less-financially-well-endowed. Are all rich people like that? Would Matt or Charlie say something like that in a similar situation? What if Tiffany or Morgan had a sex tape of a slumming-it boyfriend?
"Even the playing field," I say, watching the water lap at the shore, spitting up empty beer bottles and used condoms. I can't see how the water would be any cleaner tomorrow or the day after. "Some people,
both rich and poor, keep a running list of things they can use against basically everyone they know. I'm guessing you don't do that, or you'd already have something on Biff. And now that he knows you hate him, it'll be harder for you to get anything on him - but certainly not impossible."
"You think I should get a sex tape of him?" Morgan's green eyes are flashing in the sunlight. "You know you can see my face in that tape but you can't see his?"
"So he must have intentionally moved the camera to get a good and embarrassing shot of you," I say. "I guess you were, well, distracted and didn't notice."
"Yeah." She folds her arms over her Guess bikini top. "What if we got a video that showed him - not just having sex, but having sex with some really embarrassing woman?"
I sit up. "Like, someone really ugly?"
She nods. "That too, but also really poor. You heard how he talked to me, thinking I was..." She lowers her voice dramatically. "Financially disabled."
"You're right!" Morgan really is smart enough to go to medical school. "Poor wouldn't be so embarrassing if she was really hot. But poor and ugly would just make him look...desperate."
"Like the truck doesn't?" Morgan giggles.
"Why did you have sex with that loser anyway?"
She stops laughing. "I regret that. You know, I really don't get drunk that often - not like you and everyone else at our house parties. Usually I stay upstairs and study, because I want to keep my grades up."
"So you and Richard really are up there studying?" I stare at Morgan. She's not quite as bad a liar as Tiffany, but I am extremely good at filtering lies from truth. It's a side effect of being lied to multiple times per hour. Morgan is staring down at her lap, biting her lower lip, toes digging into the sand.
"I know nobody believes me, but yes." She sighs. "We're just friends, and we have a lot of the same difficult classes - the ones you and Tiffany avoid because you hate math or you only want to take the easy A classes."
"So when you went on vacation, you just wanted to relax and get trashed and have a good time for a change?" I fill in the blanks.
She nods. "I didn't mean to get that drunk. But when you're not in the habit of getting sloshed three days a week, you get drunk a lot faster. It has to do with your liver-"
I hold up a hand. "I'll take your word for it. You're a genius and you're going to medical school. No need to prove it by explaining biology to me." I avoided biology because I didn't want to cut up a frog, and I have no desire to become a brain surgeon anyway. I hear real doctors aren't always as hot as that McDreamy guy, and sick people are annoying.
Morgan leans back into her lawn chair. "Look, I made a dumb mistake, and I regret it, but I shouldn't have to deal with it following me around forever. Now how can we get some dirt on Biff?"
"We?" I sigh. "I guess if helping you means you don't concede to Richard, it'll be worth it. What do you want me to do?"
"Well..." Morgan swirls her toe around in the sand. "Obviously, you're not at all ugly, but-"
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"But Biff does think you're poor! And we could put some awful makeup on you and mess up your hair and-"
"There isn't enough makeup in the world to make me ugly!" I yell, scaring a flock of seagulls into taking flight. "And as much as I'd like to shut Richard up, I'm not wiling to sleep with that pig Biff!"
"You don't have to sleep with him," Morgan says. "You just have to pretend to. How much do you wanna bet he's going to be just as drunk tonight as he was last night?"
"But in order to make a sex tape-"
"All we really need to show in this particular tape are your faces. Just wait for him to pass out with a really happy expression on his face." Morgan smiles for the first time today. "The rest we can fake. This doesn't have to be a high quality video - it just needs the potential to embarrass him. We don't even need a closeup of your face - just enough to suggest you're hideously ugly."
"And how will we manage that?"
Morgan thinks for a minute. "I bet if you put on a few extra layers of makeup and didn't wash your face tonight, you could get your skin to break out."
I sigh. "Morgan, why don't we just find someone who's actually ugly and-"
"Pay her off?" She raises her eyebrows at me.
"No." I sit up, pulling my feet into the umbrella's shadow. "Remember, we're thinking outside the box here. I have a much better idea than money."
Chapter Ten
We get mai-tai's from the cheapest stand on the beach ($3.25 each) and walk up and down, casually chatting with other people who look like vacationing college students. A group of sorority girls from a school in the opposite direction of ours tells us that Biff has been hanging around since last weekend.
"So he's been here a week," I tell Morgan as we walk away. "That means he's probably pissed off some other girl in the past week. Hell, he probably pisses off a different girl every night. Maybe more than one per night. And if he gets drunk every night, chances are one of those girls is poor and ugly."
"I hope you're right." Morgan waves over her shoulder at the other sorority girls. I've never figured out why some houses hate each other and others get along. "Because if you're not, we're uglying you up."
"We'll find someone."
But we don't. We meet a few more sorority girls, including some who remember our dear friend Biff. These two, blondes with identical hairstyles and very similar pink two-piece bikinis, are from a house that hates Morgan's house, so I do most of the talking as we lounge by the hotel pool.
Barbie One, ponytail bobbing up and down inches above the water as she floats in an orange plastic raft in the pool, admits she remembers the bastard. "Um...Biff. Let me think...ooh, I remember. Ridiculously tricked-out truck, practically screams 'This is my surrogate set of balls!'?"
I flash her a thumbs-up. "That's the one."
Barbie One scrunches up her face. "I vaguely remember him. Don't remember the sex much at all. Either it's as forgettable as his truck would suggest, or I was just really trashed."
"It was forgettable." Barbie Two mutters, her face still buried in a magazine promising, for the milionth time, the inside scoop on Kim and Kanye's relationship this nanosecond.
Barbie One sits up in her raft, nearly capsizing in the pool. Which would be a disaster for her, because she obviously wouldn't want to mess up her hair by doing something fun like swimming. "What? You had sex with him, too?"
"No." Barbie Two's face is flaming red, despite the smears of sunblock crusting around her eyebrows. "I just... ."
Barbie One rips the magazine from Barbie Two's hands. "You slut! You slept with him, too!"
Barbie Two glares at her. "Do you think I like the idea of us both sleeping with the same guy two nights apart? I didn't know he slept with you first until he accidentally called me Crystal!"
Morgan and I take this opportunity to quietly slip away, leaving the two squabbling in the pool.
"I don't think we're going to find anyone ugly," Morgan says, kicking an empty beer can out of the way.
"Yeah, I forgot that with so many students in town for the week, there'd be more than enough attractive women to go around," I admit.
"I really don't want to concede the bet." Morgan tosses back the last of her mai-tai and slides the glass unobtrusively onto a nearby pool table.
"Who said anything about you conceding?" I check the time on my phone. "Let's meet the others for lunch and regroup. If nothing else, we found two girls who are probably mad at Biff. Even if they're not ugly, I think we can find another way to embarrass him."
"Okay." Morgan taps away at her phone. "I texted the others to meet us at The Tiki Hut in twenty minutes. That gives us time to strategize before Richard shows up.""
It hadn't occurred to me that Richard might be a problem. "You think he'd disapprove? After all, he's the one who said we should think outside the box."
Morgan makes a face. "He's so judgmental. He probably sits around all day thinking up reasons to disapprove o
f other people."
"I don't know. He seems pretty hung up on money, more than anything." I pull open the door to the Tiki Hut and Tiffany follows me in.
I recognize our waitress from last night, and she sure recognizes us, judging by the way her face twists in annoyance when she sees us. She quickly chases the expression away with a smile that's faker than Tiffany's double-Ds.
After she takes our drink orders and promises to be back with six menus, Morgan and I return to the problem at hand. "You know, I have a better idea than just getting a sex tape of Biff with someone poor and ugly," I say. "After all, there's no point in embarrassing some poor girl who probably already feels used by Biff."
"I guess you're right," Morgan says. "Although we'd only be doing it with her cooperation."
"And why would someone ugly and broke want to further embarrass herself after she already slept with Biff?"
"To get back at him, just like us." Morgan plays with a straw, twirling it around in her fingers. "But I guess someone who's had to deal with being ugly and poor her whole life might not have the guts to go after someone like Biff, especially since it would ultimately be just as embarrassing for her.."
"That's kind of what I'm thinking." I drum my fingers on the tabletop. "But I think we're looking at this the wrong way. We're trying to make the setup about the girl, when we should be focusing on showing what an asshole Biff is."
As Charlie and Matt sit down, the door tinkles again and Richard walks in. He casually reaches up and removes his sunglasses, sliding into the booth next to me. "How's it going?" he asks, surveying the table with that smug smile of his, the one that just barely tweaks a single dimple. There's a part of my brain that finds the guy really fucking annoying, but there's another part of my brain that finds him really fucking sexy. Well, maybe that isn't part of my brain, but still.
"We had to cancel our float trip because it was too expensive." Charlie glares at Richard as if this is somehow his fault, which it technically is.
"I had a girl get mad at me for not offering to buy her drink," Matt says, scratching his head. "There I was, talking to her and trying to actually listen to what she had to say, and all she wanted was my money. Said I wasn't being a gentleman!"
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