The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,11
to class but kept looking back as they walked down the hallway.
Pete used his massive hand to sweep his tousled Tom Holland hair out of his steely blue eyes. “Serious question for you, Nate.” Apparently, we were getting right to business. Enough chitchatting.
“Okay.”
“You’re probably already done with college applications, right? You were doing early action?” He pulled his phone out of his front pants pocket to check the time.
“Yeah, I’m almost done. I still need to get the regular-decision ones ready just in case, but they’re basically finished.”
I racked my brain to anticipate his next comment, to get ahead of this line of questioning. Was he going to ask me for college application help? To write his college essays? I wouldn’t put it past him.
“Good, good.” He forced a smile, and I forced one back in return. Panic inched up my chest, wriggling like a worm.
“A bunch of us friends of yours at school have a favor to ask you. No pressure.”
Yes, pressure. Enough with this Tony Soprano shit already.
“Since your early applications will be in soon, and schools are going to make their decisions on last year’s transcript, we were wondering if we could pay you to, um”—he shrugged as he spoke—“throw your GPA? So like, some of us doing regular decision have a better chance at getting into college if you do that. It’s like in sports, when the top-ranked team gets knocked out of the competition.”
“Wait, what?” I balled my fists to stop their shaking. “What do you mean, throw my GPA? Are you talking making B’s?” I paused. “Or C’s? Or are you talking…F’s? And how would this even work?”
He chuckled, the way villains did in movies before murdering someone. “Nothing that would get you in trouble or alert Headmaster Jacobson. A few of us could say we made honor roll and headmaster’s list our first semester senior year if you and some other nerds bumped down a few spots. We were thinking a few B’s is all, your excuse being getting senioritis. We’d be willing to pay more for C’s, though, obviously.”
Obviously? Earning money this way hadn’t even crossed my mind, though, knowing Pete, maybe it should have. This was shady as shit. He’d found some weird loophole that made this all technically possible. The bulk of the college scholarships I’d applied for would not be compromised because the high GPA requirement was through end of junior year, and not many of them took into account my fall and spring senior semesters. I’d maybe be blowing my shot at valedictorian. But could I live with myself knowing I’d whored myself out for some cash?
“You asking Sanchez too?” She was the other person in our class with the highest GPA. But she wasn’t on scholarship—her dad was some hotshot executive at Amazon. She didn’t need the money.
“I wanted to talk to you first. Seemed like we could come up with a mutually beneficial arrangement. You help us out. We help a skid.”
I cringed. In other words, I was poor and needed money, and he and his friends were rich and had lots of money. See? We could help each other, in Pete’s simple view of demand-side capitalism.
I went ahead and asked what I wanted to know. “How much money are we talking here?”
“We can talk price later, but the gist of it is, we’d make it worth your time.” His gaze traveled up and down my body. “I like you, bro, so I’d like this to work out in your favor. It’d probably be enough to get your mom a new car, one of those that self-park. Depending on how extreme you’d want to go, though, maybe we could get you a self-driving car, like mine.”
He had a Tesla Model X. The one with the ridiculous bat-wing doors.
I already knew the cost of a new Accord, around thirty grand. A self-parking one would probably be a few thousand more. I’d hoped Mom’s car might last a few more years so I could buy her a newer one after I graduated from college.
Pete was offering me thirty grand, or maybe even more, without having to wait four