The Get Rich Quick Clique: The Stoner's Guide to Making Money Without Having to Work

By A.N. Shaw

Let's be up front about this: Brian is a stoner. But he is a stoner with a job, unlike all his pothead roommates. So when the gang makes a bet to see who can make the most money "their way", he is sure he will win.

After all, he might not work hard, but he works. And surely that is more effective than relying on a lawsuit, a sugar daddy, or the lottery to pay your bills.

As he works, quite literally, to prove to his friends that his way is best, he also uses this time to do some light stalking. Just who exactly is his new roommate anyway? And what is"his way to money"? Is he a drug dealer, a prostitute, or something a little less nefarious? Brian wants to find out, and he is willing to put himself in harm's way to find out.

One thing is for sure, though: in three months time, the roommates will finally be able to conclusively declare the best way to get rich quick.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483571218

Book preview

29

Chapter 1

It all started with an innocent conversation on money that may or may not have taken place while using some perhaps illegal substances.

Morgan started it.

I need money, she pouted about some shoes that she and Nina were looking at on her phone.

You always need money. Just get a job, I told her, even though I knew there was no way she would ever heed my advice. Her glare told me I was right.

What I need to do is get a sugar daddy, she said instead, ignoring mine and Ben’s snorts at the term sugar daddy…or else at our opinions on Morgan being able to get one…who even knows.

Then you’d have to be…you know…with, like, an old guy or something, Nina said.

So what should I do? Rob a bank?

Why are we ignoring this whole get a job thing, again? I asked more because I wanted to hear what she had to say than because I expected a rationale answer.

Because, Brian, Morgan deigned to reply, "people like me don’t work." She said this as if it was a real thing. Like there were people out there just not made to do such low-life activities as hold down a job. While I could not go that far, I would happily agree that there were some people – Morgan being number one– who just were not cut out for anything that required them to use their brain or deal with people, which admittedly did give them limited options.

People like us, Nina replied proudly as she looked around the room at us, a bigger group of odd balls than you could ever hope to find. I considered us: Morgan, who would not work; Nina, who could not work; T.K., who should not work; Ben, who thought he worked; Steven, who just didn’t work; and then me, the only one in the whole group who actually held down a long-term nine-to-five.

I need better friends.

This declaration was pretty much ignored because it was something I said fairly often and so was never taken seriously.

But for real, guys, Morgan went back to her original rant, what am I gonna do about money?

"Why don’t you rob a bank?" T.K. asked from a cloud of smoke in a manner that assured us all that, while he himself might not ever have robbed a bank – though honestly that was just a guess on my part, maybe he had – he would respect like hell anybody else who did.

Marrying rich is safer, Morgan continued to pout. She had been holding out for some rich guy to want her for years, though, and I didn’t see why anybody would want to lock that down, let alone someone who could afford someone better. But I was smart enough to keep that thought to myself.

But not very ethical, said Ben, the moral light of the group. What you need to do is unleash your creative spirit. The creative arts are where the true money lies. Think about it, all great businesses started out as an idea, a thought. All movies were just thoughts in someone’s head. Be like me, and create something. When my script sells, I’ll finally have made it.

I sighed. Ben was my best friend, but let me tell you, I had read parts of scripts he started, then discarded when another idea came along, then started, then…you get the picture. If this was the way to fame and fortune, then Hollywood was in a worse place than I realized. Plus, there was that whole ‘even if he figured out a good concept and learned to write, he’d never be able to finish it anyway’ thing. So, yeah…that was a loser idea too.

I hate to rain down on that brilliant idea, dickhead, this from T.K. who was not afraid to say what he thought at any time, but in order to profit from a creative idea, you have to have some creativity and some savvy. Dear Morgan, here, has neither.

You guys, shut up. Don’t be mean. I just really, really want these shoes. And Nina and I are going to go out tomorrow looking for men with money. That’s really the only solution.

How much can these shoes cost? Just borrow it from your parents or something, I asked, kind of tired of talking about the whole subject. What good was outnumbering the female population in the house 2:1 if we still had to talk about shoes all the time?

"That’s not the real issue, though, is it? These shoes only cost a couple of hundred dollars, but there’s always another pair I’ll want right on the next page," she delivered these words of wisdom, and then switched to another pair before holding it under my nose as if to literally rub it in my face.

I pushed the phone out of my face and took a hit. That shit was not strong enough. I was getting a headache.

Listen, Mor, T.K. was the only one who could get away with shortening her name, and none of us were ever sure if he meant it as a shortening of Morgan or moron but since either fit, nobody questioned it. That’s just not the way about it. Come talk to me tomorrow. I can get you the money for those shoes fast. Don’t you worry.

Morgan looked at him with disgust, mixed with possibly a hint of interest. While T.K. had never said it out loud, it was pretty clear to all of us that whatever he would do to get the money, it would not be on the right side of the law.

Yeah, thanks T.K., but that’s cool. I just really think my way is safer and faster.

Safer, maybe. But faster, no way, T.K. smirked.

I’ll take that bet, Morgan said, and I got a little excited, thinking maybe the night would be a little more interesting than I had realized.

What bet? T.K. laughed. That wasn’t a bet. It was a fact. I can get enough money to buy your shoes faster than you can get a rich man to take you on. Moreover, I can get richer faster my way than you can yours.

He sat back smugly as he said this, and I couldn’t help but think if it was that easy why wasn’t he living it up, partying with some drug lords right about then instead of slumming it with us deadbeats all the time. Again, though, I knew when to hold my tongue.

Or sue, Nina squealed, and not one of us had a clue what she was talking about.

What? T.K. asked her with little patience in his voice.

She can sue. You can sue someone for practically anything now a days and win. So that’s how you can pay for your shoes. That’s the fastest way! She was bouncing up and down on the couch as she told us this, her big hair bouncing in all the ways that it would have been nice if her non-existent chest would have been doing. However, beggars can’t be choosers, and at least we had girls in the house at all.

I still say she should write a book or start a show. That’s the real way. This from Ben, and I had to shake my head at how seriously we were taking this whole thing.

Or win the lottery, Steven said and we all stopped to stare. Had he been awake this whole time? He got up and stretched his back before grabbing the joint from Ben’s hand and inhaling strongly. He looked at the disbelief in my eyes, my look that clearly said, what the fuck? You’re encouraging this?, and shrugged his shoulders.

Nobody had said it yet, man, and I figured, we can’t have this talk without bringing up gambling, right?

I could tell that Nina was getting excited about the whole thing because she had run over to a drawer and scrounged up a pen and some paper. When she got something in her head, she didn’t let go of the scent, instead, she created lists. I would find them balled up all over the house:

•Ways to reuse old hats

•Things that should be collected

•Reasons to start watching more documentaries

Okay, she told us, this is what we have: Morgan – marry a rich man. Nina – win a lawsuit. T.K. – something we shouldn’t ask questions about. Ben – write an Oscar winning movie. Steven – gamble. And Brian – work hard. Right?

Right about what? Morgan was looking at her with confusion in her eyes, and it didn’t surprise me that she was already losing the train of this conversation. By that point, she was pretty far gone.

Our thoughts on the best ways to get rich. For the contest, Nina replied, and I realized that now that Nina had made this a project, we might as well all get on board long term. She would see this through to the end, and she would drag us with her. Somewhere underneath all that crazy lay a scientist at heart. She had told us all our hypotheses, now she would set out the experiment to allow us to prove our theories. Who would prevail?

So now we need a time frame and a goal, Nina continued talking practically to herself by this point. So what, like three months? She scrunched her nose. That should be good. We’ll all work on getting rich our own way, and the one that comes out on top is the winner.

What’s the prize? I asked. I’ll admit, while I had absolutely no faith in any of them, I was beginning to think this might be fun to watch, and since either way, boring as I am, I would be hard at work, it didn’t really affect me. There might as well be some prize being dangled in front of me…because I assure you that my paycheck didn’t do much for my morale.

I…I had clearly thrown her. None of us were going to last if there wasn’t some big prize at the end. But it turned out it was T.K. who came up with the answer.

Other than the satisfaction of a job well done, T.K. paused, clearly laughing at me, the one on board with hard work, the winner will have all the money they gained over the last few months.

That pretty much sealed the deal. T.K. was not only our source of sometimes premium weed, he was also our resident cool guy, sad as that is to say. If he wanted to do this, then we all did. Challenge accepted.

By that point, Nina was jumping up and down in her excitement.

Yay! She raised her glass and looked at us all, waiting for us to get the hint. None of us did. Toast, guys, toast. Pick up your beers.

So we each raised our beers in the air while Nina proclaimed,

To the first meeting of the Get Rich Quick Clique. And to all of us being proven right.

After some grumbling about the name – from me – and some jeering about the results – if this wasn’t a group that loved trash talk, I didn’t know one that was – we eventually calmed down and left the basement, each off to our respective rooms.

Yep. That is how it all started – the adventure that lead to me learning the most important lesson of my life: hard work does not pay. But at the moment, I didn’t know that. I headed to my room full of confidence in my victory. The last thing I heard as the girls made their way down the hall was Morgan, still whining,

But Nina, how will I get my shoes? They’ll be out of style by then…

Chapter 2

Nina and I sometimes fucked. It’s true. It was not something I was necessarily proud of. It was not something I even usually told people about, if I’m being fully honest. But I figure if I’m going to be a reliable narrator, then I should probably be up front about it.

It started when we were in high school, and it has always just been something we’ve done in between, well, doing other people. At first, I was kind of afraid that one of us would develop feelings for the other. Which, translated, means I was afraid that she’d get all girly and fall for me and a good thing would be ruined. But there it was nine years later, and I was either oblivious or we were still cool. Maybe both.

The thing was that this had always been a really well-kept secret. This was because she and Ben had full-on dated for about a year six or seven years past and while neither one would ever admit it, they still weren’t over it. It was also because technically there was a no-fuck clause in the roommate agreement, but in reality that was just a technicality because everybody had, at one time or another, nailed Morgan. Well, everybody but me. My standards weren’t high but they existed.

Anyway, the best part about living with three other guys, a nympho, and Nina was that nobody ever complained or asked questioned about weird sexual noises they were hearing. Somebody was always watching porn, screwing someone, or just in general moaning and groaning. That was why it was so easy to sneak around everybody for so long without getting caught. Whenever we wanted, one of us would just go to the other’s room and have our way with each other. As long as we didn’t scream each other’s names, nobody needed to know what was going on. It was as simple as that.

Let me tell you something right now before you get too excited: this is not a sex story. And believe me, if you want something dirty, you don’t want to hear about my sex life anyway. It’s not like Nina and I are so great we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It was just that we were here, we were sometimes single, and I mean, would you be turning down free sex? Also, if you are looking for something dirty, go watch a movie. Dirty books just aren’t as much fun.

Anyway, like I said, this isn’t a sex story. I needed to get that out of the way before you got too far ahead of yourself. I’m not telling you about me and Nina to get you off. I’m telling you about it to explain how I overheard T.K. make a deal that got this whole thing really rolling.

That night after we had formed the club – or the clique as Nina would have it known – I texted Nina asking her if she was up and in the mood. She was.

So I was sneaking down the hall towards her room when I heard the voices.

If you did get rich, Morgan was flirting, batting her eyes up at T.K., I could just catch you and then we’d both win. She was rubbing herself against him, giggly, clearly still a little high, and he wasn’t making any move to stop her. His hand was down the front of her shirt, and I have to admit I was jealous. As much as I’d be afraid of ever actually getting with Morgan without catching ten different STDs, I did have to admit that her tits had gotten me through many solo shower sessions.

I guess that means I better work extra hard, T.K.’s voice was low and throaty, and if anybody else had been around, there was no way he’d be acting that nice. Not even at the thought of nailing her. You didn’t need to be nice to get Morgan, after all.

"You already seem to be working pretty hard to me," Morgan giggled and I saw her arm move lower. I moved back down the corner. If they saw me, they’d want to know what I was doing up. Or maybe they wouldn’t care anything about me at all in their present state. Still, best to not be seen. I heard a buzz and some mumbled curses.

Gotta take this, T.K. whispered, meet me back in your room. A giggle and a shut door, and I had to assume that it was just me and T.K.

Yeah, man…yep…I’ll get it…and you’ll…yeah, The shitty part about living in today’s technological world is that if I want to innocently and randomly hear the other side of a phone call, I can’t just pick up the other line. Damn, cell phones ruin everything. If I went all out and got trackers or something, there would be no way I could claim it was a mistake if T.K. caught me. So instead I was stuck listening to a bunch of boring ass yep’s and ums. I wondered if I could sneak back to my room without T.K. hearing me. But then it got a little more interesting.

So you’ll have the money? The drop off needs to change. That’s risky. But just as it got good, it stopped as, I assume, T.K. decided to make the safer choice of having the rest of the call in his room. I sighed. What T.K. did with his free time was anybody’s guess. While the rest of us knew each other from high school or even before, he had just applied to take our extra room from a Craig’s List ad, and since then the rest of us had painstakingly been trying to figure out just exactly who we were dealing with.

Murderer? He seemed too lazy to be a hitman. Drug dealer? He seemed too smart to be a user too. Wasn’t the dealer’s number one rule to never get high on their own supply? And if he was a dealer, and he wasn’t getting high on his own supply, then he sure as fuck was using a large portion of his paycheck to get high on somebody else’s. Anyway, we had all decided it was something nefarious, but up until that little clip of information, none of us had anything to evidence it on.

Well, I knew what I had to do. I was going to beat everyone else with hard work – though let me point out that hard is relative. With this bunch, making it in practically on time most days counted as hard work – and I was going to use T.K’s sudden motivation to finally figure just what the hell it was he did.

He was clearly competitive, which meant for once he would actually work semi-hard to prove his method worked, which meant he’d actually be doing more, which meant the chances of me catching him were a lot greater. Which meant my overwhelming need to know whether I would one day have the cops come arrest me in my sleep for aiding and abetting a criminal would finally be satisfied. So if nothing else, The Get Rich Quick Clique might just be all of our saving graces. Or at least that’s how I’d justify my curiosity.

When I thought the coast was clear, I snuck into Nina’s for a bit before heading back to my room to come up with my own plan, and one I would get to name myself. I was thinking it should be the T.K. Trajectory because if his way really did prove to be the best, then I needed to find out exactly what that way was.

I grabbed my phone and started typing into the notepad. So here is what I figured, if my way was hard work, then it made sense that I’d use that work ethic to crack this case. But how far could I go without just being an asshole friend?

Like if I put in time and effort and I invested in some spy gear, would that be crossing the line? At the very least, it would be crossing the line between my budget and bankruptcy, I decided. Meaning that was probably a little too far. But could I get away with searching his room when he was gone? Following him? Checking his phone?

I’d kick his ass if he did that to me. Well, I’d attempt to kick his ass in what would ultimately end up being him probably killing me, but at least he’d get the point that I hadn’t liked what he’d done. And let’s forget the whole good friend/bad friend debate. What if I did spy on him and found out he was hiding something big? What did I do with that information? I was no snitch, but if he was a hit man, I didn’t know how I’d feel about having him in the house. And I really didn’t know how I’d feel about having him in the house when at any moment he, a potential hit man, could find out that I knew who he really was.

In the end, though, I decided that fuck that. I was going to figure out who this dude was and deal with the consequences later. Because really, the opportunity was too good and I just really wanted to know.

In the end, I decided some light spying was okay. Anything requiring me to spend more than a little bit of money was not. Those were my rules, and I would follow them. With that decided, I put a lock on my T.K. Trajectory notes, shut off my phone, and went to sleep. I’d deal with T.K. tomorrow night. However, I had to get up early. It was a work day, after all, and I was about to become an ideal worker.

Those were the ones that usually got in before 9, right?

Chapter 3

My head was pounding when the alarm went off at 7, and it shocked me to realize that I couldn’t remember the last time I had gotten up that early. It’s not that I really slept in, but as a general rule, I’d climb out of bed at 8, shower, shit, and shave, and then roll out the door around 8:30, which would generally get me to work, albeit rushed, disorderly, and a tiny bit sluggish, roughly right at 9 – if traffic was bad, and let’s be honest, traffic is usually bad, maybe a little bit after. So even though it was only an hour earlier, it was like a shock to my system. I mean, the sun was barely out.

Tempting as it was to roll over and go back to sleep, I forced myself up, actually sat down to a big, healthy breakfast, and got dressed in ironed, professional looking clothing. If you’re going to do it, you better do it right, after all.

Actually taking the effort to get ready ate up a lot of my time, and I didn’t end up heading out until 8, which really only put me at half an hour ahead of my normal schedule, but that was okay. Only, then traffic sucked because it’s always a little worse at 8 than it is at 8:30 (which is my constant excuse for leaving so late in the first place) and so I didn’t even get in until 8:45. All this is just to say that I lost an hour of fucking sleep for fifteen fucking minutes extra in the office, but who am I to say that it wasn’t worth it. As long as I didn’t fall asleep at my desk later, then I guess it was cool. It was, after all, the impression it made. And it made a good impression, alright, because I wasn’t there for five minutes, which means still 10 minutes before I would normally be there, when my boss hunkered down in my extra seat, a shocked look on his face.

Brian, he told me, what a surprise! And this was a little bit embarrassing because he wasn’t trying to be sarcastic or anything. He really was