“Yeah,” Audrey said, looking at the crowd. “I just wonder what Rowan meant when he asked Nash if we were his newest prospects.”
“I don’t know. Maybe they bring in new prospects to nominate for gang membership.”
“Maybe. But I’m not so sure their gangs are as innocent as Nash was making out.”
“What do you mean? You think a bunch of Hollister kids are going around robbing banks or selling crack?”
“No. I just think it’s a little weird that they chose to be gangs instead of, say, teams or families or something.”
“Families? Are you kidding? Gangs are just a more fun concept. Besides, maybe they already had the posters.”
“Well, I’d be a little worried about someone who was obsessed with gang posters.”
“That’s because you’re a girl,” I said. “It’s a guy thing.” And that was the truth. Besides, I couldn’t see Nash getting up to anything too nefarious. Rowan, maybe, but not Nash.
For me, a more important line of investigation concerned the girl gangsters in the room. Which ones were Ashton’s ex-best friends? Everyone knows that when it comes to certain things, girls can be a ton more evil than guys, so I couldn’t help wondering if her old clique hadn’t come up with a way to wreak some vengeance on her for ditching them. None of them looked evil, though. In fact, if I’d had as much nerve—or stupidity—as Randy, I wouldn’t have minded talking to about a dozen of them.
“Why don’t you go over there?” Audrey said. “You know you want to.”
She’d caught me staring at a cute blonde who was dressed in a white tuxedo, of all things.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Dylan, you’re never going to get a girlfriend just by standing around staring.”
“You really think that girl and me might make a good match?”
“No, but at least you could get some practice in.”
“Yeah, at getting rejected. No thanks. I think I’ll hold out for Ashton Browning.”
“Really? Even if she ever does show back up, how are you going to talk to her when you can’t go up and talk to any of the girls here?”
“Hey.” I threw her my best one-eyebrow-raised suave expression. “When you save somebody’s life, you don’t have to have a good opening line.”
Audrey looked past me. “Well, maybe you’re not going to need an opening line tonight.”
At that point I turned to see, coming straight at me, none other than Brett Seagreaves, the tasty black-haired, blue-eyed hottie from the search-party hamburger cookout. “Hey, Dylan,” she said, nudging me with her shoulder. I couldn’t believe she actually remembered my name. “Where’s your cool hat?”
“My hat? Oh, it’s probably at home under the bed, hiding—as it should be.”
She laughed. “I like your T-shirt. Iron Maiden—scary.”
“Not as scary as this band that’s playing,” Audrey said.
Brett glanced toward the stage. “They’re pretty bad all right. Poor Nash. He had such high hopes for the Rat Finks.”
“More like low hopes,” I said.
She touched my arm and laughed again. “How do you like our little recreation center?”
“It’s cool,” was all I could muster at the moment. The touching and laughing threw me off balance, this not being the usual hot-girl reaction to my humor.
“So,” she said. “Nash tells me you were interrogating Rowan for your news articles about Ashton.”
“I wouldn’t call it interrogating. Just trying to clear some things up. He did say something I found interesting. Apparently, Ashton was kind of on the outs with a lot of her old friends. You know anything about that?”
She brushed her black hair back from her face. “Oh, I don’t know if I’d say she was on the outs with any of us. We just kind of went our separate ways.”
“Separate ways?”
“You know—we had different interests. Lately, she got so involved with her charity work. Not that we don’t all do our parts for charity. I can’t count all the luncheons, dinners, and galas I’ve been to, but I draw the line when it comes to delivering free meals to people at their homes. Those neighborhoods are scary. I understand some people have it hard, but you’d think they could at least drive over to someplace nice to get their food instead of having it delivered.”
“You mean like drive over in their Rolls-Royces?” Audrey asked.
“You sound like Ashton,” Brett said.
“Did she work for some kind of charity organization we could check into?” I asked.
Brett thought for a second, then shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I know someone who could tell you. Wait right here.”
When she left, Audrey’s like, “You realize she was flirting with you, don’t you?”
“No way.”
“Sure she was—complimenting your shirt, laughing at your little joke, touching your arm. That’s what flirting is.”
“But why?”
“Good question.”
Before I could figure out an answer, Brett was back with none other than the cute blonde in the tuxedo. Introductions went around and it shook out that her name was Aisling Collins.
“Love the Iron Maiden shirt,” she said, and reached over and touched my arm.
I glanced at Audrey, and she gave me this look like, Something is up, but I don’t know what it is.
Brett explained to Aisling how I was out to help find Ashton by doing some articles for the school paper about her disappearance. “He was wondering if you knew the name of the charity she worked for delivering meals and whatnot.”