“Who are you trying to kid, Randy?” Audrey said. “I’ll bet you’ve had more secret g*y sex than a Republican senator.”
To which Randy responded with an extended fart, his usual comeback to anything he didn’t like.
“Real mature,” Audrey said.
But Randy was right. We weren’t getting anywhere with the profiles, especially since we didn’t have access to the most important one—Ashton Browning’s. So we moved on to check out the Hollister kids’ photos instead. It was pretty interesting looking at their sweet rides and houses and bedrooms and whatnot, but that really wasn’t getting us anywhere either. I was after some photos of Ashton and finally found some. Nash had quite a few of him and her, and some of the older ones looked pretty cozy. I couldn’t help imagining myself in his situation—her head leaning against mine, her fingers touching my face, the two of us with our arms around each other.
Maybe someday it’ll be like that, I thought. After I find her and bring her home, how could she resist me and my hundred-thousand-dollar reward and my awesome ’69 Mustang?
Surprisingly, Rowan Adams had no pictures of him and Ashton. That was weird. Why wouldn’t you keep her photos? Obviously, Nash did, which meant they must’ve stayed friendly after the breakup. But Rowan and Ashton? Apparently, not so much.
Looking at the photos of him, I couldn’t figure out what she saw in him in the first place. For one thing, he was a little too flamboyant in the attire department. Definitely a hat guy. And an ironic-blazer wearer. By that, I mean these blazers were outrageous—red, orange, even chartreuse—so you had to figure they were some kind of joke.
But that was nothing. The real thing that irritated me was his eyes and smile. It was like he had small dark eyes and a good-sized beak that made them look even smaller. Not that he was ugly, but he had this smug expression in almost every picture that told you he thought he was hot stuff. You’ve seen that little smirk. It made you want slap him in the face with a cold fish.
Audrey’s like, “Put a blond wig on that kid and he’s Draco Malfoy all over again.”
“Definitely prime Slytherin material,” Randy added. Next we moved on to eyeball the posts and comments, hoping they might reveal some tasty clues and that Ashton might have some stuff on there too. Like the profiles, though, the posts weren’t much different from the tidbits kids at my school cluttered their walls with.
It’s weird—reading posts like that, you only get one small side of people’s personalities. One’s always griping, another’s impossibly upbeat, and yet another’s always coming with the jokes. You could get the idea that’s how they are all the time if you don’t know them outside of cyberspace.
One word that kept coming up did spark my interest, though—Gangland. As in: Gangland this Saturday. Or: Gangland, baby, Gangland. Or simply: Gangland! What that meant was anybody’s guess.
There were no comments from Ashton since her disappearance, of course, and in fact, we had to go back a couple of weeks before we found anything from her at all. Nothing looked suspicious. Actually, she seemed like a pretty positive supportive-type friend. Except for one comment she made in response to Rowan’s post.
Rowan Adams: Another glorious Gangland extravaganza!
Ashton Browning: :(
That was her only response, just the frowny face.
Audrey’s like, “Maybe that has something to do with why they broke up.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Yeah,” Randy added. “He probably broke up with her because he didn’t like her putting a frowny face on everything he said.”
“You would blame the girl,” Audrey said. “I bet she broke up with him because she couldn’t stand his little smirk.”
I started to scroll back even further into the past, but just then a private message showed up. It was from Nash. Admittedly, I felt a little rush. I mean, this guy was top-of-the-heap material, and here he was sending me a private message.
He’s like, Hey, master detective! Good to meet you the other day! We should hang out and talk about the case! I have a game going on at my favorite pool hall this Saturday! You should come!
Besides the correct grammar and overuse of exclamation points, there was something else odd about the message—the address of his favorite pool hall was smack-dab in the middle of the Asian District, not at all the kind of high-rent place you’d expect a Hollister kid to hang out in. But that was okay. This was just the kind of opportunity a good investigator needed to take advantage of. Maybe I could even find out what Gangland was. Plus, it would be pretty cool getting to hang with a guy like Nash.
“Hmmm,” Audrey said. “This is interesting. Very interesting. I wonder what he wants out of this.”
I’m like, “Hey, is it so impossible that the guy just wants to hang out with me?”
She shrugged.
Randy goes, “But pool? Who plays pool anymore?”
And I’m like, “I guess I do.”
CHAPTER 13
Saturday night I put on my newest old jeans and my retro Iron Maiden T-shirt. I’m not sure I’d ever heard an Iron Maiden song, but the shirt was pretty awesome, and besides, they say black is supposed to be slimming. Audrey picked me up about seven, and then we swung by to get Randy. He was wearing a cheesy collared shirt that was unbuttoned far enough to expose his pale bony chest. I should also point out that he’d been trying to grow a mustache for about a month, but it only had about twenty whiskers—twelve on one side and eight on the other—which had the texture of armpit hair. Apparently, he thought it was suave. I wasn’t so sure I wanted him along on this mission, but I still owed him for the tough spot I’d put him in at the grocery store.