I studied the picture to see if I could get any new insights into her relationship with her brother. Her room was pretty orderly for a teenager’s, but I wasn’t sure that meant she was a neat freak or if she just had a maid. The more telling detail in the picture was Tres’s phony smile. He didn’t look happy at all. He looked more like a guy who was trying to pretend he hadn’t just crapped his pants.
But what did that mean? Did he have issues with his sister? Or did he just hate having his picture taken with a guy like Rowan who outshone him in every way except for how much money their daddies had? To get an answer, I’d have to do something I really didn’t feel comfortable with—I had to talk to Rowan personally.
I didn’t have his phone number, so I sent him a message online giving him mine. Just to make sure he contacted me, I also thanked him for helping me Saturday night. It meant a lot to me, I said, made me see that he was probably the only one who had enough of a conscience to really care about whether Ashton came back or not. I didn’t mention another thing I learned about him—that his smarmy vanity routine was more than likely just the act of a desperate character trying to save his place among all his using-user Hollister friends.
Still, the chances of him calling me seemed slim at best, and by the next afternoon when I got home from school, I was about to give up on it. That’s when the phone rang. Rowan sounded different. The master-of-ceremonies shtick was gone. I told him I wanted to talk about Ashton, and he said he was out doing some errands and could swing by my house in thirty minutes. This wasn’t what I expected. I really just wanted to talk to him on the phone—a face-to-face visit seemed like a serious infringement on whatever mojo I had—but since he made the offer, I said okay and gave him the directions to where I lived.
I didn’t want to encourage him to hang around till my parents got home from work, but at the same time I didn’t want to be a bad host, so I broke out the Dr Peppers and Chex Mix and laid them out on the kitchen table. Almost exactly thirty minutes after our phone call, the doorbell rang. No ironic blazer for Rowan this time. Instead, he wore a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. He looked almost like a regular guy. Although I’ll bet that sweatshirt cost three times as much as my Pink Floyd sweatshirt.
“Well,” he said with a smile, “it seems like everything worked out after all.”
“I guess,” I said, assuming he meant that at least my nose wasn’t broken.
In the kitchen we sat at opposite sides of the table. He looked around and goes, “So this is it—the abode of the master karaoke rapper.”
“This is it,” I said. “I’m sure it looks pretty small to you.”
“No,” he said, helping himself to a handful of Chex Mix. “I like it. It looks happy.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t unfriend me on Facebook like Nash and the others.”
“They did that?” He shook his head. “Wow. They probably felt guilty about that fifteen-minute-rumble thing. Hey, I feel guilty about it, and I didn’t even know Nash set you up for it. I promise—I didn’t know a thing about that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I doubt they felt guilty. It’s more like they didn’t have anything else to use me for.”
Rowan leaned back in his chair. “You must have a pretty dim view of us. I can’t say that I blame you. I’m not so happy with how things have turned out either.”
He went on to talk about how Gangland had started as a lark, a way to make their senior year more interesting and fun. Then the competition set in. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I believe competition is a healthy thing, but it gets corrupt when people on top don’t think they have anything to fear if they lose.”
“It’s not so great for the people they trick into doing their losing for them either.”
“You’re right, of course. It took me longer to see that. Or maybe it just took a little misfortune of my own to start caring about it.”
“Yeah, I heard your dad’s been having financial problems.”
He smiled sadly. His Draco Malfoy qualities had lost their edge. “How news does get around. I suppose you also heard that I lost my stake in Gangland.”
“There was some talk going around about that.”
“It’s the bitter truth.” He took a sip of Dr Pepper. “You don’t know how it is to walk down the hall at school and know people are looking at you thinking, There’s the guy whose dad’s probably going to be filing for bankruptcy any day now. That’ll make you feel like a bottom-feeder very quickly.”
“You might be surprised,” I said. “I know the feeling all too well—in my own way.”
He looked at me and nodded. “But that’s also why I didn’t know anything about Nash’s plot to squeeze you into the rumble. No one tells me anything anymore. I’ve been relegated to master-of-ceremonies duties only. And I might not even have that if Tres wasn’t such a boring inept speaker without an ounce of charisma.”
“Yeah, I can’t picture Tres trying to announce the rumbles.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t have thought he could do much of anything, but it turns out he’s quite the little schemer. His dad’s bank gobbled up several of my dad’s properties for a song. You might think Tres would talk to him about at least letting us hang on to Gangland, but no. He’s always wanted it. I guess he thought it might garner him some respect for a change. But the funny thing is everyone still thinks he’s a little prick.”