Climbing in the passenger seat of Sean’s Lotus Evora, I slam the door. I’m more irritated than ever, now that I’ve met her. “Drive.”

Sean’s got one tensed hand on the wheel, the other in his lap. He glances over to me and puts the car in gear. “You were gone a long time. Did you meet her?” His voice is low as he looks to see if it’s safe to pull out into morning gotta-get-to-work traffic. Even on the residential streets, it’s insane.

“Oh, I met her alright,” I growl.

He barely waits for me to finish my sentence. “Well?”

“She’s exactly like I thought she would be,” I mutter, turning my head away from him.

“Shit.” We take off down the street and he hits the gas like we’re on the freeway, coming up on another car like they should get out of his way. And they should. For a while, we drive in silence. The radio isn’t on. We’re not talking. What is there to say? We’re fucked. The world has changed in a way we never thought possible. And all because of some girl named Rue Calliwell who, up until yesterday, we never knew existed.

The truth is, when we heard from our lawyer what happened, I had all sorts of ideas in my mind about what she would be like. Trashy topped the list. Broke, of course was in there. I expected to see the kind of money-grabbing whore her mother must have been.

She is broke. I was right about that. What a shit hole place to live. But even standing there in the scuffed-up doorway, her eyes had a dignified intelligence that took me by surprise. She’s barely legal to down a beer, but she seemed older than other twenty-one year olds, stronger somehow. Able to handle my stare more than most twit-heads. Rue Calliwell appeared to be ‘a good girl’ –fresh faced and unjaded compared to the chicks who run in our circles. And she had some fire in her. I liked that.

I don’t want to like that.

“I should have come up with you.” Sean says.

“I told you that you should have,” I mutter out the window.

He doesn’t argue.

We both know the deal.

My brother and I are alike only in physical appearance. No one would deny we descend from the same lineage of Czechoslovakian ancestors–before it separated into Czech Republic and Slovakia. Now I guess we’d be just Czech. But our physical resemblance is where the similarities end.

I’m the one who paid to have Rue checked out immediately after Henderson told us about her. Everything that could be found on her, we found.

It wasn’t much. She lives a fucking boring life by anyone’s standards. Works at Ralphs. Didn’t go to college, but she’s studying to be a dancer. Trains at Millennium with all the other dancers who are worth a damn. Has been in a few music videos. Has a best friend, a Mexican girl name Jenna. Last boyfriend was Leon and he was a deadbeat surfer who had only his looks to reel girls in. Didn’t last past a year.

Not much else.

Boring with a capital BORING.

So I needed to see her for myself. I had to force Sean to drive to her place this morning after we left Alec’s all-nighter. I’m the one who jumped out of the car when he wanted to call her when we arrived like we were making a fucking appointment or something.

We don’t play by polite society’s rules.

We’re rich.

What the fuck is polite anyway? What does that even mean and who the fuck invented it? Our status is a fact my brother still doesn’t seem to understand. Sean feels too guilty to actually enjoy this life we live. Well, not me.

At the Mulholland stoplight on the peak of the hill between Beverly Hills and The Valley, he can’t contain his curiosity anymore. “What was she like?” His shoulders are tense, holding onto the wheel like he’s driving a block of wood.

“You should have had more to drink, Sean. You look like you’ve got a stick up your ass.” He tenses even more. “Make that coal, because two diamonds just shot out the leg of your pants.”

Gritting his teeth against a smile, he mutters, “Someone had to drive.”

“Like we couldn’t afford a cab.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Or a plane.”

“Ha ha,” he says, dryly, lips tightening as he shakes his head.

Impatiently, I stare out the window as we head for home. These turns are killing me. I’ve been drinking since 2:00 p.m. yesterday. I might puke all over Sean’s superiority complex. His guilt over being wealthy has always annoyed the fuck out of me. What’s the point, when you can’t do anything about it? We were born into this; my brother and I. Our family is old money. We were born into this just as our parents and grandparents were, and their parents, too.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But this Rue chick? There is something very wrong about that.

Sean turns down the radio right after I turn it up. “You didn’t answer me. What was she like?”

“If you’d come to the door with me, you would have known, wouldn’t you?”

He scowls and reaches for the volume knob. “You’re a dick.” He turns it back up way too loud.

“Pull over.”

“You’re not going to…”

“Pull over!”

“There’s nowhere to pull over, Jack! We’re up against the side of the hill!! Just a couple more turns and we’re to the houses…”

“Pull over, Sean! Just do it!”

He throws on the hazards, rolls down his window and stops the car behind us by throwing his arm up in the air, stopping the car right here in the middle of the one lane street. I open the door and hurl all over the asphalt. It stings like a motherfucker and I choke and cough as he mumbles, “Foul. You never know when to stop, Jack.”

I wipe my mouth and shut the door as cars pile up behind us, honking like the impatient fucks L.A. drivers are. “I knew when to stop the car. It’s a start.”

He grins despite himself as he puts the car in gear and yells out the window, “Fuck off! People are sleeping!” We laugh and for a second forget that everything has changed. For a blissful second, it’s like it’s always been. But then we both remember, and the smiles fade.