Kill the Boy Band

by Goldy Moldavsky

  Once, Isabel and Erin and Apple and I had our picture in Us Weekly. We were behind the barricades across the street from The Late Show studio as the boys made their way in. We were screaming and we were happy. We were the barricade girls.

  Coming to the hotel now was only the tip of the iceberg compared to some of the cray things other people had done. If you really thought about it, we were the rational ones. And for one night we would be sleeping under the same roof as The Ruperts. My feelings on the matter could best be summed up with lyrics from The Ruperts’ hit “I’m So Excited.”

  Yeah Yeah Yeah!

  I’m so excited!

  Yeah Yeah Yeah!

  Tonight is the night!

  We elbowed our way past weepy girls holding signs that tried to play cleverly on British double entendres (WE WANT YOUR FRANKS AND BEANS) and signs that didn’t even try at all (BONERS!). One sign read WILL KILL FOR A KISS, where the word “kill” was drawn in ominously smeared rusty-colored paint (please let that have been paint). We passed a Senior Strepur (a Strepur approaching middle age) whose cleavage-baring top was open so low that you could see a giant tattoo of Rupert X. on her right boob. She’d either gotten implants recently, gained some rapid weight, or had a tattoo artist who secretly hated her, because Rupert X.’s inky face was so stretched out and badly drawn he looked more like Jay Leno than himself. The only way you could tell it was him was because of the the words below his portrait that read RUPERT X. MARKS THE SPOT.

  “Nice tattoo,” Erin told the lady.

  Tattoo Lady looked at me expectantly, surely awaiting my forthcoming compliment. “It’s a real treasure,” I said.

  Erin snorted and pulled me behind her. We weaved through the bars of the huge scaffolding by the entrance that contained all the fangirls within it like a prison. And even though I was a fangirl myself and shouldn’t have thought this about my own people, the scaffolding seemed appropriate. Sometimes fans needed to be caged, for the good of everyone.

  When we got to the doors, our overnight bags hanging from the crooks of our bent elbows, Consuela was the one to speak to the doorman to make him step aside. He leaned on the door for us and held it open wide.

  “Hey!” one of the girls behind a barricade yelled. “Why do they get to go in?”

  Erin looked over her shoulder and with her sweetest All-American-cheer-captain smile responded, “Because we got a room, sweetie.”

  I watched the girl who’d yelled, saw her face turn ugly with shock and jealousy. “That isn’t fair,” she said.

  “Womp womp,” Erin said. “You guys should probably stay under the scaffolding. It’s supposed to rain later.”

  The way Erin said stuff, with her catwalk confidence and her eat-shit smile, it made me feel giddy and confident too, because I was on her team and when she said those things it was like I was saying them too.

  I met Erin last year, at the start of high school, and even though we were both freshmen, Erin was already popular by then. She was popular the moment she stepped foot on school grounds, maybe because she simply decided to be. Where Erin went, so went everything shiny and new, and all she left in her wake were drooling boys and awed stares. She was the opposite of me.

  I’d always been a bit of a loner, and it didn’t really help matters that my father died in the summer between junior high and high school (two weeks after he died was when I ­happened to buy my first Ruperts album). It was hard enough transitioning to a new school and trying to make friends when you had your own personal shit going on. Plus, it wasn’t like anybody was knocking down my door, eager to befriend the loner/quiet/sad girl.

  So you ask yourself, how the heck did I become Erin’s best friend? It’s simple. I wore a Rupert K. T-shirt to school one day. I probably should have known better. Wearing a boy band shirt in middle school was one thing, but high school was populated by snickering, cruel beasts who fed on boy-band-T-shirt-wearing freshman like me. Wearing that shirt made a statement, and that statement was: Ridicule me! But Erin sat next to me at lunch that day. “Is Rupert Kirke your favorite?” she’d said. “Mine’s Rupert Xavier.”

  And so goes the story of our beautiful friendship. See, The Ruperts were the source of all the good things in my life. After Erin and I became friends, things got better. Nobody gave me grief for wearing Rupert K. shirts, for starters. But even when I wasn’t in full-on fangirl mode, Erin still had my back. Going down the halls in school was always easier with her by my side. It was self-assurance by proximity; when she was with me I was untouchable, and if anybody ever said anything to me Erin would be there to feed them a nice, warm dish of beautifully prepared shit. Erin floated, and so therefore I did too.

  Now she laced her arm through mine and I swear we positively skipped into the hotel lobby together, leaving all the other Strepurs out in the cold.

  At this point you’re probably asking yourself how all of New York’s Strepurs were able to get away from their families on Thanksgiving to stand guard outside of this hotel. You are still asking the wrong questions. Fangirls don’t play. We’d cancel Christmas in a heartbeat if Santa got in the way of us seeing the boys. I didn’t know what the girls outside had told their parents about skipping Thanksgiving this year, or if they’d told them anything at all, but the four of us had taken care of this detail already.

  Like I said, I told my mom I’d be with Erin. Erin double-booked her parents, telling her mom she’d be spending Thanksgiving with her dad and telling her dad she’d be spending Thanksgiving with her mom. (The fact that Erin’s parents lived on different islands—her mom in Brooklyn, her dad in Manhattan on the Upper West Side—and didn’t communicate with each other directly really worked out nicely for us.) According to Isabel, her Dominican family didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving (or any other strictly American holiday, for that matter). And Apple’s parents—the only parents of our group who were actually aware of our plan to stay at a hotel for the night and were totally on board with it—threw Thanksgiving the night before. They disrupted work schedules and endured extended family arguments, but Apple was happy and that was all that mattered to her parents.

  Inside the hotel I stopped to marvel at the lobby. The front desk was on the right side, with the entrance to the hotel bar off to the left. Every surface was either glass, hospital white, or gold, with the biggest pops of color coming from unexpected accents. Like the ceiling, which seemed to be made up entirely of suspended skateboard decks in the most psychedelic neon colors, hovering above us. The elevator bank was sleek, pristine, gilded, but was disrupted by the ugly appearance of a dirty phone booth right in the center of it. There were scratches in the Plexiglas and graffiti all over its accordion doors, and I wasn’t sure if it was a working phone booth, an art installation, or just a symbol of The Rondack’s try-hardness, but I appreciated the quirkiness.

  Consuela checked in for us, but before handing the keys over to Apple she took me aside. I had no clue why, and as she led me away I turned toward Erin, hoping for some guidance. She only winked and gave me a double thumbs-up. I knew how to read her brand of sign language by now. That particular signal was shorthand for I trust you to lie your ass off, girl.

  “I do not know you very well,” Consuela said. “But I have seen you with Apple. You are the best girl of all you girls.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. She was only Apple’s maid—it wasn’t like she knew me or was giving me a good grade in school or anything, but it felt like it. I really did like getting good grades. “Thank you.”

  “You promise you won’t get into trouble tonight.”

  “Trouble? Why would we get into trouble?”

  “I do not know. But Apple sometimes doesn’t think things all the way. And so many girls tonight outside? I do not get a good feeling. I do not know,” she said again, a crease splitting her forehead. “You promise me.”

  The thing about me—the reason Erin can shoot me the wink-and-double-thumbs-up combo—is that I’m your typical good girl. I dress nicely, but I wo
uldn’t say I’m at the bleeding edge of fashion. I always have my homework done on time. I say please and thank you and adults like me. Because of all these things, everyone always assumes that I’ll do the right thing. No one ever thinks I would lie. But I do lie, sometimes.

  Because of all of the aforementioned things—because of the way I’m perceived, because people are too trusting—I’m actually quite good at lying.

  “We’re going to be very good girls,” I said.

  It was only the first lie I’d tell that night.

  Consuela smiled. She gave me the keys and said goodbye to Apple, and I watched as she left through the front doors, struck dumb by the ease of it all.

  “We made it!” Apple said, jumping a little in place. “We’re going to meet them here, I can feel it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can feel it too.”

  Somehow I knew we were going to meet The Ruperts. I didn’t know yet if I would cry or scream or faint. And I know that sounds like the reaction you’d have while getting mugged or something, but getting mugged and meeting your idols was basically the same thing: a moment of pure hysteria where you lose your mind and all control. The Ruperts could do that to a person. They could do it to me. And I couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  Okay, so when I called The Rondack “swanky” earlier I may have been using the term loosely. It was swanky mostly in price, but otherwise it was trying to pull off a motel-for-rich-hipsters vibe. I guess that was what was in at the moment. We got key cards shaped like old brass keys with diamond-shaped key chains, ice machines could be found at the end of every hallway, and if you paid extra you could get crucifixes hung over your bed for the kitsch of it all. We opted out of the crucifixes.

  Our room was on the eighth floor of the sixteen-story hotel, so while we weren’t in anything fancy, we weren’t slumming it on one of the lower floors either. Part of that was Apple’s doing. We could barely afford one of the cheapest rooms, but Apple was the one who booked it, so I wasn’t totally surprised when we walked into Room 822 and it turned out to be a junior suite.

  The accommodations consisted of a room with a couch facing a large flatscreen mounted on the wall, a desk, and an armchair in the corner. Then there was the bathroom and, finally, the bedroom.

  “Why is there only one bed?” Erin said when she saw it.

  “Because one bed’s all I need,” Isabel said. She dropped her bag on the floor and launched onto the bed, springing so high I thought for sure she’d dent the ceiling. “I call the bed!”

  “You can’t just call the bed,” I said.

  “I call the bed too!” Erin said.

  “Guess me and Erin are sharin’ the bed,” Isabel said. There was this crazy demented smile on her face, made crazier by the fact that she just kept on jumping. I shot Erin my best side-eye and made sure she caught it, ’cause since when did she share a bed with Isabel? Since when did she share a bed with anyone other than me?

  I waited for Erin to say something about the sleeping arrangements. If I put up a protest I’d be labeled a needy loser who was attached at the hip to Erin, only said with a more growly voice and Isabel’s signature sneer. It had to be Erin who spoke up, who chose me. But she didn’t. She just scrolled through her phone, ignoring me. I wasn’t used to it.

  Apple sidled up next to me. “We can share the couch in the other room,” she said.

  “Bless,” I muttered under my breath. There was no way both of us were going to be able to fit on that couch. It wasn’t even a pullout. But I just smiled as she went into the other room.

  “So what’s the plan of attack?” Isabel said. She straightened herself out on the bed and pulled her messy blue-black hair back behind her ears.

  “You tell us where the boys are, obvs,” Erin said.

  Isabel clicked her phone screen on, her thumbs working overtime. “The boys haven’t been spotted leaving the hotel yet. Must mean they’re still here.”

  “We have to find out what floor they’re on,” I said.

  “We will,” Erin said. “First, though, I’m parched. Apple?” she called into the other room. “Could you get us some ice?”

  “ ’Kay!”

  “I always knew you were thirsty,” Isabel said.

  Erin playfully threw a pillow at her head. “All day errday, girl,” she said.

  Another in-joke that I didn’t get. Classic.

  I decided to flex an in-joke of my own.

  “Hey, Isabel,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “The time is 3:21!” came the cheery English voice from Isabel’s wristwatch. I knew I’d killed two birds with one stone when Erin exploded with laughter and Isabel rolled her eyes to mask her embarrassment.

  “Did you know it took him weeks to record that?” I said.

  “Weeks!” Erin howled.

  Isabel’s wristwatch was the product of a side project Rupert L. had spent millions of dollars on. His one and only flaw, as he so often reminded us in interviews, was his inability to tell time on analog clocks. He talked about it the way other people talked about actual afflictions, like diabetes or gluten allergies, but really he’d just missed that day in grade school when they taught kids the difference between the big hand and little hand.

  There was the now infamous TV interview Rupert L. did where he recounted his childhood, growing up never knowing the time. The interviewer held up his watch and asked, “Can you tell me what time it is right now?” And Rupert L., using all of the muscles in his face to try and squeeze his tears back into their ducts, replied, “No, Matt. No, I cannot.”

  The “telling time problem,” or TTP as it had come to be known, won Rupert L. a lot of sympathy from his fans, so he decided to put all of his money on a line of designer watches that literally told time. Anytime anyone within a ten-foot radius of the watch said, “What time is it?” his voice would come through to tell you. And you had to trust that it was correct, because there were no numbers to be found anywhere on the thing. As such, it totally failed as a watch in the strictest sense of the word. But it gave us his commercial, which was a gold mine for gifs. You’ve probably seen it already, but it’s too good not to describe in its entirety.

  It starts, weirdly, with a close-up of his bicep, muscles rippling beneath dark, tattooed skin. The camera zooms out to reveal Rupert L., hair freshly cut in a ’90s-era Fresh Prince hightop taper fade. He’s wearing a tank top, and pumping iron in front of a sky-blue backdrop—the same kind they use in school pictures. Then he launches into a whole diatribe about watches and time and how analog watches are a thing of the past. But the best line in the whole thing is this gem:

  “It took me weeks to record my voice on the watches.”

  There was something about the way he said “weeks”—loud and squeaky—that always made me and Erin laugh like maniacs. And that was aside from the fact that it had taken him weeks to essentially record himself saying, “The time is” and then counting to fifty-nine. That was all he had to do, really—count to fifty-nine. It wasn’t even like he sang the time.

  “You know what he could’ve spent all those weeks doing?” Erin said, her laughter not yet dying down. “Learning to tell time.”

  We all liked Rupert L., but that didn’t mean we couldn’t also harp on him a little bit. He was the group’s lovable idiot. (In this case “lovable” is used loosely and “idiot” is used emphatically.)

  Isabel was starting to look mad. Well, madder than usual. “You ain’t shit for your Rupert L. shade.”

  You probably think it’s a little strange, the way we were talking about Rupert L. You’re asking yourself how we could really call ourselves fans of The Ruperts if we were willing to make fun of one of them. I don’t know how it was in the days of yesteryear (maybe all fangirls were like Apple—blindly devoted), but the fangirls of today are a way more sophisticated bunch. Loving someone so fiercely gave us permission to also be critical of them. You’ll find the biggest Ruperts critics in Strepurs. Sometimes we won’t like a tatto
o they’ll get, or we’ll think a haircut makes them look like a drug addict, or we’ll make fun of the way they’ll pose in photographs. Just because we teased did not mean we didn’t also love. Fandom is a complicated culture.

  “We should try looking for the boys in the hotel gym,” I said. “Rupert L. is always working out.”

  I waited for either of them to say something, especially Isabel, who would’ve probably given up her ability to sneer if it meant getting to see Rupert L. sweating those buns of steel off, but she was too busy with her phone, and by that point so was Erin. So I left them and went into the next room to check out the couch/bed situation. But I didn’t have time to dwell on that, because that was the moment when the proverbial shit hit the fan and our lives as fangirls changed forever.

  * * *

  It all started with a knock on the door.

  I knew instantly that it was Apple. I knew without question that she’d forgotten to take the room key with her when she left to get the ice. Apple forgot things with the frequency and attitude of someone who knew she could simply hire people to remember things for her. So I knew it was her outside the door. What I didn’t know was that she wouldn’t be alone.

  Before I go on, I just want to state for the record that kidnapping one of The Ruperts was never part of the plan for me. When we booked the hotel room, all I knew was that we’d be one step closer to the boys. The best we could hope for was to see them, be close to them, breathe the same air as them. The most we could pray for was the opportunity to possibly get them to see us in return, to stop and talk to us, to love us the way that we loved them. All while taking a zillion selfies and bawling our eyes out.