Kill the Boy Band

by Goldy Moldavsky

  “What are you waiting for, then?” Rupert P. shouted, suddenly animated, bouncing in the chair and trying in vain to move it. “Let me go!”

  His voice knocked me into action, and I instantly forgot about all the possible consequences of setting him free. I had a new fire in me, a determination to do some good. “Yes! Okay!” I crouched down before him and started working on the knot around his right ankle. It was a double knot and extremely tight, made tighter because Rupert P. had struggled against it.

  “What’s your name?” Rupert P. said as I worked.

  “My name?” He wanted to know my name. “It’s Baby.”

  “Baby? What kind of name is that?”

  “Well, actually it’s Frances. But everyone just calls me Baby. I was named after the first woman in the c—”

  “I didn’t ask for your bloody history. Your friend …”

  “Which one?”

  “The bitch.” Erin.

  “There’s a reason she didn’t want to let me go, isn’t there? She’s planning something.”

  I let go of the knot. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you asked yourself why she still wants to keep me?”

  “She wants to get concert tickets.”

  “Does that make any sense to you? I give you concert tickets and then neglect to inform the police of your seat numbers. Brilliant.”

  I had to admit it did sound kind of ridiculous. But maybe there was more to Erin’s plan than that. Maybe there was something else she wanted that she’d forgotten to tell me about. Maybe there was a reason she was acting totally OOC, making me forget that she was a good person once—scaring me.

  “She’s lying to you,” Rupert P. said, piercing my thoughts. “She’s got something up her sleeve. I know it. You know it. You’re just turning a blind eye to it.”

  “Erin is my best friend. I trust her.”

  “She doesn’t trust you if she won’t tell you what’s going on.”

  He didn’t know what he was talking about. He didn’t know anything about me and Erin and our friendship. So why was what he was saying cutting into me?

  “What’s taking so long?” Rupert P. said. “Isn’t there a knife around here you can use?”

  Right. A knife. The faster I got him out of here, the faster I didn’t have to dwell on all the things he’d just said. I stood up straight and looked around.

  “You know what?” Rupert P. said. “Forget I said that. Last thing I need’s a demented fan wielding a knife. Demented fan. Apologies for being redundant.”

  I searched the desk, every drawer, looking for something sharp, but there wasn’t so much as a letter opener to be found. I went to the bedroom and made a beeline for Isabel’s bag. If anyone was likely to pack a knife in her luggage it was Isabel, but all I found were dark-colored clothes, her laptop, and a framed pic of a shirtless Rupert L. I spied polka-dot fabric, and even though I had to move on I was too shocked to find polka-dot anything in Isabel’s things to do so. I pinched the fabric carefully and then held it up by both ends. It was underwear. Isabel wore polka-dot underwear. I dropped them immediately.

  I went to Apple’s bag next. It was humongous, and I was already dreading having to go through all her things, but when I pulled back the zipper there was—no joke—nothing but popcorn inside. Loose popcorn, a seemingly endless supply, spilling out of the bag like she’d just raided a concession stand.

  I went to Erin’s bag next. There were overnight clothes and a red bikini that opened in the front. I guess she thought there’d be time for swimming on this stalking trip. I didn’t expect to find much else in Erin’s things, except I sort of did. Unbelievably, there was a tiny dagger in Erin’s bag, hidden in a side pocket. It was about the size of my pinkie, attached to a silver chain, its edge about as sharp as that of a spoon, but it was a dagger nonetheless. I recognized it immediately. It was an exact replica of the dagger Rupert X. used to wear around his neck. Any Strepur would remember it; he’d famously posed with it between his teeth for a Rolling Stone photo shoot. In the black-and-white photograph Rupert X. had been shirtless, the dagger necklace the only thing he’d worn. I didn’t know Erin got a necklace that looked just like it. I wondered why she never wore it.

  “Oi, where’d you go?” Rupert P. yelled from the other room. “Waiting to be set free here!”

  I came back to stand before him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t find anything sharp.” The dagger was just a charm, too tiny, the edge too dull. Useless.

  Rupert P.’s head rolled back, resting on the top of the chair. “You were only teasing me.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “You were never going to let me go.”

  “I was. I am.”

  “My nose itches,” Rupert P. said suddenly. “Will you scratch it for me?”

  I walked forward and scratched his nose with my right index finger. I didn’t see it coming when he grabbed my left hand. Even though his forearm was tied to the armrest, he could still reach his fingers out, and they wrapped themselves around my wrist. His grip was strong. I couldn’t shake free of him.

  “Let me go!”

  “I heard that one before,” Rupert P. said. “Oh yes, it was me saying it. Not so fun now, is it?”

  I pulled my arm, but it was like it was trapped in an iron cuff. “Is your kidnapping of me just a deep-seated manifestation of your daddy issues?”

  I froze, my arm going limp in his grip. “What?”

  “Your bracelet.” He turned up his nose like he’d just smelled something bad. “It says ‘Daddy.’ ”

  I looked down at my arm, his fingers digging into my wrist, my bracelet peeking through between them. He must’ve been able to see in the crack between the blindfold and his nose.

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Does he spoil you rotten?”

  I tried wrenching my hand free again.

  “Is he the shoulder you cry on whenever people surely make fun of you for being a weirdo?”

  “Don’t talk about my father.”

  “I hope I’m not out of line when I tell you that wearing a ‘Daddy’ bracelet is absolutely the creepiest kind of jewelry a girl could wear,” Rupert P. said. “You must get loads of dates.”

  “It’s something to remember him by.”

  I shouldn’t have said it. I knew I shouldn’t have said it when Rupert P. turned his face up, looking directly at me, even with the blindfold on, and smiled. “So he’s dead, then.”

  I didn’t answer. I guess that was confirmation enough for him.

  “Let me guess,” Rupert P. said. “The Ruperts have personally touched your life in a very trying time, yeah? Has Rupert K. taken over the role of the most important man in your life now? That’s rather disturbing? Call it armchair psychology if you must, but I am in an armchair and in the presence of a psycho. I think that means I have some authority on the matter. No, you’re not spoiled rotten. You’re just a rotten girl.”

  I yanked my hand with enough force that I stumbled back. My arm finally came free of his hold, but his fingers still clutched my bracelet. I landed on the floor with a pathetic thud just as the elastic broke. The white beads that spelled out “Daddy” spurted onto the ground, bouncing all over the carpet and rolling away from me.

  “Your daddy would be so proud.”

  I want to tell you that his words didn’t affect me at all, that he was just saying mean things because he was pressed about being tied up, obviously. But that wouldn’t be very honest of me. I wiped my cheeks as soon as I felt them become wet.

  I got on my hands and knees and crawled, collecting all the beads I could find, and the string, even though it was broken. And then I crawled toward Rupert P. and grabbed the knot again, blinking back my tears so I could better focus on the task of untying him. You’re probably wondering how I could be nice to him after the things he’d just said. But this wasn’t just about being nice. At that point I just wanted to set Rupert P. free so that I wouldn’t hav
e to hear him talk anymore.

  The knot was coming loose when I heard the door open behind me. I’d hardly turned around to see who it was before Apple was on top of me.

  “What were you just doing?” she said.

  “Get off me!” I said.

  “Were you about to molest my Rupie?!”

  “Crisis, Apple, get a grip!” I said. “Not even if you paid me.”

  “She was about to cut him loose,” Isabel said. Her arms were loaded up with things—mostly clothes—like she’d just looted someplace. I guess she had.

  “Did you manage to leave anything in the room?” I asked. My voice sounded fine, and I hoped they couldn’t tell I’d been crying.

  “Don’t change the subject,” Isabel said. “Erin’s gonna wanna hear about this.”

  Apple stood up, helping me up too. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just when I saw you crouching in front of his lap like that … Let’s just agree that I’m the only one who is ever allowed that close to his lap, okay? And let’s also agree never to do something so rash like letting Rupert P. go.”

  “Fuck my life,” Rupert P. said in one long exhale.

  “Look what I got,” Apple said. She pulled up her flowy knee-length skirt and revealed a pair of bright orange tighty-whities worn over her tights, the name “Rupert Pierpont” written across the waistband. “Shh,” she said, mouthing the words. “Don’t tell him.”

  “Where’s Erin?” I said.

  “She’s still up there.”

  “Better go see what she’s really up to,” Rupert P. said.

  I left the room and took the elevator to the sixteenth floor.

  I stood before Room 1620 expecting someone from The Ruperts’ team to swing open the door—a manager, maybe, or a PR person. Someone to catch me snooping and say something terrifying like, “Hey! You there!” But nothing happened when I knocked. Nothing happened the next three times I did it either. “Erin,” I called. “It’s me.”

  I almost turned back, thinking Erin must’ve already left and I’d missed her somehow, but then her muffled voice came through the door. “ ‘Me’ who?”

  “Your Bestest Bestie?”

  “How do I know it’s really you?”

  I rolled my eyes, pointless since she couldn’t see me. After all the shit with Rupert P. earlier I was really not in the mood. “Who else knows that you like to take your Rupert X. cutout and p—”

  The door swung open. “You promised to never mention that again,” she said. “And anyway, I got rid of that thing.”

  “You did?”

  She stepped aside to make room for me. “You’re not going to believe this place.”

  She did not lie. I could not believe the place, and everything Rupert P. had said about my dad and about Erin being shady totally flew out of my head and was replaced by the awesomeness of the hotel room. The suite was enormous, with floor-to-ceiling glass walls that opened up to a terrace. The light must’ve been incredible in the morning, but I could only guess at that because it was dark out by now. There were beanbag chairs, and a taxidermied deer head on the wall with a life jacket around its neck and a pig snout mask on its nose. There was a tiny plaque next to it that explained that it was only a fake deer head and could be removed by calling the front desk if you found it offensive.

  There were two framed pictures on the wall, displayed with spotlights above them like they were museum artwork. One was a large, abrasively yellow poster for some movie called The Stupids, and another was a much smaller print of René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images. I guess The Rondack designers all agreed that those two things should be displayed on the same wall.

  But the weirdest part of the suite was the dining table. It was large enough to seat eight, but it was hard to imagine anyone eating on it, since the whole thing was covered in what appeared to be a scale model of SoHo. Right there in the center was a miniature version of The Rondack itself, one of the taller buildings in the neighborhood. The Rondack within The Rondack. Trippy.

  There were things strewn about, clothes and papers, and I didn’t know if it was the boys who were messy or if it was just the debris that lay in Apple’s and Isabel’s wakes. But I really didn’t care about the small stuff at that point. I didn’t come with the intention of ransacking the boys’ things, but Erin was already walking toward one of the bedrooms, and my feet started following her of their own accord. My heart rate spiked. I realized what was happening.

  I was excited.

  I wanted to ransack Rupert K.’s things and find personal items, things that he’d packed himself and couldn’t live without.

  I was a horrible, horrible person. But I was also a fangirl in my idol’s room. How could I shut my eyes to it all?

  It was just like The Ruperts’ song “Your World.”

  Baby, let me watch you sleep

  Let me come inside, I want to see your room

  I don’t care what your mom thinks

  Show me your world and let our love bloom.

  “Rupert X. and Rupert K. are staying in the same room,” Erin said.

  “Double wedding!”

  Erin laughed. “Double wedding” was a thing we said whenever Rupert X. and Rupert K. did anything that linked them together. We liked to think they were each other’s closest friends in the boy band, and if me and Erin, who were best friends, loved two boys who were also best friends, it meant a double wedding was very possibly in our future. It was a dumb joke, but it made it us laugh, so we continued to tell it.

  “How do you know they’re sharing a room?” I asked. But when we walked into the bedroom the question answered itself. Two beds: one of them had a pair of pillows with the letters RX monogrammed in the corners of the silk pillowcases. Obviously, that was Rupert X.’s bed. Whenever an interviewer asked him about his skin care regimen, he would always bring up the importance of sleeping on silk pillows, which, he liked to point out, was not only good for the skin, but for the hair as well. And Rupert X.’s hair definitely added to his overall allure. His golden pompadour could rival a rooster’s. The other bed just looked like a standard hotel bed, but on the nightstand was an inhaler. Only one of the boys in the band needed an inhaler. My boy.

  Erin walked up to it and tossed it into the air, catching it a second later. “What do you say: perfect souvenir?”

  “I can’t take that,” I said. “Rupert K. needs that.”

  Really, he had no business being a singer with his asthma. It was common knowledge that he escaped backstage at least once every show to take a hit off his inhaler. It was usually after one of the more upbeat numbers, where he was jumping around a lot and losing more breath than he was taking in. But that was just another reason why I loved him: He lived to perform even though it could kill him. How could you not admire his commitment? There were always at least a few fan signs at concerts that said things like, RUPERT K! LET ME GIVE YOU MOUTH TO MOUTH or RUPERT K. I CAN’T BREATHE WHEN I’M AROUND YOU or I’LL TAKE A HIT OFF YOUR INHALER ANY DAY.

  Girls would fight to the death to take a hit off this thing, to be able to hold in their hands an object that Rupert K. regularly put into his mouth. And there it was, on the palm of Erin’s hand. Beckoning me.

  “At least hold it for a minute,” Erin said, handing it to me. “Take a hit if you want, I won’t tell anyone.”

  Don’t worry, I didn’t take a hit off Rupert K.’s inhaler. I wasn’t that sick.

  I only pressed the mouthpiece against my lips.

  Erin had already wandered off to Rupert X.’s side of the room, and I was grateful that she allowed me this one moment to have this middleman—a thing that both Rupert K.’s lips and mine had touched. In a way—if you squinted—it was like we’d just kissed.

  Obviously, I’ve thought about what it would be like to kiss Rupert Kirke. Okay, yes, it’s a little embarrassing to admit, but every Rupert K. fangirl fantasizes about the same thing, and I’m certainly not above it all. I actually have a whole little scenario of how it would go d
own. We’d be in this dangerous situation, or maybe just an adventurous one—I haven’t decided yet—but then when we were finally alone and we’d had a moment to catch our breaths, he’d look at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. He’d put the palm of his hand on my cheek and gently caress it with his thumb. His own cheeks would turn super red, the way they do when he’s shy or out of breath, only this time he’d be shy and out of breath for the best reason. He’d lean in really slowly and I’d know that he wanted to kiss me but he’d make me wait for it a little bit. He’d fish for the kiss (because fishing for the kiss is always the most adorably romantic way to go, natch), and then finally his lips would be on mine. They’d be soft. They’d be perfect.

  That’s what I imagine a perfect kiss would be. I haven’t had a perfect kiss yet. (You need to have at least actually been kissed to have a perfect kiss.)

  “Are you done making out with his inhaler?”

  I quickly put the inhaler down, but Erin wasn’t even looking at me. Her back was to me as she sat on the edge of Rupert X.’s bed, looking through something I couldn’t see.

  “I wasn’t making out with it.”

  “Right.”

  I walked around Rupert K.’s bed before sitting on it. When I did, I did it as carefully as possible, not wanting to put too much weight on it and disturb it somehow. But then I thought, screw it, and just full-on lay down and stretched out. It wasn’t warm like I’d hoped, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still good.

  Holy shit, I was lying on Rupert K.’s bed.

  Yes, on the one hand we’d kidnapped someone, which was bad, I know, but on the other hand, it had facilitated the fact that I was now lying where Rupert K. slept, which was oh so swoon. And the swoon, at least at that very moment, totally outweighed the bad.

  I was in Rupert K.’s bed.

  I was in Rupert K.’s bed.