Carrie Underwood, take the wheel—I was not okay.
I shut my eyes and Rupert K. was lying beside me, looking at me through his lashes, lazy and long, his hair bed-heady, sticking up in all the right places. “My love,” he said. “You’re in my bed.”
“I know!” I squealed.
“What?” Erin said.
“Huh?” It was probably a good thing Erin snapped me out of my reverie before it got too NSFW. “I can’t believe I’m in here. How are you not more excited about this?”
I watched Erin’s back, waiting for her to answer, but her shoulders only rose and fell in a shrug. A toned-down response regarding all things Ruperts was not exactly the norm for Strepurs, but was becoming exceedingly common for Erin, and continued to confuse the hell out of me.
I realize I haven’t given you the fangirl stats on Erin yet. Might as well do it now.
Stats on Erin:
Favorite member of The Ruperts: Rupert Xavier
Number of times she’s seen The Ruperts in person: 5
Number of times she’s met (this includes getting anything from a selfie to a hug) all/a member of The Ruperts: 0
Erin and I had the same stats, except we liked different Ruperts and I’d only seen them four times (the Today show concert and three other times when Isabel took us stalking and we got glimpses of them as they got on and off their vans outside a couple of TV studios in Manhattan). The one time Erin saw the boys and I wasn’t there was on her trip to Dublin six months ago.
Erin’s parents had just gotten divorced, and as a special divorce treat, they each proposed taking Erin and her twelve-year-old sister, Richie, on a trip. Individually, that is. Her dad wanted to take them on a cruise to the Bahamas, but her mom wanted to take them to Dublin to visit her grandparents. It actually made the divorce messier than it already was, because now her parents were fighting over who got to take the girls where, and they each kept throwing special incentives into the trip to try and play favorites. Erin’s little sister opted for the cruise solely based on the fact that it had a kids’ club on board and she was really desperate to have her first kiss already and was fairly certain that if it was ever going to happen it would be on the high seas while an *NSYNC cover band played under sparkling disco lights.
Erin, to her family’s surprise, chose the Dublin trip. Of course, I knew she chose that destination because The Ruperts were going to have a show there. Erin’s mom brought her new boyfriend along on the mother-daughter bonding trip and was too busy with him to care that all Erin wanted to do was go to the concert. She dropped her off at the arena and told Erin to have a good time.
She was so lucky her parents got divorced. I would give anything to fly to Europe and see the boys in concert.
Erin never even held it over my head that she’d gone to see The Ruperts without me. Actually, she never spoke about the Dublin concert. I always took it as her trying to spare me the jealousy.
“Find anything good over there?” I said.
Erin twisted her head around and held up a maroon Moleskine notebook. “Only Rupert X.’s diary.”
I sat up with a start. “Where did you get that?”
“Bottom of his suitcase.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and waited; I knew she’d read it for me.
Erin cleared her throat. “Dear Diary, Dr. Slalom says I should start this. Says she won’t read it but I should do it for my own sanity. Diaries are lame. She says I should call it a journal. Still lame. Dot dot dot. Fuck this. Good night.”
“Adorable.”
“Dear diary,” Erin continued, “Today I had whole wheat toast and jam.” She looked up. “That’s all he wrote for day two.”
“Riveting stuff.”
“You have no idea. Dear Diary, I hate my life.”
“No,” I gasped.
“No one can possibly understand what it’s like to be in a band where everyone’s name is Rupert. Someone will say, ‘Hey, Rupert!’ and we’ll all turn round. WE’LL ALL FUCKING TURN ROUND.” Erin stopped. “He put that part in all caps,” she explained. Then she continued, “All we do is sing pussy music. The lads are pussies too. Fucking can’t stand them. Yesterday we were stuck in the hotel because of all the girls outside. I had to spend the whole day with L and P. L stuck his entire fist in his mouth and expected me to be impressed. P was his usual little gingerqueer self. Fuck my life. Dot dot dot. I had eggs Benedict for breakfast. Highlight.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You can’t make this shit up. It seems like he takes the journal thing more seriously later,” Erin said. “Listen to this: Every day I look around me and am deeply plagued by the unfairness of life. It is everywhere. All around me. Why is life so unfair to so many undeserving people?”
“Wow,” I said. “Deep.”
“I have everything a person can want in life and yet I find it exceedingly unfair that I can say, with absolute certainty, that I will always be more attractive than whatever girl I am with at any given time.”
“Okay, the deep end just got kinda shallow.”
“I have been with a plethora of girls already. And while they were all very hot, not one of them has surpassed me in beauty. Why was I chosen to be so good-looking? Every time someone sees me with another girl they think, ‘He can do so much better.’ And they are right. I will go through life thinking I can do so much better. Thus, this is the tragedy of my life. Plagued by beauty. Who can I turn to, dear diary? And in parentheses he writes: Consider submitting this to our writers to create new song. ‘Plagued by Beauty’ as title. Secure a writing credit. Then he just drew a bunch of dollar signs and wrote, Boom! Shakespeare, bitch!”
“Yikes,” I said. What else was there to say? “Who knew Rupert X. was so … plagued?”
“By beauty, of all things.” Erin took her phone out of her jacket pocket and skimmed through the pages again, snapping as many pics of them as she could.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because when you catch a fish this big you don’t just throw it back in.”
“Yeah, but what good could possibly come out of information like that? Especially the stuff about him hating the band. That could cause serious backlash for The Ruperts.”
“I think it was Mark Twain who once said, ‘YOLO.’ ”
Reading Rupert X.’s diary was fine, but why take pics unless you meant to do some major damage? And why was Erin so hell-bent on keeping Rupert P.? What Rupert P. said rang in my head again. I didn’t have the answers, not right then, but something about this wasn’t sitting well with me.
“We should probably get going. We aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Ugh, why are you constantly clutching your pearls?” Erin said. “If I ever teach you anything in life it’s that you need to stop being so safe. It’s just a tiny bit of trouble we’re getting ourselves into. The water’s nice. Jump in.”
“The boys could come back any minute, though.”
“So? Wouldn’t be the first time they find girls in their room.”
“Are we going to be those girls, then? Might as well take our clothes off and just lie here waiting for them while we’re at it. Whore the place up a bit.”
Erin shot me a look. “How very slut-shamey of you.”
I was only joking, but she was right. It wasn’t cool of me to say that. And by the way the air around us turned suddenly chilly, I knew even before she’d said anything that I’d said the wrong thing.
My phone buzzed.
How’s everything going?
Another text from Mom. I started typing.
Gr8. Erin’s mom let us make the pumpkin pie but we dropped it on the floor so we had 2 do it again. 2nd pie = perfect. We wanted 2 top it off with confectionary sugar but the corner bodega didn’t have any so we bought something called Inca Kola instead. Can’t wait 2 try it.
“If you want to go so badly, then leave,” Erin said, interrupting my typing. “There’s still a few things I want to check out.”
I hit SEND.
I was certain by then. Something was definitely up with Erin.
When I walked back into our room Rupert P. was looking at me.
He was looking at me because the tights/blindfold lay at his feet.
I stared into the abyss and the abyss stared back. With a smile on its face.
Rupert P.’s face was busted all on its own, but when he smiled he was an assault to my retinas. I’m sorry, I know I should stop being so mean about Rupert P.’s looks, something I know he can’t help (though he hasn’t really tried either, has he?). Actually, no, you know what? I’m not sorry. Erin says girls apologize too much. We say “I’m sorry” almost as much as we say “Hello.” And you have to believe me—Rupert P. really was so. Ugly. I can’t even describe it. He looked like an ostrich.
“Who took his blindfold off?”
Isabel was in the corner of the room, on her phone, natch, while Apple was in another corner, on her phone too, but looking way more guilty.
“I recognize your voice,” Rupert P. said. “Have a nice chat with your bestie, did you?”
I reached for my bracelet but then remembered what he’d done to it. I marched over to where Isabel stood. “He’s seen our faces now. How the hell could you let this happen? You were the one who kept reiterating the importance of the blindfold! He couldn’t make us, remember?”
“Yeah, well, Golden Delicious over there just had to look into his eyes to assure him that everything would be hunky-fucking-dory. By the time I realized what she was doing the blindfold was off and Rupert P. was looking me in the face. Fugmonster’s got that Medusa stare. I’m still spooked, man.”
“Apple!”
“Okay, okay, I know you’re mad,” Apple said. She was next to us suddenly, a meddlesome apparition. “But I think I’m getting to him. Showing him some kindness may be just what he needs right now if we want him on our side.”
“Bull to the shit,” Isabel said. “She just wanted selfies.”
This could not be happening. This wasn’t an actual conversation we were having. I snatched Apple’s phone out of her hands, ignoring her cry of protest, and clicked on the gallery icon. I just wanted to be proved wrong. There could not be pictures of Apple posing with our kidnappee.
There were a dozen pictures of Apple posing with our kidnappee.
She was sitting in his lap in all the pictures, sometimes throwing her head back so her auburn hair cascaded over her shoulders, other times bowing her head toward him, trying to manipulate an intimate scene. Pic after pic, Rupert P. looked utterly unamused. Actually, in the first few pictures he looked enraged and even panicked, but by the time I got to the final few he was just dejected, rolling his eyes in some. And in all of the pictures, Apple had her shirt off.
“Apple, what is wrong with you?”
“Everything,” Isabel chimed in.
Unbelievably, just by the way her face fell, I could tell that Apple was expecting me to congratulate her on how good she looked in the pictures. “I did it … for science,” she said.
“Why is your shirt off in all of these?”
“Wardrobe malfunction.” She took the phone from me.
“Delete them!” I said. “Delete them immediately!”
“No way. I wasn’t going to post any of them anyway.”
“Sure you weren’t. Just like you didn’t post that Vine of you gyrating against that Rupert P. life-size pillow, despite all common sense and better judgment.”
“That pillow and me looked really good together!”
“If you Instagram any of those I will kill you,” I said. “I will peel you, I will slice you, and I will bake you in a pie, Apple. That is not hyperbole!”
“How dare you talk to me like that?” Apple said. “You’re taking your frustrations out on me because you know you can’t talk to your dear Erin like that. And Isabel is too scary to talk to like that. But just because I’m the normal one in this group doesn’t mean everyone gets to walk all over me!”
“You’re the normal one? You’ve been trying to sexually molest Rupert P. since you dragged him in here by the ankle!”
“Semantics!” Apple said. “I love that boy! Look at how precious he is!”
I looked over at Rupert P. He was drooling.
“How can you deny all the sexual tension between us!” Apple said. “This might be the greatest day of my life and you’re ruining it.”
“The greatest day of your life involves a guy tied to a chair?”
“You’re purposefully choosing to focus on the negative!”
“Isabel, she’s acting schizo,” I said. “Back me up!”
But Isabel didn’t say anything. She was too busy trying not to drop the two phones in her hands. Rupert P.’s phone didn’t stop vibrating. “He keeps getting messages wanting to know where he is,” Isabel said.
“They want to know where I am because the television special is starting soon,” Rupert P. said from his chair. “What time is it?”
“The time is 7:53!” said Isabel’s watch.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Rupert P. muttered.
“Hey, Isabel,” I said. “Did you know that when Rupert L. looks at a watch face his eyes cross?”
She really did not find that one funny. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time for a Rupert L. watch joke.
“Listen to this.” Isabel clicked on one of his voice mails and put it on speaker.
“Where are you?!” A man’s voice, gruff and agitated. I could tell by their expressions that neither Apple nor Isabel knew who he was either. Maybe he was The Ruperts’ manager, Larry Lee. We’d never heard his voice before, but we’d seen his picture tons. He was balding and overweight and looked like someone who always sounded gruff and agitated. “There are screaming girls waiting, do you hear me?!”
As soon as that message ended Isabel clicked another.
“Twenty bloody minutes to show!” The same man. I tried to picture him, and he was pink all over with steam comically coming out of his ears. “You’re not at the hotel, you’re not here. Michelle doesn’t know where you are and neither does Griffin. Yes—we resorted to asking Griffin. He’s not much of a secret when the shit hits the fan like this. A secret we’ve been keeping for you, and this is how you repay us, you little shit!”
That message finished, and then a new voice came on. “Hullo, Rupert.” I knew that voice. I would recognize it anywhere. “It’s me, Rupert … Rupert K…. obviously. Listen, mate, where are you? The lads are going a bit mad. I’m trying to sort them out but they won’t listen. This is a big show, you know that. I’ll talk to them, though. We won’t do anything until you get here. Just call me back, alright? Right.”
End of messages.
Isabel put her phone in her pocket and focused solely on Rupert P.’s. “Let’s answer all of them at once.”
I wanted to know what she was going to do. No, not what she was going to do—what she had up her sleeve. Because that was how Isabel operated. She didn’t merely do things; she schemed. But I was also afraid to ask.
“There,” Isabel said. “How did people live without Twitter?”
I didn’t have to look at my phone to know that Isabel had just done something very bad. Her devilish smile told me that all on its own. I checked my Twitter feed. A new tweet from our very own Rupert P.
Apple got to it first. “Crisis!” she said. “Crisis!”
I looked down at my phone’s screen. “You didn’t,” I said, incredulous.
“I did,” Isabel said.
“What are you all going on about?” Rupert P. said.
“Baby, you just quit The Ruperts!” Apple said.
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“Just as I predicted you would on my website an hour ago,” Isabel said. She sighed. “Do you know how much traffic this will drive in? I can’t with how good I am.”
“I didn’t quit the band!”
“But you just said so, right here on Twitter.”
Isabel set his phone down on his lap, faceup so that he could read the tweet. Just two words.
I quit.
Cryptic enough to make his phone go silent for an instant, and then for it to light up again incessantly. It buzzed on his thigh until it slid off and then skidded on the carpeted floor. The phone was the only thing moving in the room until Isabel finally did what I never thought she’d ever do to a phone. She turned it off.
“Why would you do that?!” Rupert P. yelled. “I thought you girls were supposed to be fans!”
“Quite frankly!” Apple said. “He can’t quit the band! If he’s not in the band … do I even like him anymore?”
“You should be thanking me,” Isabel said to Rupert.
“Thanking you?! Are you mental?! You’re destroying my life!”
“Actually, I just got you some really good publicity. The whole world is going to tune in tonight to see if it’s true. The band will be in every news story tomorrow morning.”
“You should really get into public relations,” I told her.
She shrugged, all faux modest. “I see no lies in that statement.”
“Do you think anyone will believe this?!” Rupert P. shrieked. His voice got higher the angrier he got, like he was experiencing puberty all over again. “Tomorrow morning I’ll tell the whole world you did this!”
“You’ll tell the world a band of teenage girls kidnapped you and forced you to post that you quit on Twitter? I think the real concern here is, will anyone believe you?” Isabel said.
The door flew open and Erin blazed in, breathless. “Whose brilliant idea was it for him to quit the band?” she said, her phone in her hand and a grin on her face. Though the grin was short-lived, disappearing as soon as she saw Rupert P. She didn’t say anything, and neither did we. We only watched her, waiting to see what her reaction would be. For his part, Rupert P.’s eyes narrowed, and there was something behind his gaze. A kernel of recognition. Erin looked scared, like she was dreading something. I couldn’t make out what, though. I didn’t have all the information yet.
Erin sped right past him and went into the bedroom. We all followed her like she pulled on invisible leashes and we were helpless to take off the collars. Apple headed for the bathroom, though. “Where are you going?” Erin hissed.
Kill the Boy Band Page 9