Kill the Boy Band

by Goldy Moldavsky

  “Are you alright?”

  No. No, I was definitely not alright. I was hugging Rupert K. of The Ruperts. Rupert K. of The Ruperts had just saved my life. Not that it was in any real danger to begin with. But I nodded anyway.

  “You won’t off yourself, then?”

  I shook my head. Words. They would’ve been handy right then. Somehow I mustered one up. “No.”

  “You sure? You’re a sad-looking girl alone on a roof …” His voice was London butter. Is that a thing? Let’s say it was Marmite, but delicious. He helped me up and I let him.

  What was he even doing here? Wasn’t he supposed to be at the Thanksgiving spectacular? I guess it had probably ended by now. It was only supposed to be an hour after all. And enough time had passed for him to have come back to the hotel. Plus, I knew Rupert K. well enough to know that he always skipped an after-party.

  But why was I trying to figure out why he was here? He just was, and I wasn’t going to ask any questions.

  “I just needed to think,” I said.

  Unbelievably, he kept looking at me. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me, actually. There was something quizzical behind his eyes, like he thought I might still jump. I didn’t dare move an inch. I didn’t want to do anything that would make him look away.

  “What’s troubling you?” he asked. At this point I had lost all manner of speech. I could’ve been drooling for all I knew. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. I don’t usually get to talk to people my age … new people my age. So when I do I can pry a bit. Did you want to be alone?”

  “I HAVE NEVER WANTED TO BE LESS ALONE.”

  I may have said that a little too loudly. To defuse the awkwardness I cleared my throat. Totally saved it.

  “We haven’t been properly introduced,” he said. “I’m Rupert Kirke.”

  Lulz. Duh.

  “I’m Sloane,” I said. “Sloane Peterson.”

  “So, Sloane. Why are you on the roof of The Rondack all by yourself tonight?”

  “I just needed to clear my head because … well, my best friend sort of betrayed me, I guess? She did something behind my back and now I don’t know if I can trust her again.”

  “Wow. That’s exactly the same reason I came up here.”

  Soul mates. That was what we were. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” Rupert K. said. “My mate turned his back on me tonight, and it could mess up a lot of things for us. For me.”

  Okay, so he obviously couldn’t know that I’d wallpapered my bedroom with his face and I was currently wearing a total of three pieces of clothing that featured his likeness (socks, tank top under my sweater, underwear), but was he not aware that I knew who he was? I was a breathing fifteen-year-old girl—he must’ve known that I knew. Why was he being so open with me? Did he see something in me that made him feel like he could talk to me? Thinking about that made me feel instantly guilty. Rupert K. looked so sad, and I was indirectly (or was that just plain directly?) responsible for it.

  “Maybe you just need to hear your friend out,” I said. “I’m sure if you talk it out you can come to an understanding.” Rupert P. could explain the whole thing once we let him free.

  “What about you? Do you think you can talk it out with your friend?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But you shouldn’t be sad. Down there? Those girls are screaming for you.”

  He smiled. “So you know who I am.”

  I nodded, my heart beating fast.

  “You’re not screaming for me.”

  Oh, I was. Internally I was shrieking. “Screaming wouldn’t do you any good right now.”

  He laughed and leaned over the edge of the wall, looking down at the girls, but they didn’t seem as impressive to him as they had to me. His gaze floated up, admiring the skyline as the buildings got higher uptown. “There are so many bright lights.”

  “Bright Lights, Big City.”

  “Bright lights, big city?” His eyes went wide, a new idea forming behind them. “That’s good. That’s really quite good, actually. Do you think I could use that in a song?”

  “It’s the title of a book,” I said. “And a movie.”

  “Oh. Right, I knew that.”

  “It’s okay, it came out in the eighties—way before we were born, and it’s not very popular, you wouldn’t have heard of it.”

  “No, no, I know it,” he said. “Yeah, now that I think of it. Course.”

  He was lying. He always squinted when he lied. It was strange that we were meeting for the first time and I already knew all his mannerisms cold, yet he knew nothing about me.

  I leaned over the wall too. A sea of Strepurs growing larger, no end in sight. The crowd had gotten so large it spilled over onto the block across the street. I wondered if you removed the building behind them, would there be more of them still, the way you find bugs under rocks?

  “Did you know that if you throw a penny off the Empire State Building you could kill someone?” Rupert K. said.

  It was a myth, but I wasn’t about to correct him.

  “Do you think if I let go of my hat it’ll kill one of the girls down there?”

  “Uh, probably not,” I said.

  “Let’s test it out.”

  He let go of his hat, and a second later the wind whipped it off his head and carried it away. I had to fight every urge in my body not to go after that hat.

  “Those girls are screaming for the idea of me,” Rupert K. said. “They’re screaming for the guy whose face is on their tube of toothpaste at home. You know, we even have an endorsement deal with cat food now? Do you want your cat to eat like a normal cat, or do you want him to eat like a Rupert?”

  I couldn’t help but snort at his funny, infomercial-guy voice while simultaneously thinking very seriously of getting a cat.

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or anything,” he said. “I’m very glad for my success. Sometimes it just gets to be too much. Especially when you’re in it together with three other guys. It’s not as easy as other people think.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you want to know a secret?” He leaned in close. So close that the air next to my cheek felt suddenly warmer. “Sometimes I think about leaving it all.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’ve got big eyes.”

  Non sequiturs were sort of his thing. Some people thought he maybe had undiagnosed ADHD. I was experiencing one of his patented adorable ADHD moments! “I’ve been called bug-eyed.”

  “No, they’re lovely.”

  Was I falling? Had I gone over the edge of the roof after all? I had the distinct sensation that I was falling. But Rupert K. was not leaning out to catch me. Guess I was just imagining it.

  “Uh. You. Also. Have eyes …” I said.

  I was an idiot.

  His phone rang, a mercy killing of my hopeless gibbering. He pinched it out of his back pocket and glanced at the screen. “I’ve got to take this,” he said. “I hope it works out with your friend.”

  “You too.”

  He walked away and disappeared through the door. I was left to reconstruct my brain.

  Eventually I made my way back to the room. I felt like every character in every teen movie who’d ever been with someone for the first time. You know, that morning after scene where they’re walking down a hallway with a knowing smirk, a spring in their step, and badass music playing in the background. Except Rupert K. and I hadn’t actually been together in the strictest sense. And I also couldn’t fully enjoy the moment knowing that I was holding one of his best friends hostage.

  It was time to let Rupert P. go. I was kind of hoping the rest of the girls wouldn’t be there so I wouldn’t have to deal with them and their rationalizations. I just wanted to be done with Rupert P., set him free, back into the wilds from whence he came. But even if my friends were there, I wouldn’t let them change my mind anymore. Finally, all bets were off. I was making my
own decisions from now on.

  I walked down to the eighth floor and opened the stairwell door. It opened right across from our hotel room. Apple was standing in front of the door, facing it.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She spun around, looking like I’d frightened her. “Hi.”

  “So how was the concert?”

  “Short.” She was going to say something more, but both of our attentions were stolen when Erin appeared at the end of the hall, walking toward us. Almost at that exact same moment, the elevator doors opened on our other side and Isabel stepped through them. The four of us met in front of our door, facing one another at an intersection. A weird vibe fell over us. Maybe it was the silence. In all the times we’d been together, we’d never actually been silent. We were always talking about the boys, and when we weren’t talking about them we were screaming for them.

  Now that we were all together, my first instinct was to tell them about meeting Rupert K., but I stopped myself. It wasn’t the right time. Plus, things were definitely still weird between all of us. I knew what we really had to talk about was what was on the other side of that door.

  “What are we going to do with him?” I asked. No one said anything. “Apple, do you still want to keep him? After the things he called you?”

  She shook her head.

  “And Isabel?”

  She shrugged. “Fun’s over now. I’ll do whatever you guys want.” But I knew what she meant was she’d do whatever Erin wanted.

  I looked at Erin. I didn’t feel like talking to her, but it was her turn to make her opinions known. She looked drained, and I thought maybe it was because of our argument earlier. She raised a shoulder. “Whatever,” she said.

  So we opened the door to our room.

  * * *

  There was something wrong.

  I could feel it even before I knew what it was; something about the darkness in the room, the stillness. Rupert P. was still there, but it was too quiet. His head was bent forward, unmoving. I knew the other girls could feel something was wrong too, all except Apple. We all stayed still while she moved forward. She walked up to his chair. “Rupert?” she said.

  Silence.

  “Rupie?”

  The tights weren’t around his mouth anymore. They were wrapped around his neck.

  Erin, Isabel, and I may have been the farthest from him, but I think we all got it before Apple did. But when she did get it—when she lifted his head and saw his eyes and mouth bulged open in a silent scream—she was the only one to say it out loud.

  “OMG,” Apple said. “He’s dead!”

  I know what you’re asking yourself. You’re asking how a group of teenage girls managed to kill the biggest flop in the world’s most popular boy band.

  The truth is, I had no idea.

  Not right then.

  All I knew was what the screams of four hysterical girls reverberating in a very expensive hotel room sounded like. All I could hear was the cacophony of our screeching, and all I could see were arms flailing, tears streaming, hair pulling: the vision of horror. And right in the middle of it—the thing we were avoiding and the source of our hysterics—sat Rupert Pierpont of The Ruperts.

  Dead.

  I don’t mean it like hashtag-dead. I mean, Rupert P. was literally dead.

  I never thought my knees would buckle at the sight of him, but here I was, falling. I sat on the ground as the rest of the girls continued flailing. If you muted them and didn’t stare directly at their faces, it would’ve looked like they were prancing. Seriously, I’d never seen Apple more agile in my life. She was leaping from corner to corner on the balls of her feet, twirling her fingers around strands of her hair. The only way you could tell she was at all distressed was by looking at her features, which kept morphing into twisted, wet shapes. Even Rupert P. looked upset by what was happening.

  Shit.

  My pocket buzzed, knocking me back into reality. I fished my phone out and there was Mom’s latest text.

  How was the dinner, honey?

  I looked up and met Rupert P.’s eyes. He was shocked, outraged, forever.

  My fingers shook, but I still managed to type out a message.

  So yummy.

  Mom responded immediately.

  Did you remember to thank your friend’s parents?

  I scoffed.

  Ofc. I’m not a Neanderthal.

  Apple bumped into/collapsed against a wall, and the sound snapped me back into reality. Or the nightmare that was my reality. Rupert P. kept looking at me. Where was AdBlock when you needed it?

  I put my head between my knees, suddenly feeling light-headed. I took deep breaths. I tried to think. FYI, it is very hard to think in a room full of screaming girls, especially if you’re one of them.

  “Stop screaming.”

  None of them heard me. It wasn’t their fault—I might have whispered it. I made eye contact with Apple, the loudest of all of us. “Apple, stop screaming.” She crouched down beside me, got in my face, and yelled, “I CAN’T!”

  “If we don’t stop screaming people will hear us and send someone!”

  That did it. Our screaming turned into silent heaving as we tried to compose ourselves.

  “How did this happen?” Erin said.

  “Who was in here last?” Isabel said.

  “We’re going to need a polyethylene plastic bin and a few gallons of acid,” Apple said. We stared at her. “I watched Breaking Bad, I know how to get rid of a body!”

  For the first time we had just acknowledged that Rupert P. was no longer a person. He was a body. And all of us realized it at the same moment. Though it was just a small moaning at first, the screaming was gearing up again, deep from all of us.

  “Everybody calm down!”

  They all watched me, but not because of my sudden outburst; because I was taking control of the situation and that’s exactly what they needed. I didn’t know where I had gotten this sudden strength. I’m not sure if I could even classify it as strength. A momentary clarity. Maybe my father’s death had prepared me for a situation like this. Maybe I wasn’t freaking out as much as them because I’d already been touched by death. I knew of it.

  The point is, I couldn’t just back away slowly and hope my footsteps would lead me all the way back home to Brooklyn. I couldn’t just scroll through this. Maybe I was one of those people who handled a crisis with a level head and I didn’t even know it. Whatever it was, I embraced it. “We need to assess the situation,” I said. “Rupert P. is dead.”

  “Well, thank shit you’re here, Nancy Prew,” Isabel said.

  “It’s Nancy Drew and a person is dead, Isabel!” I said. “Because of us.”

  “Are you saying one of us killed him?” Apple asked.

  “Wait, hold up, who said anything about killed?” Isabel said, stepping up to me like a panther ready to pounce. “Nobody killed anybody!”

  “Then how did he die?”

  We all turned to look at the body, a new curiosity. But none of us moved closer to him. “Apple, you check,” I said, breaking the eerie silence.

  “No way, I’m not touching him.”

  “You loved him!”

  “His death kind of ruined him for me.”

  “But how did Rupert P. not ruin Rupert P. for you?” Isabel said.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. I could hear the other girls holding their breath, sucking it in and taking all sound with them. The room was a vacuum; just white noise that buzzed in my ears, louder the closer I got to the body.

  But then I saw it.

  “Oh.” Less of a word, more of a gasp.

  “He’s not dead?” Apple said. “This is all a bad dream?”

  “Yeah, Apple, we’re all having the same bad dream at the exact same time,” Isabel said. “Honestly, the delusion is so strong with you sometimes.”

  “Would both of you shut up?” I said. “I think I know how he died.”

  “What is it?” Isabel said. “The suspense is killin
g Rupert P.”

  “The tights.” The tights that made a great blindfold and even better knots were also an exceptional murder weapon. They were too tight around his neck. Tights that were tight. Whodathunk?

  “He was strangled.”

  The four of us towered over him, our heads almost touching as we looked down at him—really looked—for the first time. He seemed stiff already, even though he couldn’t have been dead more than an hour. And his hair was drained of what little orange brilliance it once had, now that it was set against his sallow pallor.

  I didn’t see my father when he died, so I knew it was the first time any of us had seen a dead body before (I assumed—you never really knew with Isabel). It reminded me of that scene in Stand by Me where the four friends find the body by the train tracks and their lives change forever in a profound yet charmingly coming-of-age way. Did this constitute our own shitty rite of passage? Had we just lost our innocence? Were we women now? Because I didn’t feel anything except for a vague nausea.

  Finding a body and contemplating what it all meant was overrated. It was nothing like the movies.

  “Okay, which one of you dicktips killed him?” Isabel said.

  “A second ago you said nobody killed anybody.”

  “A second ago I didn’t know he was strangled. So who did it? Not me.”

  “Not me!” Apple said.

  “Not me.” Even though it was stupid, I didn’t want to be the last one to say it, stuck with the short straw. I turned to Erin, who hadn’t chimed in with her “Not me” yet. She was still looking down at Rupert P., but so much more differently than the way she’d looked down at him just an hour earlier. Her eyes seemed stunted open, and she was biting down hard. I could see it in the way her jaw muscles were flexed. I imagined her standing over Rupert P. as he sat, helpless. I imagined her pulling the tights taut against his throat until his veins bulged and the saliva in his mouth gurgled. It wasn’t difficult—I’d seen her tie the tights around him twice already. I imagined her pulling hard and not letting go until the capillaries in his eyes burst, the words “kill the boy band” ringing in my ears.

  I imagined my best friend as a murderer.