“I’m taking off his underwear,” Apple said. And here I was in blissful ignorance, having forgotten that she still had that nasty thing on. “He quit the band. I’m not going to go around wearing the underwear of a former member of The Ruperts. Gross.”
She went off and Erin turned to Isabel and me. “Why is his blindfold off?” she asked.
“Why bother whispering?!” Rupert P. shouted. “I can still hear you!”
Erin walked out of the bedroom and the leashes tugged us along. She reached for the tights on the floor, but Isabel grabbed her wrist before she could do anything with them. “Wait. He should see this.”
Apple came to join us just as Isabel turned on the TV and flipped to Channel 4. It was eight o’clock. Time for The Ruperts’ Thanksgiving spectacular.
All there was on-screen was an empty stage. Well, the backup band was there, listlessly playing instruments—the starting chords to “Can I Get a Bite of That Sandwich, Girl?” to be exact—and there were spotlights roaming the stage, as if they too were looking for The Ruperts, to no avail. The only way you knew there was a live studio audience was because there would be an intermittent shout for someone’s favorite boy bander every few seconds. After a moment, two hosts skipped onto center stage, and for all the smiling and laughing and sweating under stage lights, it looked like they were bracing through the pain.
All of us in the room—even Rupert P.—watched with bated breath.
“Well,” said the female host. “Looks like we’re going to start with a video clip first!”
“You never know what’ll happen on a live show, folks!” said the male host.
“Not that anything’s wrong!” the female host said.
“Nothing is wrong at all!” the male host said. Then both of their hands went to their ears, and they nodded, and the male host said, “They’re telling me to cut to the video.”
“That’s what they’re telling me too, Stu.”
“Let’s see what the boys got up to when they paid a visit to Isla Pardon’s house to learn about preparing a turkey!”
“Sounds scrumptious and adorable!” the female host said.
They cut to a video of The Ruperts inside a beautifully sunlit kitchen with famed chef Isla Pardon looking lost in between them. This was obviously a prerecorded bit because there was Rupert P. with his arm around Isla, clueless to the fact that she looked none too pleased about it.
“That was our song ‘Can I Get a Bite of That Sandwich, Girl?’ ” Rupert L. said to the camera. “And speaking of food, let’s see if we might learn how to slaughter a proper American turkey for Thanksgiving!”
Isla giggled, or maybe coughed, and said, “We won’t be slaughtering a turkey—just cooking one, boys.”
“That’s what I meant.” Rupert L. rolled his eyes and laughed.
The boys proceeded to mess around while Isla took the recipe seriously. Rupert X. pinched some salt and threw it over his shoulder while Rupert L. dipped his finger into a bowl of powdered red stuff and then tasted it, grimacing. “I’ll have the breast, please!” Rupert P. said.
“Turkey breast,” Rupert K. said quickly. “He meant turkey breast.”
“OMG, I don’t think the boys have ever talked about breasts this much,” Apple said.
“Twitter is probably exploding right now,” I said.
Rupert L. thought it was the most original thing in the world to make the turkey look like it was dancing around; Rupert X. drank directly from the bottle of cooking wine; and Rupert K. tried to get Rupert P.’s hands out of the mixing bowl. They ended the segment with a turkey stuffing food fight.
“There’s no way they’re going on with the show after this, not without me,” Rupert P. said.
“No one is checking for you,” Isabel said.
“They’re all backstage right now, trying to find where I am. They’re going to cancel it. They are going to come out and apologize. You heard what Rupert said. He talked to the lads. They’re not doing anything without me.”
They cut back to the studio again, the camera focused on the stage. The backup band was still out, the girls were still screaming.
“Are The Ruperts really going to perform without Rupert P.?” I asked.
“Prayer circle,” Erin said.
The guitarists played the opening riffs of “Love U-FO,” and suddenly Rupert K.’s voice broke through the silence. “I think our love might be extraterrestrial,” he sang. The three boys came out and started jumping around, hyping the crowd and messing up their synchronized dance moves, as usual. And all we could do was watch, shocked, confused … amazed.
Isabel walked up to the TV, slack-jawed. “I can’t believe it,” she said.
I couldn’t believe it either.
Apple chewed her hair.
And Erin smirked. “Would you look at that,” she said. “It’s amazing how much better this song sounds without a fucking juggling break in the middle of it.”
I kept watching the screen. The Ruperts were performing flawlessly, maybe better than ever. It was almost as if they’d always been a three-man band. The point is that what was happening on TV was because of us. In a twisted way, we’d made history. The need to let Rupert P. go seemed almost beside the point now. I mean, yeah, it was still criminal, but something way bigger was happening. We’d changed the band.
We’d bettered it.
“What a time to be alive,” Erin said.
“I told you no one was checking for you!” Isabel said, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
I looked at Rupert P. His face was glued to the TV too, and he looked more shocked than any of us. Even he had seemed to forget about my plan to set him free.
“This is giving me life right now,” Isabel said. “This is giving me so much life I might be immortal.”
She was thinking of what must’ve been happening online. Her phone was already in front of her face, her chipped navy fingernails already dancing over the screen.
Sometimes I wondered if Isabel was all bandwidth and hot spots. The Internet, and the shenanigans that transpired within it, made her spark to life like nothing else. Her heart was her site, pulsing with life every time the comments section exploded after a good scoop. She came alive with the chaos. I think she loved it more than she loved the band itself.
This was a next-level scandal, and to Isabel, scandal was the only thing that pulled back the curtain and showed us who our idols truly were. Without the scandal we only saw something manufactured, created by music execs and publicists. For the first time, I kind of got it, and suddenly, I couldn’t wait to see the fallout. How would The Ruperts deal with this shake-up in the coming days? It felt like Pop Rocks. Like I’d just emptied a whole bag of them into my mouth and they were just starting to burst. Delicious.
The song ended and the hosts came back onto the stage and asked the boys some questions.
We waited for them to ask about Rupert P., to address the redheaded elephant in the room. Would they say that Rupert P. was sick and couldn’t perform? That his tweet was fake; that he’d been hacked?
“We’re noticing that one of the members of The Ruperts is missing,” the male interviewer said. “Rupert Pierpont is no longer with us?” There was a slight uptick in his voice at the end of the sentence that turned it into a super-bleak-sounding question.
“Rupert Pierpont quit,” Rupert X. announced.
Gasps, from the studio audience and from us.
“We’re absolutely gutted,” Rupert L. said.
“But we wish him all the best,” Rupert X. said.
I waited for my Rupert to say something, but he stayed silent.
And that was it. The hosts smiled, a new song started up, and the new Ruperts were born.
Rupert P. had been wiped out. It was as if he’d never even been in the band to begin with.
And no one understood that better than Rupert P. himself.
“You’re all going to pay for this!” he yelled. He’d gone batty with rage, and I guess
the anger gave him some adrenaline or super strength or something, because suddenly his right arm slipped out of its restraint. And once that one was free he could get his left arm out too.
None of us moved. We probably should’ve tried to stop him, but I think we were all scared of what he’d do in his demented state. His hands were free now. Anything was possible.
He seemed shocked that we didn’t move to tie him again, but he only froze for a moment, and then he started on the tights around his ankles.
“You’re all mental!” he said, his fingernails picking at the knots. “I never understood fans, you know? The worship—that I understood, but the way you all imagine yourselves with us. You call us your boyfriends. It’s so dumb. You think any one of us would get with you?” He stopped and looked up at Isabel. “I’m not being funny, love, but you look and act like a bloody barbarian. There is not a single graceful or feminine thing about you. You think any of The Ruperts would look twice at you if they saw you in this hotel? You look like you work for housekeeping. The only time we’d ever look your way would be to throw our dirty sheets at you.”
Isabel looked angry. Well, she always looked angry, but now her fists were clenched balls at her sides, stiff as frostbite, and her lips were a tight line. But underneath all of that I saw something on her face that I’d never seen before.
Hurt.
“And you!” Rupert P. said. “Your name can’t actually be Apple. You don’t mean to tell me that your parents named you after the fruit whose shape you most resemble. You’re a beached whale! You realize that the only way you were able to get anywhere close to me is because you’re twice my size and I didn’t stand a chance, right? When you charged at me it was like you eclipsed the world. Pretty sure I saw my life flash before my eyes.” He laughed. “That’s exactly what it was. Even if I were straight I’d never love you! No one could. Look at yourself! You really are rotten, Apple. Though I’m sure that’s not the first time you’ve heard that one.”
Tears sprung to Apple’s eyes with shocking force. Well, not that shocking, I guess. I knew Rupert P. was an asshole, but seeing it up close was a visceral experience. It was the kind of 3-D that makes you dizzy and induces vomiting. That was Rupert Pierpont to a T. Apple couldn’t look at him, or any of us for that matter. She took out her phone and gave it all of her attention instead.
“And you!” He turned to Erin, and I really wanted to hear this because, yes, Erin could be a bitch depending on if you misinterpreted her confidence, but on the outside, Erin was beautiful. He could say all he wanted about her personality, but he couldn’t touch her looks. And as Rupert P. took her in, it was like he was doing so for the first time. He seemed stumped for an insult, quiet and contemplative. And then he said, “I know you.”
Erin’s eyes went slightly bigger than usual, and Rupert P.’s lips curled from a grimace into a smile. “Bloody hell, now this all makes sense. You’re the Dublin girl.”
Dublin girl? “What does he mean?”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Erin raced to him and picked up the pink tights on the ground, so quick that Rupert P. didn’t even have time to try and snatch her. But I was quicker. I pulled her hand away before she could gag him. This time I didn’t turn to her for answers, though. I turned to Rupert P.
“How do you know who she is?”
“He’s delusional and butthurt,” Erin said. “Don’t listen to him.”
“You were at the Dublin show,” I said.
“She was more than just at the Dublin show,” Rupert P. said. “She was the Dublin show.”
“You went backstage?” Isabel asked.
“You met the boys?” Apple said, looking up from her phone.
“No wonder you did this,” Rupert P. said. “Don’t tell me this is your way of getting back at us.” For some reason he looked at me then. And he laughed. “What did I tell you? Can’t trust your own best friend.”
“What is he talking about, Erin?”
“I’m done talking,” Rupert P. said. “You girls will destroy yourselves from the inside. Don’t need me to muck it up for you.”
“Apple, hold him down,” Erin said.
“Oi!” Rupert P. said. But Apple was already on him, and just as he’d said, she was clearly stronger than him. She held his arms behind the chair. Erin used the same pair of hot-pink tights she’d used the first time. She wrapped them twice around his mouth and then used the ends to tie his hands behind his back. Every time he tried to move his arms the tights got tighter around his mouth. Who knew Erin was such a mastermind at tying people up?
Who knew anything about Erin anymore?
I looked at her, but she averted her eyes.
“Well, I’m going to the concert,” Apple said. Her tears had already fallen, and apparently were long since forgotten.
“But you don’t have tickets,” Isabel said.
“Actually, I do.” She held up her phone. “Consuela has been standing outside of NBC this whole time. She just texted that a Rupert P. fan was so upset by his absence that she walked out. Consuela snagged her ticket.” Apple left the room.
“Well, this was anticlimactic,” Isabel said. “The Internet’s blowing up right now, and I need to be on top of it.” She left the room too.
Erin looked at me but neither of us said anything, a silence so icy I shivered. Even Rupert P. looked interested in it, his eyes darting back and forth between us, riveted like a fan at Wimbledon. But we weren’t about to indulge him. Or at least Erin wasn’t. She walked out of the room.
My plan to set Rupert P. free would have to wait. Right now I needed to follow Erin.
Story of my life.
But this time I followed Erin with the intention of getting some answers. She jammed her finger into the elevator button, still not saying anything, not even looking at me. After a few seconds of waiting she huffed and pushed through the stairwell door. I followed her. I followed her down eight flights. For a moment I was stupid enough to think she was trying to get me to come with her someplace private, but by the time we got to the lobby she was taking so many sharp turns around corners that it hit me that she was actually trying to lose me.
“Wait up!” I said as I followed her into the Valmont room.
I didn’t know what the Valmont room was for, but it was a huge space with rows of chairs divided in the middle to form an aisle. Maybe they held weddings there, or seminars. Right now it was empty except for me and Erin.
She finally stopped, a lone rose standing tall among a field of ugly brown chairs. She spun on her heel to face me. “Yes?”
As if I was a pesky gnat she couldn’t get rid of. As if I wasn’t the one friend she told all her secrets to. “What the hell was all that about?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You were the Dublin show?” I said, echoing Rupert P.’s words. “What was he talking about? How does he know you?”
“He must’ve seen me at the concert.” Picking at her cuticles, wanting to change the subject. But I wouldn’t.
“Stop lying to me, Erin. At first I thought it was only a little weird that we were taking a boy bander hostage, but now I feel like you’re writing a story and I’m just playing a part in it, because all I got from everything that went down in there is that (a) Rupert P. is an unmitigated asshole and (b) his being in our room right now is maybe not the fluke that I thought it was. What the hell is going on?”
She took a deep breath, and I could see from the look on her face—cheeks filled with color, lips twisted, resigned—that she would tell me something she’d never told me before. That she would be honest with me. Maybe for the first time.
“Rupert P. being in our room is a fluke,” Erin said. “How could I have known what Apple would get up to when caught alone in a hallway with the love of her life and an ounce of determination?”
I took this in, but it sounded like truth by omission. It sounded like there was more. “What did you know?”
She t
ook a deep breath and it all came out. “I knew that Griffin had a room on the eighth floor, and that Rupert P. would probably be spending most of his time there.”
“And why did you know that? Or want to?” I asked. “It wasn’t because you thought that would get us closer to the boys.”
“No,” she said. “I wanted to know where Griffin and Rupert P. would be so that I could catch them together off guard. I was hoping to maybe get a picture. Citizen pap the hell out of them. The plan was always to blackmail Rupert P. Everything that happened with Apple—Rupert P. ending up in our room—that was all serendipity. It expedited things. I never dreamed the blackmail would go this far. Or that it would work so well.”
“But why would you want to blackmail him?”
“To make a dent in the group. Which would be the start of my plan.”
I was afraid to ask, because I was afraid of what the answer would be. But I needed to. “What is your plan?”
“To kill the boy band.”
Oh.
Like it was the weather.
Sunny out and 30 percent chance of kill the boy band???
“Figuratively speaking,” Erin added.
Because that made it so much better. “Do you mean The Ruperts specifically, or boy bands as a concept?”
“Both, actually.”
“Oh,” I said. “What the fuck?”
“Calm down,” Erin said. “I just want to destroy them till they’re an unrecognizable shell of their former selves.”
“Erin, what the fuck?” I said it again. And again. I think I may have repeated it a dozen times, because Erin came to sit next to me (I must’ve also taken a seat at some point) and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Are you okay?” she whispered. “Do you need some time?”
“Do I need time? I need more than time, Erin! I need an explanation. Do you realize how crazy you sound right now? Oh no, you’ve had a psychotic break, haven’t you? This is your Black Swan moment. It’s okay, it can happen to anyone. I need to get you help.”
Kill the Boy Band Page 10
