Kill the Boy Band

by Goldy Moldavsky

  I had one of these before, shortly after my dad died, when life felt impossibly heavy and my thoughts spiraled so far out of control that I was basically catatonic with fear. It was the kind of fear that pulled all the breath out of you with one continuing scream. The kind the made the walls move in, the kind that shut you up and shut the world out. The kind that sends you to therapy.

  I had to pull myself together, rein in my reeling mind, before things got really bad.

  I wanted to go home. When we’d all made the decision to come to the hotel I was secretly happy I’d get to skip Thanksgiving this year. I couldn’t handle another Thanksgiving like the one I’d had last year. Just a few months after my father’s death, me and my mom in our cramped apartment, eating silently under the fluorescent kitchen light. It was so pathetic and my mom and I knew it but pretended we didn’t. Trying to make small talk over the cold gravy had given me anxiety.

  But I would still choose a Thanksgiving like that one over the one I was currently experiencing.

  I took out my phone and began typing a message.

  Hi mom.

  I held the phone in front of my face, waiting for her reply, turning the screen on again every time it dimmed to black.

  Hi honey. Thanks for checking in. Busy over here. So glad you’re having fun.

  But I wasn’t having fun. I wanted to tell her that, but my finger only hovered over the screen. Finally, I texted back.

  Yeah. Lots of pillow fights.

  I kept turning the screen back on, but after a while I realized she wasn’t going to be texting back. Probably had to deal with a patient who had a wishbone stuck in his throat or something.

  It was becoming increasingly clear to me that one of my best friends had murdered our least favorite member of our most favorite boy band, and any way you spin that it’s simply unforgivable. Maybe I chickened out when we should’ve called the police, but I wasn’t just going to barricade myself in this hotel room with a murderer.

  So I made up my mind. This time I was going to stick to my guns.

  I was going to get the fuck out of Dodge.

  Damnit, I was starting to sound like Annie Oakley.

  I opened the door, walked right through it, and didn’t stop until I was facing my friends/a possible murderer.

  “I am so done,” I said.

  “Oh, an encore performance,” Isabel said. “Good. I had so much fun at the matinee.”

  “Eat a dick, Isabel!” I pointed my finger at her. Actually, it was more like my entire arm. It stretched out before me like a plank, the point of my index finger stopping just inches from Isabel’s face. “I can’t stand this anymore. Am I the only sane person here? Because none of you seem to understand what we just did. We moved a dead body! We could still very well go to jail if all this goes sideways! We incriminated our favorite people in the whole world. They’re going to get into a lot of trouble! They’re ruined. They’re over! Rupert Kirke didn’t deserve that. He didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “They’re all the same,” Erin said.

  “You eat a dick too, Erin!” I yelled. “I am so done. I cannot. I have lost the ability to can. I am consciously fucking uncoupling myself from this situation. You guys want to wreak havoc on our world as we know it? Fine! Count me out! I’m not going to hang around with one of you—one of you who likely murdered Rupert P. Yes, he was a ginger and he was a flop but he didn’t deserve to die!”

  “She’s right,” Apple said. “I do kind of feel bad over what we just did to the boys. Maybe we should send them an Edible Arrangement?”

  “Ugh!” My face was damp. I didn’t know if it was sweat or snot or tears, but I didn’t care. I wiped my face and pushed my hair back. I know I looked crazy, with half my bangs probably sticking up, my cola-stained sweater, my tear-streaked face. I didn’t need a mirror—their expressions were enough to let me know that my freak-out was concerning them. Good.

  “This is crazy,” I said. “You’re all crazy.” I kept pointing. Pointing seemed like a very good idea at the time. “You’re crazy! And you’re crazy! And you’re crazy!” In my mind I heard Oprah’s voice. “You get a car! And you get a car!” My mom watched that episode on repeat so many times, weirdly happy and envious. It wasn’t healthy.

  Shit, what the hell was I even talking about?

  “I’m leaving this hotel room and I am not stopping until I find a police officer, and then I’m telling them everything,” I said. “So long. Farewell. Auf Wiederfuckingsehen good night.”

  I turned around, swung open the door, and found Michelle Hornsbury standing on the other side of it.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Michelle Hornsbury walked past me into the room and I was powerless to stop her. It was the shock more than anything that paralyzed me, and I saw that it paralyzed everyone else too.

  “Michelle, hi,” Erin said.

  “Ethel, hello.”

  “Erin,” Erin said.

  “Erin, yes, of course, forgive me, I’m afraid I’m not in the right headspace at the moment, as you might say. It’s been a troubling couple of hours on my end. Rupert quitting the band and all.”

  She hadn’t stopped moving since she came in. She opened some doors, bent down to look under the desk, rounded the couch. She didn’t miss a corner. I thought it was because she wanted to check that the room met her standards. I know better now.

  “You know, you never actually gave me your room number when you left me out with the vultures in front of the hotel.”

  “Oops,” Erin said, shooting me a furtive glance. “Guess I forgot.”

  “No worries. Lovely boy at the concierge desk was a very chatty fellow. He gave it to me.”

  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but what the fuckall are you doing in our room?” Isabel said.

  Michelle Hornsbury sat on the couch and flashed Isabel a smile. “Why, Erin invited me to stay the night.”

  “Would you excuse us for a minute?” I said. I opened the door to the bathroom and Apple, Isabel, and Erin followed me in.

  “Is Michelle Hornsbury really staying with us?” I said.

  “Hashtag-NOPE,” Apple said. “Hashtag-whodoesthat bitchthinksheis. Hashtag-thestarfuckinggolddiggingsuccubus trampgoes.”

  “Crisis, stop with the hashtags,” Erin hissed. “This isn’t my grandmother’s Twitter.”

  If I could’ve added my own hashtag right then, it would’ve been hashtag-mess. Getting rid of Michelle Hornsbury was just another thing on the list of clusterfucks we were dealing with today, seeing as how she’d entered our hotel room and parked herself on our couch without any of us actually inviting her in.

  “Wait, let’s talk this out,” Isabel said. “Think of all the shit Michelle Hornsbury could dish. I could fill my site for days.”

  “No,” Erin, Apple, and I said simultaneously.

  “She can’t stay,” Apple said.

  “So we’re agreed,” I said. “Michelle Hornsbury goes.”

  Erin and Apple nodded. A moment later, Isabel gave in and nodded too.

  “Great. Let’s kick her out.”

  * * *

  Michelle Hornsbury stayed. I have no good excuse for why Michelle Hornsbury stayed, except to say that somehow, in the time we had decided to kick her out, she’d put on silk pj’s, curled up on the couch, and had a Kindle in one hand and a mug of tea that had mysteriously materialized in the other. After that none of us had the heart to kick her out. She was a sad, beautiful statue.

  Also, she was Michelle Hornsbury. Even though she had no discernible talents, she was still famous, and that made her intimidating. The only one of us who probably could’ve stood up to her was Isabel, but she was also the only one of us who wanted her to stay.

  And maybe Isabel had a point. Maybe sitting through Michelle Hornsbury’s stories about the boys would be kind of cool.

  * * *

  “Terribly small, I’m afraid,” Michelle Hornsbury said, snickering devilishly while the rest of us st
ared at her in awe, and at least one of us tried desperately not to believe her.

  Michelle Hornsbury took a deep breath and let her laughter subside. “I’m sure you all want to talk about Griffin’s video. I’m just not sure I can bring myself to do it.”

  Griffin’s video! I’d forgotten about it in all the madness. And by the way the rest of the girls perked up, it seemed they’d forgotten about it too. Isabel whipped out her phone and found it on YouTube immediately. We all crowded around her to get a better view.

  “Sorry,” I said to Michelle Hornsbury. “We haven’t seen it yet.” Technically true.

  Isabel clicked PLAY, and we finally had the video and audio together. Griffin sat in front of a white wall, all earnest and emotional. When he showed the video on his phone it was just the one I’d suspected—the same one that’d we’d all seen on Rupert P.’s phone. Michelle Hornsbury started to cry again.

  “Alright, I’ll talk about it!” she said. “That weasel Griffin Holmes has always had a crush on my Rupie. It’s been clear from the start. But I’m certain he did some fancy CGI on that video or something. You girls don’t actually believe Rupert would go behind my back?”

  “No.”

  “Course not.”

  “Never.”

  “Rupie was not gay. He loved me. We loved each other.”

  She looked so convinced of her own words that I realized that she believed them. Was Michelle Hornsbury a professional beard who didn’t realize she was a beard? This whole time I thought that she and Rupert P. had an understanding of what their relationship actually was: a front meant to convince the world that he was straight, a great ticket to fame for her. A win-win for both of them. But now I thought she may have been one of the few people in the world who wasn’t aware of her own role in the relationship. And as I looked at Michelle Hornsbury, beautiful and poised and so elegantly English, I suddenly felt really bad for her.

  I felt bad for her and Rupert K.

  I wondered where he was, what he was doing. Did he call the police like he said he would? Like I said I wanted to. We’d both wanted to do the right thing, but if his story ended up anything like mine, he hadn’t done the right thing either.

  I took my phone out and checked his Twitter to see if he’d posted anything. It was a long shot in the middle of this shitstorm, but he was the most prolific tweeter in the Ruperts.

  And then I saw it. He’d tweeted something twenty-two seconds ago.

  Bright Lights, Big City.

  I read it again and then a dozen more times. It was what we’d talked about on the roof. Was this a message for me? Did he want me to meet him on the roof?

  I stood quickly.

  “Where are you going?” Erin said.

  “I need to be somewhere.”

  “Let her go,” Isabel said. “I want to see if she’ll actually make it out the door this time.”

  I did make it out the door, Isabel, thankyouverymuch. I headed for the roof.

  Rupert K. was sitting against a low wall, his head in his hands.

  I stood before him, over him, and didn’t say anything. I only watched as he sat, crumpled against the wall, knees bent up to meet his face, shoulders heaving. He had his inhaler clutched in his hands, though if he’d just used it or was about to, I couldn’t tell.

  Finally he looked up at me, and despite the circumstances and the way he looked, it delighted me that he wasn’t surprised to see me there.

  “You read my tweet.”

  I nodded. It had been for me. I knew it. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” he said, and then immediately amended, “No.”

  I sat beside him, folding my feet underneath me to stave off some of the cold from the concrete. I wanted to ask him if he was upset because of Rupert P., but it felt wrong asking him a question I already knew the answer to. Deceptive, somehow. So instead I asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He searched for his words, unsure of what to say but determined to say something. He wrote that tweet for a reason after all. He wanted me here. He needed me here. “Ever since the band, things have been a little crazy in my life,” he began. “I mean, one day you’re in India, helping build a school for poor children, and then the very next day you’ll be at the Teen Choice Awards, accepting the award for best smile. It’s great, but it’s also really screwed up, and somehow I’ve got used to it. The surreal has morphed into my reality when I wasn’t looking, and now this is my life. But tonight … I don’t think I can handle my reality anymore.”

  I said I wouldn’t ask him this, but screw it, I asked it anyway. “Is this about Rupert P.?” He looked me in the eye so fiercely I didn’t have time to be scared, because I knew that I’d scared him first. “I saw Griffin’s video,” I added quickly. I had to make sure I cleared up the fact that I was asking about Rupert P., the closeted boy bander who’d just quit, and not Rupert P., the closeted boy bander who’d just croaked. “Did you know the two of them were together?”

  “Yeah, I knew. Rupert would never admit it, but I was his best friend. I think I was his only friend. I told him to let Michelle go, that it wasn’t fair to her. And that our fans would understand if he wanted to come out. I supported him one hundred percent, whatever he wanted to do.” He buried his face in his hands again. “I told him he could always come to me if he wanted to. I don’t know why he didn’t, and now …”

  “And now what?”

  “And now it’s too late.”

  “Why?” I wanted him to say it. I wanted him to say it so badly so that it would be out in the open, a secret that was spilled instead of one that we both held, and both continued to keep. He looked at me, his green eyes glassy. He was going to tell me Rupert P. was dead. He was going to let me in. Maybe we could figure out what to do together.

  But a noise tripped us out of the moment.

  “What was that?” Rupert K. said.

  We heard it again, a sound coming from one of the doors. Voices. Scraping. Thudding.

  “I can’t be here,” Rupert K. said, standing and overly paranoid. “I don’t want anyone to …” He stuck out his hand. “Come with me.”

  Rupert K. wanted to be alone, but he still wanted to be with me.

  He wanted to take me somewhere.

  He wanted to take my hand.

  I let the moment linger, let my field of vision fill with the image of him standing above me, looming large and reaching out to me. And then I gave him my hand, obvs.

  There were three doors we could see, and we ran to the one farthest from the one where the noise was coming from. We slammed through the door and ran down the stairs, not knowing where they led but taking them like there was a fire behind us that we had to outrun. I was flying high/down floors, and all I knew in that moment was the feel of Rupert K.’s hand in mine. I know there was a lot going on; there was a giant dead redheaded elephant in the room to think about, but shit—I had given Rupert Pierpont enough thought for today. And to be honest, it was more thought than he even deserved. Mayherestinpeace.

  The real newsworthy thing here was the fact that I was holding Rupert K.’s hand and we were alone together, practically having an adventure.

  We must’ve taken the service route, because we kept passing equipment in the hallways—giant spools of cable, mopping apparatuses, large rolling bins. We were in the bowels of the hotel, the dark corners not meant to be seen by any of the guests, let alone one of the biggest stars in the universe. We checked every door we found, but they were all locked, so we kept going until we found one that wasn’t. And when we did, we went through it.

  The indoor pool.

  Totally empty but still lit, water shimmering, a million diamonds. It slowed us to a halt. It quieted our breathing. And for the moment, at least, I think it eased both of our minds.

  We looked at each other, me and Rupert K., and for the first time since finding Rupert P. in his room there was the shadow of a smile on his face.

  * * *

  “The purpose of the w
hole thing is to defeat the evil goblin—he’s this huge giant who rules the kingdom and has a million minions. So in every level you have to defeat some of his minions, and they come in all forms—sometimes they’re warlocks, sometimes they’re beautiful sirens. The siren levels are brilliant. There’s something about beautiful girls being totally evil that I really dig for some reason.”

  “Strong female characters?” I said.

  “Exactly. I care very much about the feminist cause. I consider myself a feminist, actually.”

  “I think that’s amazing.”

  Rupert K. and I sat by the edge of the pool on chaise lounges, and he was telling me about his favorite thing in the world—Goblin Gerald’s Kingdom, a computer game. Of course, I already knew this was his favorite thing in the world, and I’d even tried to play the game myself a couple of times before giving up completely after I realized I really did not care about dragons and swords and witches. But I let him keep talking about it because the important thing you have to realize here is that he was sharing something with me. He was sharing his favorite thing. If you switched a few things up and squinted a little, this could even look like a date. And also, how cute was he, talking about what a feminist he was?

  I hoped he couldn’t tell that I was totally swooning. Was it a visible thing when girls swooned? Did we suddenly look faint? Were we all red and puffy-faced, our eyelids aflutter? All I know is if it was possible to look swoony, I did.

  “By the way, are you aware that your shirt has a huge stain on it?”

  I looked down at my white sweater, marred with a full bib of Coke. I was completely mortified. “Crisis,” I said under my breath. “This is embarrassing.”

  “It’s no biggie.”

  Rupert K. stood to walk up to the edge of the pool, and in the meantime I wondered if it would be too forward of me to take off my sweater right in front of him. I concluded that it would be.

  I took off my sweater.

  It was only when I looked down at my tank top that I remembered I was wearing my special Rupert K. shirt. His stenciled and faded face was smiling back at me, and I scrambled to put my sweater back on before the actual, three-dimensional Rupert K. turned around.