Kill the Boy Band

by Goldy Moldavsky

  “Your story,” the officer said. He looked at his watch, brought it right to his face, squinted, and then pulled it back farther, opening his eyes wider. “It took hours to tell.”

  “I thought it would be important not to spare any details.”

  “Yeah, but we’re talking about hours here. Four hours of my life.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “An abridged version woulda done the job.”

  I was about to say something but then thought better of it. He really did seem kind of annoyed that my story had been so long, and I didn’t want to annoy him any more than I clearly already had. I stuck my hands out toward him, palms up, wrists together. “Are you going to arrest me now?”

  “Arrest you?”

  “I just confessed to kidnapping and framing somebody for murder. And I just told you who actually did kill Rupert Pierpont.”

  “The girl who was in here before you did the same thing,” the cop said.

  My hands fell to my lap. “Excuse me?”

  “Her story had her seducing all the Ruperts and then smothering Rupert Pierpont with a pillow in a sacrificial ritual. And it only took her ten minutes to tell it. Ten minutes.”

  “Look, I’m sorry that my story was so long, but—”

  “Your friends, this Erin and Apple and Isabel—they’ll corroborate all this?”

  “No, but—”

  The cop closed a file on his desk and sat up a little, stretching out his right leg. “Few days ago we got a girl in here that actually planted her own evidence in the hotel to make it look like she had something to do with the murder. Another girl confessed to killing Rupert Pierpont in music video fashion on YouTube. Do you really think you’re the only one trying to get The Ruperts off?”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “There’s hundreds of you girls,” the cop said. “Making a mockery of the NYPD. But I’m forced to listen to all of you until we officially close this case. I honestly don’t know if you girls just want attention or if you really do love those boys too much. But I’ll tell you one thing: It scares me.”

  I watched him shake his head from side to side, a silent whistle escaping his lips. In that headshake I could see exactly what he was thinking about. He was wondering what happened to the good old days. He was wondering when girls got so gosh darn complicated. He didn’t have a clue.

  “Fans,” he sighed. A bad word when he said it.

  “Fans,” I repeated, serious.

  “You girls …”

  Are never taken seriously.

  “… should find a nice hobby.”

  But we should be taken seriously. We can be amazing. And dangerous.

  The cop was no longer paying attention to me, but that was okay, since I was no longer paying attention to him. “So you don’t believe what I just told you.”

  “Four hours,” the cop said, getting up, shaking his head.

  He left. I found my own way out.

  So the cops didn’t believe me. Maybe I should’ve seen that coming. Or maybe not. Out loud, the story really did seem totally outrageous. But it still needs to be known, and that’s why I’m posting it here. I guess you can consider all of this one long-ass PostSecret. So now it’s out in the open, whether anyone chooses to believe it or not.

  A short while after I left the hotel it was completely taken over by Strepurs. They infiltrated, just as Rupert L. feared they would. Running amok, with the police hopeless to catch all of them, Strepurs ransacked every floor of the place. No one is really sure what their mission was, but I think being packed so tightly together outside of the hotel, plus the trauma of a Rupert dying and the rest of the members being carted off to jail, set something off in those Strepurs. There was never any rhyme or reason to the things they did in their day-to-day fan lives; imagine how much less there was on the other side of a collective psychotic break. They managed to get into our room somehow and destroyed everything that may have once made it a crime scene. Michelle Hornsbury was swallowed up by Strepurs for the second time that day.

  Things cooled down after that night.

  Last I heard, Michelle Hornsbury was in Dubai and in a new relationship. John Mayer.

  Rupert Xavier and Rupert Lemon were arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years in a maximum security prison for throwing a body off a roof and endangering the public, but with any luck they’ll be out in twenty for good behavior.

  Rupert Kirke’s case was a little different. He’d told the prosecutor and the media that he’d been with a girl the whole time. A girl whose name he did not remember. For a while, the media had a field day basically calling him a skank for being with a girl and not even knowing her name.

  Rupert K.’s team of lawyers interviewed a lot of the girls who had come forward to say they were the ones who had been with him when Rupert P. died and had been thrown off the roof. The press called it a modern-day Cinderella story. Thousands of girls came forward, from all over the world, hoping that crystal slipper fit on their foot. But Rupert K.’s lawyers couldn’t go through all the girls. It wasn’t feasible, they said. And then, miraculously, Rupert K. did remember her name. He said he’d been with a girl named Sloane Peterson. He said she liked red cars, museums, dance parties in town squares, and writing.

  The media had a second field day, and every blog, news­paper, and entertainment news show made fun of him for spending that night with the female lead in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

  His case looked pretty bleak for a while there. But a maintenance man at the hotel came forward and corroborated Rupert K.’s story, saying that he’d seen Rupert K. and a young woman running through the halls near the hotel’s indoor pool. Rupert X. and Rupert L. eventually admitted that Rupert K. wasn’t with them on the roof.

  Rupert K. wasn’t charged with a crime. He’s currently working on a solo album. Folk dubstep. He posted a SoundCloud of his first single on Twitter. It’s called “Are You the Girl?” I can’t bring myself to listen to it yet.

  As for what happened to us four girls, it’s a lot less interesting.

  As you may have guessed, none of my friends came forward with any information about what happened that night at The Rondack. Once they left the hotel, they never looked back.

  Apple took down all her Rupert P. posters and found a new band to obsess over. Six Stages of Grief was an American boy band trying to bring back the whole emo/pop/punk scene. They weren’t very big yet but they had a small following of devoted fans, Apple among them. She washed the auburn out of her hair, going back to her natural black. Her favorite member of 6SoG was Dashiell Bancroft. He was five feet one, showing a major case of premature male-pattern baldness, and had a chin that receded into his jaw.

  Now that the members of The Ruperts were dead/behind bars/a solo artist, Isabel couldn’t exactly continue to run her Ruperts update site. But with all the traffic she’d garnered from her night at The Rondack she had a strong enough following to launch a full-blown celeb gossip site big enough to rival the major outlets. I wonder if she’ll link to this story.

  I still see Erin at school, and we still talk, but it isn’t how it used to be. I don’t think it ever will be again. I never told her what happened when I went back to our hotel room and found Michelle Hornsbury there. She’d already made her conclusions about me, and I don’t even know if she’d trust that what I’m telling you right now is the truth.

  But that’s just it, isn’t it?

  I could be making all this up. I could have spun this whole story so that it worked out in my favor. I could’ve assigned random roles and made Erin the Mastermind, Isabel the Enforcer, and Apple the Simple One just so that I could be the Innocent One. I know that if Erin, Apple, and Isabel were telling it, they’d probably (definitely) make me out to be the Crazy One. But if I were making all of this up, I would probably just make Isabel out to be the murderer or something, don’t you think?

  I’ve told you about everyone else, and if you’ve read this far I’m assuming you’re intere
sted to know about what happened with me. As per usual, my life isn’t terribly exciting at the moment. I haven’t written fanfiction since everything that happened with The Ruperts. Maybe one day I’ll find some other fandom that’ll inspire me to write about it, but until then I think I’ll try my hand at real fiction. If that’s the only thing that came out of writing this whole story down, then that’s good enough.

  But I’ve been thinking a lot about the future too. And if I’m being honest, I’ve been thinking about what Civil War Bartender said. I imagine myself going to my first college party. I imagine talking to a group of hip, counterculture coeds and the topic of The Ruperts getting brought up. Somebody’ll say, “Hey, you guys remember The Ruperts? How lame were they?”

  I imagine what I’ll say.

  I wonder if I’ll lie.

  Thank you:

  To Jenny Bent, my rock star agent, who does so much more than I thought an agent could do. You are so, so good and I am truly lucky and amazed to have you in my corner. To Gemma Cooper, who got this book straightaway and made things go smoothly over the pond. Eskimo! And to Victoria Lowes for putting up with all my emails.

  To my editor, Matt Ringler, who may be the coolest person I know and not only because he is king of the raccoons. Thank you for making everything about this experience so choice. #blessed #squad. I also have to thank Aimee Friedman and David Levithan, who, along with Matt, not only rallied behind this book but turned their lives into what I imagine to be a particularly zany episode of Three’s Company in order to acquire it. I am forever grateful. And thank you to all the amazing people I’ve met at Scholastic, which I can confirm is a magical wonderland of a place.

  To my awesome UK editor, Rachel Petty, and everyone at Macmillan UK for their support.

  To those who read early drafts and chapters: Esther Silberstein, Diana Gallagher, Richard Ho. Heroes, all of you. And to Chaya Levinsohn, my first reader, always. I remember the exact moment we were walking through a bookstore and I asked you if you thought I’d ever have a book in there and you said, with so much conviction, yes. That was when I knew I could do it. Thank you.

  To those who provided some excellent jokes: Steven Bluth and Jo Schwarcz. To Lawrence Lee of the Canadian Lees. My first partner in parody crime. (:-*) To Ruthie, Shira, and Sarah (you’re welcome!).

  To Akiva Moldavsky Z”L and Sonia Moldavsky. Mom, you gave me everything and now everything I have is for you. I love you. To Ari, Maayan, Tily, and to Yasmin Freedman, the original stan. Your fangirling ways are the stuff of legend, and way better than any fiction I could come up with. This book was an attempt to capture everything I loved growing up. And everything I loved growing up is inextricably entwined with you. I hope we never stop talking in movie quotes and singing our favorite telenovela theme songs.

  To Berko Schnaiderman Z”L and Blanca Schnaiderman. To Felix and Valer. Tios Jorge, Ira, Samuel Z”L, and Vladimir. Tias Bella Z”L, Estella Z”L, Malka, Lidia. And to Raquel Fodor and Rebeca Schnaiderman, con todo mi cariño.

  To Silvia, David, Rodrigo, Jordana, Kevin, and Berko.

  And to Alex, who was very literally by my side throughout the making of this book. At the Tea Lounge when I wrote the very first line, in Herald Square when we figured out what the start looked like, on the road back from CT trying to pin down who Erin was, at Chagall’s when we had the very important plot breakthrough, at Basil when we finally knew whodunit, and flying over the Pacific, doing the very last revisions. Thank you for being there. (And for telling me that I am an amazing story.)

  GOLDY MOLDAVSKY was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives. This book is only partially autobiographical. Kill the Boy Band is her first novel. You can find her online at goldymoldavsky.com and on Twitter at @goldywrites.

  Copyright © 2016 by Goldy Moldavsky

  All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or ­registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any ­responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  First edition, March 2016

  Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll

  Author photo by A. Melamud

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-86748-1

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.