Was doing crazy stuff to show your love just part of the Strepur tradition? Was pretending to threaten the life of Rupert P.’s girlfriend worth it if it was just in good fun?
While Erin’s schemes were normally exciting, now she was genuinely starting to scare me. Erin had always been edgy, but this was veering into sadistic. She’d definitely been spending too much time with Isabel.
“You’re not serious about the lip gloss, right?” I said. “We can’t torment Rupert P. like that.”
“We’re already off the rails,” Erin said. “Might as well make it a true pileup.”
“I don’t know …”
“Remember that time we went to the mall?”
How could I forget? When you lived in New York City, going to one of the malls here wasn’t a thing people normally did. But one day Erin and I got it in our heads that we wanted to be like Real American Teenagers, and Real American Teenagers went to the mall.
“You made up this elaborate lie that got us both out of school,” Erin said. “It was totally Ferris Bueller of you.”
Erin referencing an ’80s movie? She really did know the way to my heart.
“We took the subway to the Manhattan Mall,” I said.
“What a shithole.”
“And you stole that cardboard cutout of Rupert X. from Claire’s!”
“Rupert X. had no business displaying tween jewelry anyway.”
“Your klepto ways are a thing of legend,” I said.
We’d taken the cutout and run like hell until we found a photo booth. I’d always wanted to have those strips of photo booth photos you only ever saw in movies. Erin and I spent all of our pocket money posing with Rupert X.’s cutout, and he actually came out pretty lifelike in the pictures, except for the occasional glare off his forehead and the fact that he never changed expressions.
Erin liked trouble the way some people liked chocolate: Too much could become a problem, but a little once in a while could be a naughty guilty pleasure. The way she thrived on it was contagious, and now, sitting across from her in the hotel bar, I was itching.
“Do you think we could get Rupert P. to give us concert tickets out of this?” I joked.
“That is so ransom of you. I like the way you think, girl.”
I took the lip gloss from her hand. “We’re leaving this here, right?”
“Of course,” Erin said. “I was only kidding about that.”
I was relieved. Maybe Erin wasn’t as sadistic as I thought.
“Come on, we can’t keep Rupert P. waiting,” she said. “It’s getting late.”
“If only we had one of Rupert L.’s watches to tell us what time it is.”
“It’s like a cuckoo clock for your wrist,” Erin said.
“I’ll tell you what’s cuckoo …”
She cracked up and I joined in the laughter. The thing about me and Erin was that we could always make each other laugh. That trumped everything else.
I got up to go first, with Erin following behind me. When I turned around I saw her put the pink lip gloss tube into her pocket.
Back in the room, we found Apple straddling Rupert P.’s lap and dragging her tongue along the side of his face.
“What the fuck everlasting?!” Erin said.
“Oh, hey, guys,” Apple said. “I was telling Rupie that everything would be a-okay with just a lick and a promise. The promise part was my full devotion to him.”
Rupert P. moaned through the tights.
“Isabel, you were supposed to watch her,” Erin said.
But the only thing Isabel was watching was her phone, like I knew she would be. “She’s only licking him,” she said, lying cross-ankled on the bed. “It could be so much messier and you know it.”
Erin pulled Apple off Rupert P.’s lap. He tried to bounce in place, move around some, but the chair was one of those really ornate and heavy armchairs that wasn’t really going to budge unless you meant to do some damage, and judging by Rupert P.’s spaghetti arms, I wasn’t sure he was strong enough to move it an inch, let alone tip it over if he wanted to.
He gave up all attempts to escape almost immediately, though he still moaned. The tights around his mouth were soaked, either with his own saliva or with Apple’s. Maybe the moisture around his cheeks was from tears. My gut suddenly twisted with a sour feeling of guilt and sympathy that I could not ignore.
“Was he crying?” I whispered to Apple, low enough so that Rupert P. couldn’t hear.