“Don’t you have a girlfriend also?” Erin said. “Girls, doesn’t Rupert P. have a girlfriend?”
“Michelle Hornsbury,” Apple said. “She’s quote-unquote nineteen, a quote-unquote university student, a quote-unquote model—”
“Don’t forget beard,” Erin interjected. “She is also a very dedicated beard.”
“Quote-unquote?” Rupert P. asked meekly, hopefully.
“No,” Erin said. “She is very factually performing her duties as a beard.”
“Wait, what’s a beard?” Apple said, stroking her jaw.
Isabel cleared her throat and spoke in an authoritative voice. “A beard is someone who dates a gay person of the opposite sex in order to make that person appear heterosexual.”
“What?” Apple said.
I tried to explain it this time using simpler words. “It’s when a girl dates a gay guy, making him look straight.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Damnit, Apple, do we have to draw you a fucking Venn diagram?” Erin snapped. “Michelle Hornsbury is only Rupie’s pretend girlfriend so that he may maintain a straight image in the public eye.” She turned to Rupert P. “Am I warm?”
“You know nothing about my relationship with my girlfriend!”
“Quote-unquote.”
“We met Michelle Hornsbury downstairs,” I said.
“Ah yes, lovely beard, that beard,” Erin said.
“You met Michelle Hornsbury downstairs?” Apple whispered fiercely. “Was she stunning in real life? Are the rumors true? Does she smell like cotton candy and the tears of Rupert P. stans?”
“It would break her heart if she found out about Griffin, wouldn’t it?” Erin went on. “Or is she in on it? Oh shit, is it like an arrangement between you two? Why, I never.”
“Walk me out of here with my blindfold on,” Rupert P. said, the desperation in his voice so thick you could spread it on toast. “Put me in the lift, I swear I won’t look at any of you. I don’t know who any of you are—you’ll never get in trouble.”
“Fuck that,” Erin said. Behind me, Isabel giggled. No matter how often they were popping up these days, Isabel’s giggles never sounded quite right, and that was especially true now. Like spotting a clown at a cemetery.
“Do you want autographs?” Rupert continued. “Is that it? Do you want me to sign something? A body part, perhaps? Your breasts?”
“Ew, no.”
“Wretched.”
“Child, please.”
“Quite frankly!” Apple squealed. She pulled on her shirt, but I stopped her before she got the whole thing off.
“We should take the deal,” I whispered to Erin.
“Don’t be such a spaz.” She held up the phone, her eyes blazing but leaving me feeling suddenly cold. “We have all the power now, remember? We can make him our bitch.”
She turned to him and said, “Time for you to start bargaining, cowboy. Think that’s something you can juggle?”
“I’ll give you whatever you want. Just please don’t go through my phone. That’s private.”
He told her not to go through the phone, so of course she had to. The first stop was his gallery. As much as I knew this was wrong, as much as I felt bad for Rupert P., whose posture was suddenly stick straight, his head high, his ears perked—a puppy who thought it heard a noise at the door—I couldn’t not look at his phone. I was weak. Don’t judge me.
We all crowded around the phone and Erin started scrolling through the pics, the minutes filling with our excited squeals every time we saw one of our boys in photographs from backstage on tour. There was a series of shots of Rupert L. bench-pressing with his shirt off, and all the orifices of Isabel’s face went round: her eyes got extra big, her mouth formed a silent O, even her nostrils flared with pleasure. “Iconic,” she whispered.
There were a few hidden camera–style shots of Rupert X. playing with his hair, and then a few more where he was looking directly at the phone with a pressed expression on his pretty face.
And then there were the pics of Rupert K.
In a lot of the pictures he was posing for selfies with Rupert P., smiling, happy. I was looking at never-before-seen pictures of Rupert K., and it was starting to hit me that we truly had unprecedented access to the boys. Somebody send help.
But then Erin stopped scrolling. At first I couldn’t make out the image. It wasn’t an image at all, actually. There was a PLAY button in the middle of the screen, surrounded by an eye, lips, an elbow? Then I realized what it was.
Isabel’s eyes lit up. “What a time to be alive,” she said.
“That’s not real. That’s photoshopped,” said Apple.
How to explain that you couldn’t photoshop videos?
“Jackpot,” said Erin. “The boy planted his own evidence. Quelle surprise.”
Erin’s red-nailed finger clicked the PLAY button, and we all watched as Rupert P. made out with a guy. Definitely Griffin Holmes.
Erin stopped the video before it could get any further.