The next text came from Rupert L.
I’m heer. Wear r u?
Ever helpful. Sometimes, I couldn’t figure out why Isabel loved Rupert L. so much. He was super cute, sure, and he may have been built like a bag of rocks, but he was also dumb as a bag of rocks. His tweets were always littered with typos. It figured his text messages would be too.
“Autocorrect can be a bitch,” Isabel explained.
Finally, the text from Rupert K. that I was waiting for came in.
Sound check at NBC. Are u close?
Isabel spun to face Rupert P. “Wait a minute. How did everyone leave the hotel without being spotted?”
“Maintenance entrance in the car park below the hotel,” Rupert P. said, calmer now. “It’s the reason we picked this place. I need to be at sound check, so can you please let me go now?”
Rupert P. could’ve said a whole bunch of things just then, but Erin and Apple and Isabel were too distracted to pay him any more unnecessary attention. They had the boys’ room key and the promise that they weren’t around. They had the keys to the castle.
“Let’s go!” Isabel said again, getting antsy, bouncing in place.
Erin took a step but I took her hand. It felt suddenly like if I let her go I’d lose her for good. “Erin, he’s willing to let us get out of this mess scot-free,” I whispered. It felt necessary to keep my voice low, as though what I was saying was too important and fragile to state out loud. “Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?”
The way she looked at me just then, the way her eyes crinkled with some of the glassiness of before but none of the sadness—for the first time, that look scared me. “It hasn’t even started yet.”
Neither of us could know then just how right she would turn out to be.
Rupert P.’s head hung low. With the girls out of the room I felt I could be nice again. And something about the way he looked, the way he was literally bent out of shape, made me feel like being extra nice. “You don’t have to be ashamed,” I said. “It’s okay to be gay.”
He didn’t say anything. For a second he was so still I thought he might have fallen asleep. And then I had the creepy thought that he was dead or something. Amazingly, it was only the first time that night that I’d have that thought. But then his lips twisted ruefully, and in that moment I knew not only that he’d heard me, but that he also hated me.
“It’s okay to be gay, is it?” he said, his voice mocking and nasal. “Well, thank heavens you’re here to tell me that. I never would’ve thought so until this very moment. That’s all I need, yeah? A Rupert Kirke fangirl to share her infinite wisdom with me.”
Yep, he hated me. It made me feel uneasy. But I guess it was too much to ask of the person you were kidnapping not to hate you.
“It’s okay to be closeted too,” I continued. “You should come out in your own time. And if and when you do come out, your fans are still going to love you. I don’t know if you know this or not, but there’s hardly anything that fangirls love more than gay boy band members. I mean, I don’t particularly subscribe to that faction myself, but you’d be surprised how many slash rpfs there are out there.”
“Slash rp—? What the hell is an rpf?”
“Real person fics … fanfiction.” “Fanfiction” was one of those few words people didn’t say in real life. Like “shit” blurted in a kindergarten classroom. It just wasn’t done. And it felt weird to say it now. I thought briefly of writing down everything that was happening for a future fic. Sort of a true crime rpf. I was pretty sure it’d never been done before. Then I realized it would probably come off way too unrealistic. It’d have to be an AU fic. “Forget it,” I said.
“Bloody hell, how is this my life?” Rupert P. said. “How am I taken prisoner, listening to a teenage girl talk to me about fanfiction! How the fuck did I even end up in the bloody band! I can’t sing, you know! I can’t even bloody sing!”
“I know.”
“Shut up! You don’t tell me I can’t sing! I’m the only one who’s allowed to say it. Me!”
“Sorry,” I muttered under my breath. “How did you know I was a Rupert Kirke fan?”
“What?”
“When you said I was sharing my ‘infinite wisdom’ with you, you called me a Rupert K. fangirl. How did you know?”
“You stink of it.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re wearing his perfume,” he said.
All the Ruperts had their own separate fragrances. They were a big hit, along with the requisite nail polish and hair accessories. You could smell like your favorite boy and wear his face on your head at the same time. Rupert K.’s fragrance smelled of jasmine and baby’s breath flowers. I was wearing it now. But I’d only dabbed it on my neck and wrists. I was sure Rupert P. was exaggerating about the strength of it.
“And Rupert K. is everyone’s favorite,” he said.
“Not my friends’.”