“Crisis, Apple, get a grip!” I said. “Not even if you paid me.”
“She was about to cut him loose,” Isabel said. Her arms were loaded up with things—mostly clothes—like she’d just looted someplace. I guess she had.
“Did you manage to leave anything in the room?” I asked. My voice sounded fine, and I hoped they couldn’t tell I’d been crying.
“Don’t change the subject,” Isabel said. “Erin’s gonna wanna hear about this.”
Apple stood up, helping me up too. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just when I saw you crouching in front of his lap like that … Let’s just agree that I’m the only one who is ever allowed that close to his lap, okay? And let’s also agree never to do something so rash like letting Rupert P. go.”
“Fuck my life,” Rupert P. said in one long exhale.
“Look what I got,” Apple said. She pulled up her flowy knee-length skirt and revealed a pair of bright orange tighty-whities worn over her tights, the name “Rupert Pierpont” written across the waistband. “Shh,” she said, mouthing the words. “Don’t tell him.”
“Where’s Erin?” I said.
“She’s still up there.”
“Better go see what she’s really up to,” Rupert P. said.
I left the room and took the elevator to the sixteenth floor.
I stood before Room 1620 expecting someone from The Ruperts’ team to swing open the door—a manager, maybe, or a PR person. Someone to catch me snooping and say something terrifying like, “Hey! You there!” But nothing happened when I knocked. Nothing happened the next three times I did it either. “Erin,” I called. “It’s me.”
I almost turned back, thinking Erin must’ve already left and I’d missed her somehow, but then her muffled voice came through the door. “ ‘Me’ who?”
“Your Bestest Bestie?”
“How do I know it’s really you?”
I rolled my eyes, pointless since she couldn’t see me. After all the shit with Rupert P. earlier I was really not in the mood. “Who else knows that you like to take your Rupert X. cutout and p—”
The door swung open. “You promised to never mention that again,” she said. “And anyway, I got rid of that thing.”
“You did?”
She stepped aside to make room for me. “You’re not going to believe this place.”
She did not lie. I could not believe the place, and everything Rupert P. had said about my dad and about Erin being shady totally flew out of my head and was replaced by the awesomeness of the hotel room. The suite was enormous, with floor-to-ceiling glass walls that opened up to a terrace. The light must’ve been incredible in the morning, but I could only guess at that because it was dark out by now. There were beanbag chairs, and a taxidermied deer head on the wall with a life jacket around its neck and a pig snout mask on its nose. There was a tiny plaque next to it that explained that it was only a fake deer head and could be removed by calling the front desk if you found it offensive.
There were two framed pictures on the wall, displayed with spotlights above them like they were museum artwork. One was a large, abrasively yellow poster for some movie called The Stupids, and another was a much smaller print of René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images. I guess The Rondack designers all agreed that those two things should be displayed on the same wall.
But the weirdest part of the suite was the dining table. It was large enough to seat eight, but it was hard to imagine anyone eating on it, since the whole thing was covered in what appeared to be a scale model of SoHo. Right there in the center was a miniature version of The Rondack itself, one of the taller buildings in the neighborhood. The Rondack within The Rondack. Trippy.
There were things strewn about, clothes and papers, and I didn’t know if it was the boys who were messy or if it was just the debris that lay in Apple’s and Isabel’s wakes. But I really didn’t care about the small stuff at that point. I didn’t come with the intention of ransacking the boys’ things, but Erin was already walking toward one of the bedrooms, and my feet started following her of their own accord. My heart rate spiked. I realized what was happening.
I was excited.
I wanted to ransack Rupert K.’s things and find personal items, things that he’d packed himself and couldn’t live without.
I was a horrible, horrible person. But I was also a fangirl in my idol’s room. How could I shut my eyes to it all?
It was just like The Ruperts’ song “Your World.”
Baby, let me watch you sleep
Let me come inside, I want to see your room
I don’t care what your mom thinks
Show me your world and let our love bloom.
“Rupert X. and Rupert K. are staying in the same room,” Erin said.