“Yeah, but what you’re proposing isn’t any better. It isn’t nice.”
I thought she’d drop it then, that she’d see the error of her ways, but Erin only came closer, smoothed out the shoulder of my gym T-shirt, and said, “Fuck nice.” She held out the bottle again, giving it a little shake. She smiled.
I was enthralled by everything about her. By the fact that she was so appalled by Leslie Hamilton’s treatment of me that she’d steal the girl’s water bottle. By the fact that she wanted to get revenge on Leslie Hamilton simply because she cared about me.
I loved that memory of Erin sticking up for me in her own way. And I especially loved the look on Leslie Hamilton’s face when she spit out her water in disgust. Now, after everything, that memory seems tainted somehow, and I just see the situation for what it was: shady as fuck.
Because the truth was, my best friends were psychopaths.
Officially.
I mean, there really was no denying it now. When they weren’t kidnapping boy band members, they were plotting to destroy them.
I thought of going back to the bar again, but then I also felt like I needed a change. So instead of going down I went up. I took the elevator as high as it would go, and then when it wouldn’t go any higher I found the nearest stairwell and kept going up til there was nothing but a door. I pushed it open, and a gust of wind assaulted me. It whipped my hair in all different directions and shouted in my ears. The fresh air was violent, but I felt better already.
I took out my phone and clicked on Twitter. My feed was blowing up, just as I knew it would be. It was a volley between Rupert P. fangirls tweeting threats to kill themselves or anyone else if the news of Rupert P.’s departure was true, and other Strepurs being surprisingly excited by the news of Rupert P.’s exit. My Tumblr dash was a mess too, with people reblogging tear-stricken selfies and hundreds of posts of girls freaking out. Buzzfeed already had a slew of lists up, from “Twelve Signs That Rupert P. Was Bound to Leave The Ruperts” to “Sixty Reasons Why The Ruperts Will Be a Better Band Now That Rupert P. Is Gone.” Isabel’s website was my last stop. She’d already posted about the whole debacle, speaking about it as if she had some sort of insight on the matter. Well, I guess she kind of did. She was promising more updates soon. I tried scrolling through her comments section, but it seemed impossible to get to the bottom of the page. Her site was extremely popular, but I’d never seen her get this many comments. She must be somewhere right now high-fiving herself or threatening people’s well-being, or whatever it was Isabel considered celebratory.
My battery was down to 30 percent. I put my phone in my pocket and walked over to the edge of the roof. The wall at the edge came up to my waist. Normally I would’ve been scared. I was really high up, and if I leaned too far out—splat—it’d all be over. But fear hadn’t done me any good today. Fear had stopped me from confronting Erin about all this. From making up my own mind. I looked over the edge. Down below were the screaming girls, a whole ocean of them. I may not have been down there with them, but I was one of them.
I loved being a Strepur. Maybe I was obsessed, but so were millions of other girls. I wasn’t out of my depth. And I was happy in my obsession. But was Erin right? Was I just a drone, wasting my time and potential on boys who would never know I existed?
I stuffed my hand into my jeans pocket and fished out the elastic string of my bracelet and the few beads I’d managed to find after Rupert P. broke it. I pinched one end of the elastic and strung the remaining beads onto it. Some of the letters were missing, and I only managed to spell out “Ddy.”
You know that feeling you get when you’re about to cry? When your chin quivers and the back of your throat twists and hurts? I hated that feeling. I blinked, trying to stave it off. I sighed deep and shut my eyes, tried to think of something better, and then …
“Please don’t jump.”
The new voice frightened me, and I spun to see where it came from. And then I froze. Because standing behind me was … my boy.
My life ruiner.
My Rupert K.
My face at that moment was that Heart Eyes emoji.
“Please, think about what you’re doing,” he said. He was coming toward me with careful steps, his arms outstretched before him as if ready to catch me if I fell. Was it bad that a part of me wanted to just so he could? “It gets better. Life is precious. Uh, life is beautiful?” He cursed under his breath and squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, embarrassed by his triteness. “I don’t know what people usually say in these sorts of situations. Just, please don’t jump.”
He was standing right next to me. He wore a gray peacoat over a white shirt, buttoned all the way up to the collar, and he gripped his black hat onto his head with one hand.
This wasn’t real.