They all watched me, but not because of my sudden outburst; because I was taking control of the situation and that’s exactly what they needed. I didn’t know where I had gotten this sudden strength. I’m not sure if I could even classify it as strength. A momentary clarity. Maybe my father’s death had prepared me for a situation like this. Maybe I wasn’t freaking out as much as them because I’d already been touched by death. I knew of it.
The point is, I couldn’t just back away slowly and hope my footsteps would lead me all the way back home to Brooklyn. I couldn’t just scroll through this. Maybe I was one of those people who handled a crisis with a level head and I didn’t even know it. Whatever it was, I embraced it. “We need to assess the situation,” I said. “Rupert P. is dead.”
“Well, thank shit you’re here, Nancy Prew,” Isabel said.
“It’s Nancy Drew and a person is dead, Isabel!” I said. “Because of us.”
“Are you saying one of us killed him?” Apple asked.
“Wait, hold up, who said anything about killed?” Isabel said, stepping up to me like a panther ready to pounce. “Nobody killed anybody!”
“Then how did he die?”
We all turned to look at the body, a new curiosity. But none of us moved closer to him. “Apple, you check,” I said, breaking the eerie silence.
“No way, I’m not touching him.”
“You loved him!”
“His death kind of ruined him for me.”
“But how did Rupert P. not ruin Rupert P. for you?” Isabel said.
“I’ll do it,” I said. I could hear the other girls holding their breath, sucking it in and taking all sound with them. The room was a vacuum; just white noise that buzzed in my ears, louder the closer I got to the body.
But then I saw it.
“Oh.” Less of a word, more of a gasp.
“He’s not dead?” Apple said. “This is all a bad dream?”
“Yeah, Apple, we’re all having the same bad dream at the exact same time,” Isabel said. “Honestly, the delusion is so strong with you sometimes.”
“Would both of you shut up?” I said. “I think I know how he died.”
“What is it?” Isabel said. “The suspense is killing Rupert P.”
“The tights.” The tights that made a great blindfold and even better knots were also an exceptional murder weapon. They were too tight around his neck. Tights that were tight. Whodathunk?
“He was strangled.”
The four of us towered over him, our heads almost touching as we looked down at him—really looked—for the first time. He seemed stiff already, even though he couldn’t have been dead more than an hour. And his hair was drained of what little orange brilliance it once had, now that it was set against his sallow pallor.
I didn’t see my father when he died, so I knew it was the first time any of us had seen a dead body before (I assumed—you never really knew with Isabel). It reminded me of that scene in Stand by Me where the four friends find the body by the train tracks and their lives change forever in a profound yet charmingly coming-of-age way. Did this constitute our own shitty rite of passage? Had we just lost our innocence? Were we women now? Because I didn’t feel anything except for a vague nausea.
Finding a body and contemplating what it all meant was overrated. It was nothing like the movies.
“Okay, which one of you dicktips killed him?” Isabel said.
“A second ago you said nobody killed anybody.”
“A second ago I didn’t know he was strangled. So who did it? Not me.”
“Not me!” Apple said.
“Not me.” Even though it was stupid, I didn’t want to be the last one to say it, stuck with the short straw. I turned to Erin, who hadn’t chimed in with her “Not me” yet. She was still looking down at Rupert P., but so much more differently than the way she’d looked down at him just an hour earlier. Her eyes seemed stunted open, and she was biting down hard. I could see it in the way her jaw muscles were flexed. I imagined her standing over Rupert P. as he sat, helpless. I imagined her pulling the tights taut against his throat until his veins bulged and the saliva in his mouth gurgled. It wasn’t difficult—I’d seen her tie the tights around him twice already. I imagined her pulling hard and not letting go until the capillaries in his eyes burst, the words “kill the boy band” ringing in my ears.
I imagined my best friend as a murderer.
I was the worst best friend in the world.
“Erin?”
“None of us are guilty,” Erin said. “Whatever happens, we stick to the same story, alright? We were all together and none of us did it.”
“You know what that means, right?” Isabel whispered in my direction. “She totally did it.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Um, I know this is an upsetting time, but collect your feels in an orderly fashion. Who do you think you’re talking to?” Isabel said.
“Way to stick together, you guys!” Apple said. “Can’t we go two minutes without fighting anymore? And let’s stop accusing each other. We just need to be honest about where we all were when Rupert P. passed away. I was at the concert.”