A few minutes later we all stood up and surveyed our handiwork. Rupert Pierpont was stuffed in the bag like a ventriloquist’s dummy in a very small trunk, though probably a lot less lovingly. Thankfully, his face was obscured, so I could imagine he was just a pile of clothes. Apple did the honors of zipping the bag closed.
“Should we say something?” I said.
“What do you mean?” Apple asked.
“I don’t know. It just feels like we should say something. To honor him. Like what people do at funerals and stuff?”
“This isn’t no funeral,” Isabel said.
“It would still be nice,” I said.
“That’s the one thing this death and cover-up is missing,” Isabel said. “Niceness.”
“Forget it.”
“Just say something,” Erin snapped.
Since Erin had agreed to it, Isabel no longer seemed to have any objections, but now that they were all looking at me expectantly I didn’t know what to say.
“Fine, I’ll go,” Isabel said. She cleared her throat. “Rupert Pierpont was a living wonder. He lived and we all wondered how he did it. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, may he juggle with Jesus.”
We stared at her.
“The end,” she said.
It was something. After a moment of silence we got back to the task at hand.
“What if the boys are all in their room right now?” Erin asked.
“Should we text them again?” Apple asked.
“We can’t. If we use Rupert P.’s phone now it will definitely look like foul play.”
“We’re just going to have to risk it,” Isabel said. “It’s now or never, girls. We wanted to meet the boys anyway.”
This was not how I wanted to meet the boys.
But we left the room.
Even though the bag had wheels Apple couldn’t drag it -herself, so Isabel grabbed one corner of the handle and pulled him down the hallway with her.
The four (five?) of us waited in front of the elevator doors silently, not speaking to one another, not even looking at one another. When the doors opened we should’ve looked, or at least said something, because the elevators were going down and I don’t think any of us realized it until the doors closed behind us. We were now stuck riding in the same elevator with four girls, all tweens, and a lone mother acting as chaperone, all wearing The Ruperts T-shirts. The mother too.
“Hi!” one of the girls said. “Are you guys Strepurs too?”
I don’t know why, but our first instinct—without even consulting one another—was to shake our heads firmly and deny we were fans. Usually it was fun meeting other Strepurs and gushing together about our shared love, but I guess we all just wanted to distance ourselves from The Ruperts as much as possible, given the circumstances. Ironic, I know, since we were heading to their room. And we were carrying one of them in our luggage.
“Oh!” the same girl said. She had dirty-blonde hair. She might have been twelve. I know they were only a few years younger than us, but they still seemed way too young to be cavorting around a hotel.
“Well, we’re fans!” Dirty Blonde said.
I don’t want to overuse exclamation points here, but you have to believe me when I tell you that every sentence of hers ended with one. I could virtually see them popping out of her mouth with excited aplomb.
“How are you guys in here?” Erin asked.
“We got a room!” the girl said.
Shit, they were us. This elevator was maybe a portal to a different dimension, because we were staring at ourselves in the mirror and the picture wasn’t pretty.
Was this what we looked like to the outside world? Imbeciles bouncing on the balls of our feet with stupid grins on our faces and tear ducts ready to flood at the drop of a hat, or more likely, at the bat of a boy bander eyelash? Because I’ll tell you right now, it was a scary sight.
“Actually, we just went up to the penthouse floor looking for the boys!”
“You did?” Isabel said. “Any luck?”
“No!” Her face was an emoji. Specifically, the pouty cat with the lone tear on its cheek. “We knocked on every door but no one opened! They’re probably hiding out because Rupert P. just quit! Those poor boys are having a really hard time right now!”
“I heard Rupert X. couldn’t stop crying,” another girl with frizzy hair said.
“I heard Rupert L. is roaming the streets of Manhattan looking all over for Rupert P. so that he can have a real heart-to-heart with him and convince him to rejoin the band.”
Another girl piped up. “I heard Rupert K. bought him a really rare collectible Troll doll that he was waiting to give him for his birthday but he’s going to give it to him tonight because he feels bad and wants him to come back.”
“They’re such good guys!” Frizzy Hair said.
“They really love each other!” Dirty Blonde said.
“Nothing can ever tear them apart!” another one said.
“We’re from Tarrytown!” the last one said.
The four of us didn’t say anything.
I don’t think we knew how to respond. They were really hard to understand. Were they even speaking English? Was this how we sounded to people? I tried to convince myself that we were different from them. Cooler. Better … Saner. But of the two groups, only one was lugging around a dead body in a suitcase.