My hand flew to my mouth.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Michelle Hornsbury said, leaping up to go to the bathroom. Once she was out of sight Erin stood up and looked at me. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Just … around.”
“The most important thing ever happens and she’s just around,” Isabel said. “Did you see what Rupert P. supposedly posted on Twitter a few minutes ago?”
Apple shoved her phone in my face. On the screen was Rupert P.’s apparently final tweet.
Goodbuy cruul world … (Going 2 off meself now.) … Buy 4evr.
“Who wrote this?”
“Rupert L. and Rupert X. were talking about Rupert P.’s Twitter password,” Erin said. “It was obviously their idea. And judging by the glaring typos it was Rupert L. who wrote it.”
“You retweeted a suicide note?”
Apple snatched the phone out of my hand. “All the cool kids are doing it.”
She was right. The tweet had only been posted ten minutes ago, but it had already been retweeted over 160,000 times, with even more favorites.
“I don’t want to be here anymore, guys,” Apple said. “This isn’t fun.”
“This stopped being fun hours ago,” Erin said.
“We can’t go,” I said. “The police are downstairs. They said they’re not letting anyone in or out.”
“They won’t even notice us, we can slip right past them,” Erin said. “But what are we going to do about Michelle Hornsbury?”
Right. Michelle Hornsbury. Our loose end. I hadn’t heard her crying in a while. “Why isn’t she crying anymore?”
The four of us looked at one another. Normally not being able to hear Michelle Hornsbury’s oddly British crying would be a kind of blessing, but given the circumstances, it was more suspicious than anything. We all went toward the bathroom without having to consult one another. Erin knocked on the door.
“Michelle? Everything okay in there?”
Nothing for a minute. And then the door opened. Michelle Hornsbury walked out with something orange pinched in her fingers. Tighty-whities, well, tighty-oranges, as it were. The name “Rupert Pierpont” stitched across the back.
“What the bloody hell is this?” Michelle Hornsbury said.
I was going to kill Apple.
Poor choice of words, all things considered, but really, we were all going to kill Apple. If only she didn’t have to collect Rupert P.’s nastiest shit for her shrine, we wouldn’t be in this hashtag-mess. Michelle Hornsbury held up Rupert P.’s underpants for further inspection. It was probably the closest she’d ever gotten to them.
“That’s nothing!” Erin said. She was the quickest of all of us and snatched the thing out of Michelle’s hands.
“Are those pants?”
“Pants?” Isabel said. “Have you seen pants before, or …?”
“Pants!” Michelle Hornsbury said. “What you Yanks call underwear.”
“Definitely not underwear,” I said.
“They’re Rupert’s,” Michelle Hornsbury said.
“Definitely not Rupert’s,” Erin said.
“They have his name stitched into them!”
Shit shit shit. Quick. Somebody had to think quick.
We stared blankly.
“All Rupert P. fangirls have underwear like that, right, Apple?” I thought it was a good way to go, but as I said it I realized I shouldn’t have brought Apple into this. If this situation taught me anything, it was that Apple could not be trusted to make sane decisions when it came to Rupert P., dead or not. If I had only glanced in her direction before I said her name, I would’ve seen that she was hovering behind Michelle Hornsbury with an end-table lamp clutched over her head, ready to strike.
At her house in Connecticut, Apple had added a punching bag to her gym and named it Michelle Hornsbury. I should’ve known this was going to happen.
Erin and Isabel seemed to see it just as I did. We tried to motion to her. Isabel shook her head from side to side slowly. Erin mouthed the word “no” and I tried to discreetly make a “put down the blunt object” motion with my hand.
Of course, Michelle Hornsbury saw all of this. She looked up. “What the hell are you doing?!” She stood and ran to the corner of the room, hiding behind Rupert P.’s death chair, ironically enough.
Apple put the lamp down and walked over to Michelle Hornsbury. Well, I shouldn’t say “walked,” exactly. She stalked.
“So you found your dead fake boyfriend’s underwear in our room. You want a prize or something?”
“I’m not sure I like your tone,” Michelle Hornsbury said.
“You don’t like my tone? Well, I don’t like that you’re practically accusing us of murder.”
“Uh, Apple,” I said. “She really didn’t say that. Like, at all.”
“Didn’t she?!”
“Apple, honey, maybe you should stop talking,” Erin said.
“No, she needs to hear this.”