“We’re your biggest fans,” Isabel said.
The doors opened at the lobby, and the temporary quiet, where the only sound was that of Rupert L.’s breathing, was replaced by the continued noises of the pandemonium I’d heard the last time I was there. It hadn’t subsided at all. In fact, it was louder now. The madness just outside the glass doors had seeped its way inside, and there was no way to avoid it.
We all stepped out of the elevator, and us girls stood back as the cops led the boys away. They bowed their heads, looking down to avoid the flashing camera lights. The glass doors opened and everyone was screaming, despair that their favorite boys were being taken away or happiness that they were finally getting to see them. It was impossible to tell the difference.
Rupert K. turned back around. He was being dragged forward, but he turned his head to see me. The expression on his face was inscrutable. Did he recognize me? Was Isabel just playing mind games with me? Was I playing mind games with myself?
We watched as the cops ushered them to the back of a police car, glowing with all the flashing lights that were bouncing off of it.
None of this was right.
I had to help him.
“I have to help him.”
“Keep saying it,” Isabel said. “Maybe you’ll start to believe it.”
For once I ignored her. I marched through the doors. It had started to rain, which made all the lights—cameras, the blue and red flashes from the cop cars, the beams from the helicopters—reflect off every surface, totally blinding. It took my eyes a moment to adjust. All there was were the flashing lights and thousands of drenched, crying girls. For a moment I wondered if it actually was raining at all, or if it wasn’t just the collective tears of every Strepur in New York.
I spotted the girl from earlier in the day when we were making our way to the front of the hotel, the one who’d said it wasn’t fair that we’d gotten a room. She was hugging one of her friends, and she was crying too, but when she saw me she stopped. Her eyes connected with mine and I could swear she hated me. Her eyebrows settled low, her lips formed a tight line, just shy of a pout. As if somehow she knew exactly what my part was in all of this.
“I didn’t mean to.”
I don’t know if she heard me. Probably not. It was practically Armageddon outside after all. But either way, she only spurred me on further.
It took me a moment to find a police officer. Finally, I spotted one being engulfed in a sticky blob of blubbering girls. Every time he pushed his palm out to keep the girls from coming any closer it got swallowed up, lost for a scary moment before he was able to retrieve it again.
“Excuse me,” I said to the cop. He didn’t hear or he was too busy, so I had to say it again, louder this time. “Excuse me!” It felt like my voice was louder than it had ever been before. “I’d like to confess something.”
“What’s that?” the cop said.
Yeah, what’s that? What was I going to confess? That me and my friends had kidnapped Rupert P. earlier? Despite everything, I still didn’t want to rat them out. But I could still help Rupert K. while minimizing the damage.
“I was with Rupert Kirke.”
“Who?”
“Rupert Kirke? He’s one of The Ruperts? I was with him when Rupert P…. jumped. I’m his alibi.”
The cop rolled his eyes. Couldn’t say I didn’t expect that. “Get in line, miss. Every girl here is Rupert’s alibi.”
I looked around, and it was only then that I really stopped to listen to what the girls around me were screaming. It wasn’t some unintelligible noise of collective anguish. They were saying something. I could pick words and sentences from the air.
“I saw him! He didn’t do anything wrong!”
“I was with Rupert the whole time!”
“I was with Rupert!”
“I was with Rupert!”
“I was with Rupert!”
“Ignore her, she’s simple,” Erin said, suddenly next to me, smiling up at the cop and pulling on my elbow. “She’s just sad, like the rest of us.”
She steered me away. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You know it isn’t right.” We were crossing the street to meet Apple and Isabel, and it almost felt like that time we’d waded through the crowd at the Today show to get to Apple’s tent. It seemed like so long ago. “The boys are going to go down for this and they didn’t do anything wrong.”
“They threw a body off a roof,” Erin said. We were on the other street now, back with Isabel and Apple. “I know he weighed one hundred and five pounds soaking wet, but from that height that scaffolding still felt the fall.”
“According to Twitter, twelve girls were injured,” Apple said. “One girl lost her ability to clap.”