“Which is to say nothing of the hundreds of girls pledging to kill themselves if the cops don’t let The Ruperts go. Fuck, sometimes even I’m embarrassed to be in this fandom,” Isabel said.
“I can’t live with myself knowing Rupert K. is going to go down for something that I was a part of! He needs to know the truth. Someone needs to know the truth,” I said.
“The truth stays with us,” Isabel said.
“Isabel’s right,” Erin said. “We can’t tell anyone anything. Promise.”
I took her hand and led her away from the other two girls. Before I promised anything I needed to know something.
“Do you believe I did it?”
My sanity was riding on her answer. Literally. She still knew me best. Despite her secrets, and her betrayal. Despite her allegiance to Isabel and her warped ideas about boy bands and teen girls. Erin may have stopped being my best friend, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that she’d still held the title not one hour ago. “Just tell me,” I said. “I need to know what you think.”
“Any of us could’ve done it,” she said. “We all had motive. I even told you I wanted to ‘kill the boy band,’ which in retrospect was a really poor choice of words.”
“Yeah, but the difference is, I don’t actually believe that you killed Rupert P.” I never really suspected Erin. Maybe I let my imagination wander a few times, but despite everything, everything she’d done and all the new things I’d learned about her, I knew Erin wasn’t capable of murder. “Do you believe that I did?”
The rain was turning her light hair dark, and she kept blinking through it. She sighed and bit her lip, the red of it faded by now. She seemed to think of that just as I did because she dug a lip gloss out of her pocket. Michelle Hornsbury’s Pink Lemonade lip gloss.
“You know what?” I said. “Don’t answer that. You were wrong about so much today already.”
“Look—”
“No, you listen to me now.” It was so easy to say that, and I suddenly wondered why I’d never said it to her before. “Maybe obsessing over a boy band is stupid. But so what? You say that us fans are the worst thing that’s happened to society. But all we’re doing is loving cute boys. Is that really so bad?”
“Fans have turned love into something medieval.”
“But that’s love. It’s crazy and great. Being interested in cute boys is what we’re supposed to be doing at this age. You know what we’re not supposed to be doing? Kidnapping people. Murdering them. Inciting riots outside of hotels that are direct results of the bad choices we’ve made. You say our stanning has gone too far, but you’re the one who took things too far, Erin. You ruined people’s lives … You’re a life ruiner.”
The wailing sirens, the girls; I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the destruction we’d caused. So much had changed since the afternoon. Including our friendship. “You told Isabel that I hallucinate that Rupert K. is with me sometimes.”
“I fucked up.” She looked like she meant it, sad enough to cry, and then actually crying. Or maybe that was just the rain, an illusion of false tears on her face. The rain couldn’t make her less beautiful, though. I hated that even then I was thinking that. “I’m sorry, okay?” Erin said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Erin was saying sorry. What a time to be alive indeed. Strangely, it didn’t make me feel any better. Maybe Erin was right. Maybe girls apologized too much.
“Say something,” she said. “Forgive me.”
I wouldn’t give that to her. I wasn’t ready to.
“Please,” Erin said. “I know you. You’re too nice not to accept my apology.”
“Fuck nice,” I said.
I turned and started to walk away.
“Where are you going?” Erin said, calling after me. But I did not turn around. I went back to The Rondack.
I didn’t know what I was doing, going back to the scene of the crime. I guess I needed time to myself, to reflect on what I’d possibly done. I didn’t really believe I’d killed Rupert P., but visualizing my friends murdering him actually made me believe that maybe I was capable of it too. And Isabel and Erin were a convincing pair; if they thought I’d gone crazy, then maybe I had. I mean, how do you know you’re really crazy unless someone tells you that you are? I did dream of seeing Rupert K. all the time.
Maybe I had hallucinated seeing him tonight.
It didn’t help my sanity any that when I opened the door to our hotel room Michelle Hornsbury was there.
She was just standing there, staring at the chair. The one that Rupert P. had once sat on. And she was weeping. Seeing her like that freaked me out. It felt like something out of a horror movie, like seeing a little girl with pigtails in a hallway: You didn’t realize just how creepy something like that could be until suddenly it was. I jumped, and Michelle Hornsbury did too when she heard me.