“Why did you kidnap him?”
At the end of the day there still wasn’t a logical answer to that question. But I guess that was fitting, in a way. There was so little logic to fandom. At the end, the only thing left was passion. Madness. Maybe those two things weren’t so different.
I shrugged. “He was a Rupert.”
She dwelled on this for a minute. Her eyebrows rose and then fell just as quickly. She’d come to be satisfied by this answer, even though I couldn’t possibly understand how she could be.
“Are you going to tell on me?” Michelle Hornsbury asked. “Because I should probably take this time to remind you that I know about the kidnapping, and then the disposal of the body in the boys’ room. The punishment would still be awfully severe for you.”
Always nice getting threatened at the end of the night. “No. I won’t tell on you.” I didn’t know if that was true yet, but I wanted to get out of there alive. Also, somehow, impossibly, I felt sorry for her. I knew she was a psycho, so there was still fear there, but now it was mingled with pity.
“So do you mind if I stay here tonight, then?”
“Go nuts,” I told her.
She shot me a look and I winced, realizing what I’d just said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Michelle Hornsbury watched me carefully for another minute and then just up and walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind her and leaving me like I was another fan she couldn’t deal with. At least she didn’t kill me.
I counted my blessings and got the hell out of there. Outside the room, in the hallway, I dug into my pocket and found my white bead bracelet. A lot of crazy shit had happened since Rupert P. had broken it, but I’d gotten through the night without having to smack it against my skin to feel the sting. I’d have to find another way to commemorate my dad, and that was okay.
I left The Rondack and never looked back.
“That’s quite a story,” the officer said.
I nodded. “Thank you.” And then as soon as I said it I realized I must’ve sounded like an idiot. He hadn’t been complimenting my storytelling abilities.
“Probably didn’t have to be so long, though,” he said, “did it?”
“What?” This was not the reaction I was expecting. I was sitting on the chair beside his desk at the precinct, people bustling about all around us. It had taken a week since everything went down at The Rondack for me to muster up the courage to come down here and make this confession. Not to sound like a snob or anything, but honestly, I thought there’d be a bit more fanfare.
“Your story,” the officer said. He looked at his watch, brought it right to his face, squinted, and then pulled it back farther, opening his eyes wider. “It took hours to tell.”
“I thought it would be important not to spare any details.”
“Yeah, but we’re talking about hours here. Four hours of my life.”
“I’m sorry?”
“An abridged version woulda done the job.”
I was about to say something but then thought better of it. He really did seem kind of annoyed that my story had been so long, and I didn’t want to annoy him any more than I clearly already had. I stuck my hands out toward him, palms up, wrists together. “Are you going to arrest me now?”
“Arrest you?”
“I just confessed to kidnapping and framing somebody for murder. And I just told you who actually did kill Rupert Pierpont.”
“The girl who was in here before you did the same thing,” the cop said.
My hands fell to my lap. “Excuse me?”
“Her story had her seducing all the Ruperts and then smothering Rupert Pierpont with a pillow in a sacrificial ritual. And it only took her ten minutes to tell it. Ten minutes.”
“Look, I’m sorry that my story was so long, but—”
“Your friends, this Erin and Apple and Isabel—they’ll corroborate all this?”
“No, but—”
The cop closed a file on his desk and sat up a little, stretching out his right leg. “Few days ago we got a girl in here that actually planted her own evidence in the hotel to make it look like she had something to do with the murder. Another girl confessed to killing Rupert Pierpont in music video fashion on YouTube. Do you really think you’re the only one trying to get The Ruperts off?”
“I didn’t know—”
“There’s hundreds of you girls,” the cop said. “Making a mockery of the NYPD. But I’m forced to listen to all of you until we officially close this case. I honestly don’t know if you girls just want attention or if you really do love those boys too much. But I’ll tell you one thing: It scares me.”
I watched him shake his head from side to side, a silent whistle escaping his lips. In that headshake I could see exactly what he was thinking about. He was wondering what happened to the good old days. He was wondering when girls got so gosh darn complicated. He didn’t have a clue.
“Fans,” he sighed. A bad word when he said it.
“Fans,” I repeated, serious.
“You girls …”