The Dead Queens Club, page 25
Eustace overtrumps with the queen of spades and says, “Sorry. Looks like there’s a new queen in command.”
Which is a solid comeback. “Okay,” I say, “but seriously, it’s not like Cat’s going to promote you just because you fed her some gossip.”
He smirks.
“You asshole. You’re literally just trying to generate drama for your own entertainment, aren’t you?”
One of the theater guys deals the next hand, and Eustace shrugs. “You’re the one running Dead Queens.”
“My blog is both transparent and democratic, thank you very much.”
“We’ll see if it stays that way now that you’re getting your fifteen minutes,” he says with the kind of wicked grin that can only be accomplished with months of dedicated practice time.
But I don’t get around to a rebuttal because that’s when Henry starts texting from the basketball bus, and in the euchre game of life, Henry will literally always trump Useless Chapman.
Henry: We need to talk
Me: word choice? or was that intentionally threatening
And then, like a tenth of a second later, Parker texts me, too: Btw don’t tell H anything!!
Me: about what?
Parker: NOT FUNNY
Parker: Delete these messages
Parker: Delete ALL messages from me
So much for laughing it off.
Then Henry’s back: What are you doing?
Me: reporting. wearing a dinosaur shirt but this isn’t the best time for sexting, sorry
Henry: Not funny
Tough crowd.
So I get boring, because he’s in Serious Game Mode: I can hang out later if you want.
I survive the play by spending the entire time on Dead Queens while Eustace puts together a review so ridiculously scathing, it would make Dead George proud. That’s what Cat gets for putting me on editorial standards watchdog duty for a guy she’s using as a spy.
She’s pretty savvy, but we’re pretty obstinate.
Anyway, by the time we’re walking out, the bus is pulling back in from the game, and Henry meets me at his car looking like he literally just conquered the world.
“Cleves!” he yells, and then he picks me up and spins me around like I’m some dainty Katie Howard type.
Keep in mind that this is our first face-to-face interaction since our attempted hookup. Or at least our first interaction that didn’t also involve Cat Parr doing her best vampire impersonation on his neck. Before he literally swept me off my feet, I was planning on going for a cordial, platonic, and professional high-five.
This does feel like the better choice, though. At least to the anti-establishment contrarian in me.
He sets me back down and I almost lose my balance. “Good game?”
“We destroyed them.” He gets into the car.
I get in, too. Now that we’re talking again, I can’t even remember why I was so sure things were going to be awkward between us. I mean, as long as we’re not meeting his dad for dinner, I’d say we’re solid. “Where are we going?” I ask him.
“Wherever,” he says, and then he cranks up the radio and turns the heat on full blast and opens the windows. It’s like a loud blizzard in Hell, and I love it. As we drive out to nowhere, I can almost forget the last month even happened.
I’m definitely a fan.
Eventually we’re out of the fields and onto a road lined on one side with big houses spaced claustrophobia-close. Henry pulls into a driveway and shuts off the radio, and that’s when I realize how freakishly quiet this overcrowded mini-mansion commune is. And dark.
Nobody’s here.
“So...did the rapture happen while we were driving? And this used to be a colony of devout rich guys?”
Henry laughs and gets out. “Welcome to Culver,” he says. He heads up the driveway toward one of the empty houses. It’s three stories high and looks slightly precarious, given how skinny the lot is.
“Is this the town with Lake...Madagascar?”
“Maxinkuckee.” Henry’s on the porch now. He runs his hand under a windowsill and goes, “Ha!” and holds up a key. Then he bounds back down the steps and over to the garage—bounds, even though he’s got an ice pack sealed onto his leg with two hundred square yards of Saran wrap—and unlocks the side door. Something inside starts beeping, but Henry ducks into the dark and after a second, the beeping stops.
“Let the record show that I had no hand in this home invasion.”
But of course he ignores my reservations, grabs my hand, and pulls me inside. He flips the lights to reveal a garage that has more interior design than your average living room. There’s art on the walls and even the shelving is color-coordinated. The space could fit three cars, but instead there’s just a Jet Ski on a trailer, which in context looks kind of like a sculpture on a pedestal.
“It’s not a home invasion if it’s your own place,” Henry says.
“I’m dying to hear the mental gymnastics you did to categorize this as your house.”
“Technically it’s the Howards’,” he tells me.
“Sounds like a fairly significant technicality.”
He hits a button on the wall and one of the doors starts to roll up. “My dad’s grandfather owned this property. He gave it to Norfolk’s grandfather.”
“In that case, I totally stand by whatever we’re doing.”
“What we’re doing,” he says, “is cashing in a debt.”
“You’re a terrible influence.”
“You love it.” He crosses the garage to check out the Jet Ski.
“So this is the lake house Parker’s always talking about?” I ask. Which seems like a better approach than bringing up any dead Howards or Boleyns.
“God, everything’s bragging material for her.”
Whenever Henry talks about her, he gets annoyed. Which is retroactively understandable, since she’s running around telling every living girl he’s ever dated that he’s a killer, but that’s a new development. And he doesn’t even know about it. “What’s up with you guys hating each other, anyway?”
“Rochford and me?” He starts unwrapping the ice pack on his leg. “Can’t trust her.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“She’s self-serving as hell. She’ll throw you under the bus when she’s done with you.”
“Okay, but if that’s true, wouldn’t she have done it when we broke up?”
He drops the bag of ice and goes around to the front of the trailer—the part you’d hook up to a truck. “You sell yourself so short.”
“Right. That’s why you dumped me.”
“Don’t be like that. You know it was mutual.”
Mutually stupid. “Whatever. But there’s no strategic reason for Parker to stay friends with me.”
“People like you. You’re different.”
“Because I’m not like other girls?” I accompany this with an obnoxious foot pop and eyelash flutter. It’s too bad I don’t have a flower crown or something to help me fully capitalize on this dumb trope.
“Come on. You do it on purpose.”
I give him the double middle finger.
“Anyway, she’s probably using you for something. I just don’t know what it is.”
“Nice.”
“That’s what I’m saying. She’s not nice.” He picks up the front of the Jet Ski trailer and starts wheeling it out into the driveway. “Give me a hand with this?”
“I don’t even want to know what we’re doing,” I say, but I start pushing the trailer anyway. We’re probably going to take it back to Lancaster and leave it on Cat’s lawn. “But back on topic: I don’t have anything Parker wants. Unless she’s in it for my encyclopedic knowledge of Netflix documentaries or my off-brand aviator collection.”
We have the trailer all the way out of the garage now, and Henry swings it onto the grass. “It’s not going to be obvious. You won’t even notice.”
“Your confidence in my observational skills is incredibly inspiring,” I retort.
“Did you know she was helping Katie and Tom hook up?”
“Of course not,” I say way too fast, because I’d definitely rather have him knock my powers of deduction than group me into the helping-his-girlfriend-cheat category.
“So you probably wouldn’t notice if she set you up for whatever she’s plotting.”
“She’s not plotting. Don’t be dumb. You’re the one who plots.”
“Takes one to know one,” he says grimly. “She’s getting friendly with Cat lately, isn’t she?”
I stop pushing the trailer. “Wow, Henry. You really know how to make a girl paranoid.”
“I don’t want her using you.”
“She’s not. She trusts me.”
“Right.” We pass the end of the house, and Henry aims for the lake.
“Seriously, the shit she’s told me lately—” I stop, because let’s be real: Parker’s murderer story really doesn’t deserve any publicity.
“What did she say? That I’m going to dump Cat?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s stupid.”
He powers through the last few yards to the water. “Cleves. What did she say?”
“Not worth repeating.”
“Come on. Tell me.” He comes around to my side of the Jet Ski and takes my hands, and we stay like that, looking into each other’s eyes, and I swear it’s like he’s reading my mind.
“Just prom stuff. You know. The fire wasn’t Anna’s fault, blah blah.”
He laughs. “Classic. Did she mention she was the one who told me Anna was cheating?”
“Yeah, right. That was Jane Seymour.”
“It was all Rochford.”
“But I thought you told me—”
“Listen,” he says. “She was obsessed with George. And she was jealous of how close Anna and George were, so of course she spilled Anna’s secrets. She’s all about payback bullshit.” He shrugs. “But then Anna lost it, and then the Tower happened.”
I’m beginning to question my prom investigation, because every new version of the story sucks worse than the previous one. It’s way less fun than originally anticipated. “You mean—”
He nods. “If Parker didn’t tell, Anna wouldn’t have done the Tower. If Anna didn’t do the Tower, George wouldn’t have died.”
His words hit me like an exploding scaffold. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. I don’t know if anybody really knows—nobody who lived through it, anyway. But I do know Parker would swear by any possible excuse if she thought there was even a one-in-a-million chance that her clinical addiction to gossip is the spark that lit the fireworks.
She can’t believe she killed George. It might actually, literally, kill her, too.
“Fuck,” I say, sitting down on one of the trailer wheels.
He pulls me back to my feet. “I won’t let her screw with you, okay?”
“I mean, thanks, but I’m more thinking she’s just...losing it.”
“She’s not.”
“Hypothetically?” I say. Maybe Henry’s type is girls who overuse hypotheticals.
“You’ve seen her mess with people. She’s a pro. You know that.”
“I mean, yeah, but—” And I’m trying exceptionally hard to pretend Henry’s wrong, but I’m thinking about Parker and Lina bestie-ing it up before Anna bulldozed her way to the center of Parker’s precious Exclusives table, and how everybody says Parker was Jane Seymour’s number one fan before Anna was even cold, and how Jane’s just another ex-friend these days.
And how Parker barely has time for me anymore now that Katie’s gone and Cat’s the new queen bee.
“But we’re friends,” I say, and then I’m literally crying right here in the middle of the Howards’ yard. Which is even more embarrassing than it sounds, trust me.
Henry pulls me in against his chest.
“God, I miss Katie,” I mumble into his jacket.
He hugs me tighter, snot and tears and all. “I miss her, too.”
We stay like that for a minute, and then I’m the one who kills it, because suddenly I’m laughing instead of crying.
“What?” Henry says.
I shake my head. “It’s so dumb. We’re so dumb. We’re worse than the kids whose parents force them onto talk shows to scare everybody else into parenting their kids better.”
He starts laughing, too. “And we were supposed to be growing up.”
“We’re regressing. I’m a side piece, and Parker thinks you’re a murderer, and—”
“She said that?”
“I told you she’s unhinged. And Cat’s just over in the journalism room trying to be useful in all the things she does, and we’re all so useless, and she’s like, ‘Where the hell is my corner office in the New York Times building?’”
We’re laughing so hard we’re almost back to crying. They can definitely hear us all the way across Lake Maximillionaire, and somebody’s probably going to call the Marine Police or the National Guard or whatever. But I don’t care, because the only thing I need right now is to forget about Ms. Parr and Judas Rochford and Anna bin Laden and every last Lancaster kid.
Except Henry.
“Goals,” he says.
“Best senior year ever,” I yell.
Henry spins me around and sets me back on my feet. Then he kicks through the ice at the edge of the lake and wades in with the Jet Ski. I wade in, too, and climb on behind him. He revs the motor to life, and it’s louder than a full military assault.
If the Marine Police weren’t onto us before, they definitely are now.
But it doesn’t matter. Henry launches us off into the dark, and I clutch onto him for dear life. Then we’re flying across the lake, and I scream because (a) why the hell not, and (b) who gives a shit, and (c) we’re Henry and Cleves, and everybody else can suck it.
We own this lake and this stolen Jet Ski and this ghost town night.
We’ll figure the rest out later.
Culver Neighborhood Watch
Does a Really Great Job
The Marine Police never catch us.
We come back after half an hour, because it’s so cold that we’d probably die if we stayed out any longer. I lose my balance while I’m disembarking and fall face-first into the water.
“She’s beauty and she’s grace,” I sing. Or sort of atonally yell through chattering teeth, if we’re being honest.
Henry leans off the Jet Ski to pull me up, but then of course he falls in, too.
I let go of his hand and pull a glob of mud out of my hair. “She’ll fall flat on her face.”
He tries to get up. He falls over again. We’re winners through and through.
Eventually we get the Jet Ski back on the trailer and into the garage—and by “we,” I mean “Henry,” while I do what I would optimistically call “quality control,” but mostly consists of shouting unhelpfully whenever the wheels start taking out the shrubbery. Then Henry shuts the garage door, but instead of going back out to the car, he heads inside.
“Want anything?” He’s already in the kitchen. I’m right behind him, dripping lake water all over the perfect hardwood floors. The cops will have a clear roadmap of events when Norfolk Howard reports a burglary.
“A sauna,” I say as he digs around in a cabinet and unearths a lone bag of chips.
Henry rips the bag open but leaves it on the counter. He snags a beach towel from a closet, tackles me with it, and sends us crashing into the breakfast nook, where of course we knock three chairs over. “God, you’re freezing,” he says.
“Yeah, well, I fell in a lake.”
He pulls a leaf out of my hair. “This was the best idea.”
“I’m not going to argue. I’m just saying my entire body is caked in frozen mud.”
He leads me out of the kitchen and points up the stairs. “There’s a shower straight up and to the right. The room across the hall has plenty of clothes.”
I pry my shoes off, but I still leave footprints all the way up to the most concerning bathroom I’ve ever encountered. Two of the walls are solid mirrors, and the other two are floor-to-ceiling windows, and I can’t figure out how to close the blinds, so I shower in the dark, obviously.
Wrapped up in a fluffy and fashionable Howard-Boleyn towel, I head for the room Henry was talking about and flip the lights on. The second I see everything, I do a stage-worthy uncontrollable shiver.
It’s Anna’s room.
Creepy factor: off the charts.
There’s a fancy sound system, so I turn it on, since I’m kind of freaking out and I want the company. It’s classical piano, but not Hannibal Lecter-ish and not Edward Cullen-ish, either. Dramatic and flashy. The walls are super-white with big paintings in black frames, and they’re all aggressive abstract things with lots of texture. Past a giant bookshelf is another black-framed masterpiece, but this one isn’t art. It’s photos.
Which of course I need to investigate, for journalistic reasons.
There’s Anna and George and Parker on the pier. Anna and George dressed up outside a church. Anna and a bunch of girls in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Anna and Katie on a boat. Anna playing piano. Anna and Henry, and she’s laughing so hard she’s blurred.
She looks so real, it legit feels like prom never happened and any second she’s going to come in like, what are you doing in my—
Then there’s a hand on my shoulder, and I go through the ceiling. And scream. And almost lose my towel. So by the time I turn around, I have one hand clutching the towel shut and the other in a velociraptor claw configuration.
Henry’s standing there, dying of laughter.
“Not funny,” I say, waving my claw in his face.
He goes over to Anna’s closet and throws an unimaginably pretentious dressing gown thing at me.
“Dude, you know sexy bathrobes are absolutely not my aesthetic.” I smooth my towel down. “Isn’t there a T-shirt somewhere?”
