The Dead Queens Club Read online




  If your school’s homecoming king had a little too much in common with Henry VIII, would you survive with your head still attached?

  You’d think being the new girl in a tiny town would equal one very boring senior year. But if you’re me—Annie Marck, alias Cleves—and you accidentally transform into teenage royalty by entering Lancaster High on the arm of the king himself? Life becomes the exact opposite of boring.

  Henry has it all: he’s the jock, the genius and the brooding bad boy all in one. Which sort of explains why he’s on his sixth girlfriend in two years.

  What it doesn’t explain is why two of them—two of us—are dead.

  My best friend thinks it’s Henry’s fault, which is obviously ridiculous. My nemesis says we shouldn’t talk about it, which is straight-up sketchy. But as the resident nosy new girl, I’m determined to find out what really happened to Lancaster’s dead queens...ideally before history repeats itself.

  Praise

  “A fun, fresh twist on Henry VIII! Full of snark, laughs, and a whole lot of heart... Hannah Capin has a witty new voice that’s sure to make heads roll.”

  —Whitney Gardner, award-winning author of You’re Welcome, Universe

  “A clever, irresistible twist on history that you’ll want to follow to the end. I was rooting hard for Cleves the whole time, but I have to admitI also fell for Henry. I loved this book!”

  —Cynthia Hand, New York Times bestselling author of My Lady Jane

  “So are you Team Lina or Team Anna?”

  Parker gave me a pointed look. “They’re both amazing girls, okay?”

  “One of them teaches orphans to read. The other one steals people’s boyfriends.”

  “That’s really reductive, don’t you think?”

  And there I was, called out by a girl most people would write off as plastic on sight. “Point taken. But—”

  Then the bedroom door opened, and we shut it straight down, because there she was, in the flesh, wearing indoor sunglasses and an oppressively yellow dress and shoes most people would categorize as weaponry.

  Anna Boleyn.

  The Dead Queens Club

  HANNAH CAPIN

  To Katharine, Anne, Jane, Anne, Katheryn, Kateryn, and Jane.

  And to Cat: you are eternally the Trastámara and Marck to my Howard girl.

  Hannah Capin lives in Tidewater Virginia. When she isn’t writing, you’ll find her sailing, singing, or getting entirely too invested in the lives of historical women. The Dead Queens Club is her first novel.

  Contents

  Homecoming

  Indiana Teenagers Demonstrate Poor Study Habits

  Summer Camp Contributes to Life of Petty Crime

  Police Have No Leads in Lancaster Auto Theft

  Program Attendees Redefine “Progress”

  Boy, 17, Dumps Recycling Instead of Girl

  Being the New Kid Doesn’t Always Suck: More at Eleven

  Corporations a Factor in Downfall of American Youth

  “Hmm,” Says Psychic, Channeling Spirit of Sigmund Freud

  Cheer Captain Takes High School Somewhat Too Seriously

  New Research Suggests Attending Class Is Overrated

  No Charges Pressed in Howard Heights Burglary

  “Business Casual Is Always Appropriate,” Claims Reincarnated Fascist Dictator

  Rumors of Lancaster Cheer Squad Hazing True, Sources Say

  Peanut Gallery Offers Insights into Intramural Inveiglement

  Breaking: Ledger Reporter Isn’t Actually Rabid Anna Fan

  Do Homecoming Kings Have Any Actual Responsibilities? Correspondent Goes Deep Undercover to Investigate

  Designated Driver Tells All, and No One Else Can Remember Enough to Know If It’s True

  Schoolboard Rules That All Parties Must Include a Fight

  End of the Road

  Slumber Parties: Not Just for Sexy Pillow Fights Anymore

  Overly Ambitious Girlfriend Both Better and Worse Than Anticipated

  Courtly Intrigues: Coming Soon to a High School Near You

  “That Escalated Quickly,” Says Absolutely Everyone

  “I Love the Smell of Drama in the Morning,” Claims Combatant

  Girls at Corner Table Definitely Not Plotting to Overthrow Government

  Scientists Determine That Time Slows Down During School Dances

  Lancaster Youth Carry on Time-Honored Traditions

  United States Congress Bans Texting

  Correspondent Miraculously Does Not Get Lost in Woods but Everything Else Continues to Be Shitty Anyway

  Nothing Goes Wrong and Everyone Makes It Home by Curfew

  Number Six

  Bad Times at Lancaster High

  Best Day Ever Continues to Improve

  Hell Hath No Fury Like a Writer Scorned

  Transatlantic Lecturing Proves Ineffective

  Local Basement Surprisingly Classy When Footballer-Free

  Sordid Past Haunts Teenage Revolutionary

  True Life: My Internet Persona Is Cooler Than Me

  Correspondent Baffles Literally Everyone with Her Shockingly Poor Decision-Making Skills

  Lancaster Homeowners Lament Presence of Unchaperoned Teenage Pedestrians

  Alien Abduction Likely Cause of Students’ Disappearance

  College or Exile? Reports Remain Unclear

  Illinois Sues Indiana Over Seymour Expatriation

  Shit Hits Fan

  Suspect Apprehends Self

  Reporter Seeks Political Hunger Strike to Join Following Lunch-Related Injuries

  Editor-in-Chief Is Life of Party, Says No One

  Marine Police Under Investigation in Negligence Suit

  Culver Neighborhood Watch Does a Really Great Job

  Operation Desdemona

  Nobody Expects the Fort Wayne Inquisition

  Public Service Announcement: Your Attic Is Probably Cursed and You Definitely Should Not Go Up There

  Correspondent Is Extremely Done with Boys

  At Last, an Answer to “Will I Ever Use This in Real Life?”

  Does Lancaster High School Even Have a Journalism Teacher? Parent-Teacher Association Raises Concerns

  Nothing to See in Howard Heights; Definitely No Plotting at All

  Stalking: The Trend That’s Sweeping the Nation

  Students Go Above and Beyond on English Assignment

  Seriously Just Stay Out of the Damn Woods, Says Local Teen

  Once Upon a Time Things Did Not Suck

  Correspondent Honestly Doesn’t Have the Words for This

  The King Is Dead

  Teenage Girls Achieve Immortality

  Acknowledgments

  Homecoming

  Indiana Teenagers

  Demonstrate Poor Study Habits

  Henry calls me at 12:01 the night before homecoming. Or technically—and assuming the alarm clock I knock off my nightstand once a day is even in the right time zone—the morning of homecoming.

  “Cleveland. I need you. Put some pants on.”

  I pause the third episode in my Air Crash Investigation marathon. I’m supposed to be writing the world’s most uninteresting article for The Lion Ledger, our school paper, but literal fiery death is better than forcing myself to care about city council elections. “Who says I’m not wearing pants?”

  “Come on. I know you’re not.”

  I dangle one hand off the bed, snag a pair of black-and-white cow-print pajama bottoms, and wrestle into them. “I totally am.” r />
  “You are now.”

  “Yeah. Pay up. Where are we going?”

  “The dump,” he says. “The one in York.”

  “The whole truth.”

  “And then Walmart. And then school. And then Katie’s.”

  “Okay, Henry, no. I’m just a bystander in your relationships, remember?” I grab a bottle of Mountain Dew from my nightstand and chug the rest of it.

  “But you’re never a bystander in pranking.”

  “I’m not helping you torture your innocent girlfriend.”

  “Right, but what if she’s not?”

  “Your girlfriend? Then I’d congratulate her.”

  “Not innocent, Cleves.” He’s laughing. “Come on.”

  “And yet you’re the one conscripting people into pulling off some plot when they’re just trying to pantslessly enjoy making themselves afraid of flying.”

  “Are you watching that plane crash show again?”

  I cram my feet into a double-knotted pair of Chucks. “It’s compelling.”

  “It’s sick.”

  “So is torturing your girlfriend.”

  “It’s not torture. It’s fair play.”

  “Dude, she’s your fifth girlfriend since January. Maybe you’re the problem.”

  “Not this time, Dr. Phil. Trust me.”

  “You’re a bastard,” I tell him, but I’m already opening my window and climbing out. “I’ll see you in two minutes.”

  Summer Camp

  Contributes to Life of Petty Crime

  I first met Henry the summer before junior year. We were at this camp that’s basically school, except with harder classes and more hooking up. Most of the other kids were there on purpose. A lot of them were actually excited about it.

  I, on the other hand, just wanted to be home reading crappy thrillers and hanging out with my friends and possibly getting in trouble. Or doing anything other than six weeks of breakneck studying.

  The first Saturday of camp, everybody else was pairing off at this ’80s party and choreographing how to sneak into each other’s rooms. I was in the lounge sending ugly selfies to my friend Sybil back in Cleveland and seriously considering making an Advent chain to count down the days left at Overachiever Camp when I noticed that this guy two seats over was taking ugly selfies at the same impressive pace I was. So I took a picture of him, obviously, and of course that was the exact second he looked up.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Um, yeah,” I replied, but I went ahead and sent the picture to Sybil anyway, with the caption “oops busted.” Then I figured we were already at peak awkwardness, so I said, “Great form,” and he laughed instead of looking creeped out, which would have been a much more rational reaction.

  “Keep a copy for when I’m famous.”

  He said it like it was this casual but definite thing, the way normal people say when I brush my teeth tomorrow. If anybody else at camp said the same thing in the same non-kidding way, I would’ve added them to my “ugh” list and told them I, too, planned to be famous, as the Guinness Book of World Records title holder for owning history’s largest collection of toenail clippings. Or something.

  But with him, I just figured, you know. Yeah. Accurate. I mean, up until that moment, I hadn’t even seen his entire face, because he’d always been in the middle of a swarm of Overachievers when I’d seen him around. He had a full entourage even when he went to grab extra ketchup in the dining hall. I had a few theories about his popularity, one of which involved a form of catnip that attracted academically enthusiastic humans and another that cast Selfie Boy as the favorite son of Harvard’s dean of admissions. Which was essentially the same thing.

  But now that the entourage was one room over getting their “Dancing Queen” groove on, and I could give Selfie Boy the undivided attention the rest of the universe had been giving him all week, I got it. This sounds borderline culty, but you know how people always say somebody’s “magnetic,” and you just think of it like another word? Like how “literally” doesn’t literally mean literally, and “chill” isn’t a temperature? Well, as of that instant, I realized what “magnetic” really means. That somebody has this actual invisible force field that draws everybody else in. To the point that I couldn’t believe I’d been wasting my time with the kids in my lab group when I could’ve been doing whatever Selfie Boy was doing, which was undoubtedly much, much better.

  Even if he was just grabbing extra ketchup in the dining hall.

  Luckily—although perhaps also surprisingly—I have enough social graces that I didn’t verbalize this. Instead I went with, “Who’s getting the pictures?”

  “My girlfriend,” Selfie Boy said, holding up his phone. The girl on the screen was crossing her eyes and there was a toy monkey on her head, but she was totally gorgeous in that organic-moisturizer-ad kind of way. Like she did yoga and drank green smoothies and probably meditated, too.

  “Damn. Good work.”

  “I know, she’s beautiful, right? And smart. And she kills it on the lacrosse field.”

  “What’s the catch?” I asked, even though everything I knew about natural selection indicated that his girlfriend was probably flawless and likely the result of an international search, several years of think-tank negotiations, and a personal consultation with the Pope. “Heartless mean girl?”

  “Try again. She’s volunteering in Guatemala this summer.”

  “Did she also save a busload of nuns from careening off a cliff on her way to the airport?”

  He smirked, but it was the proudest, most affectionate smirk I’d ever seen. Like he’d completely won at life by landing such an unsurpassable partner in magnetic-ness. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “So what’s her name?”

  “Lina. Catalina Trastámara Aragón-Castilla.”

  “That settles it. I’m stealing her identity and breaking out of here.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Why? Is it more work than you thought it was going to be?”

  “It’s pretty much the same amount of work I thought it was going to be. Unfortunately.”

  “Oh,” he said, but he sounded confused, like too much work didn’t translate into whatever secret language he and Lina probably spoke. Which might have just been Spanish, but I was taking German, because Ninth-Grade Me went through a deep and inexplicable World War II phase.

  “The thing is,” I told him, “until two weeks ago, I thought I was going to be spending my summer getting sunburned and going on adventures. Then my parents went all career-counselor on me, and here we are.”

  “So this is supposed to make you competitive for pre-med?”

  I actually started laughing.

  “What?”

  “Come on. If you had to choose one kid at this camp who’s definitely not going to be cutting people open for a living...” I pointed at myself.

  “Pre-law?”

  “I’d gavel myself to death.”

  “Political science?”

  “Bingo. I’m your future Commander-in-Chief.” I went for a presidential pose, but nothing really worked, so I wound up saluting. “But no. They just want to trick me into figuring out a real future day job. Since writing overly opinionated and slightly satirical thrillers isn’t the most practical career track anyone’s ever thought of.”

  He took another ugly selfie. “A political career might boost your sales.”

  “Especially if I come up with a really original scandal. Get Capitol Hill out of the adultery rut. You know, like start an organized crime ring to import exotic animals into the secret tunnels under the West Wing.”

  I scooted my chair a little closer to his, so we weren’t spaced quite as much like one of us had a highly contagious disease. “What about you? I have this terrible suspicion that you’re here of your own free will. Even though you kind of look like
you got lost on your way to football camp.”

  “I paid the tuition myself,” he said. “And football doesn’t start until the week we go home.”

  “I’m starting to see how you and Catalina Tarantula Amazon-Coachella ended up together. You’re a prepackaged power couple.”

  He flashed a very JFK-looking smile. “We know what we want.”

  “World domination. Duh.” I kicked my shoes off and swung my legs over the arm of the chair. Somehow Selfie Boy’s literally literal magnetic-ness wasn’t intimidating at all. It was the exact opposite, actually, like we were long-lost preschool best friends or something. “I guess my main question is why the hell you’re talking to me instead of... I don’t know. The dean.”

  “Work hard, play hard,” he said. “You’re not here for the library time.”

  “Accurate.”

  Another campaign-winning grin. “We’ll make this summer interesting. Count on it.”

  And then I realized I didn’t know his name, even though we were pretty much jumping ourselves into America’s tamest two-kid gang. He must have had the same thought, because he said, “I’m Henry, by the way.”

  “Annie.”

  He actually winced. “Annie doesn’t work. You’re not wearing enough pink.”

  “I’m allergic,” I said, looking down at my outfit. I was interpreting the evening’s theme with an off-the-shoulder T-shirt (courtesy of my roommate’s nail scissors) and a giant pair of boxers with REAGAN BUSH ’84 across the ass.

  “Well, where are you from?” he asked.

  “Cleveland.”

  “Cleveland.”

  He said it like a statement, judgment-free, but I wasn’t taking any chances. “We have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a legitimately fancy orchestra. It’s the New York City of northern Ohio.”

  “I’m not knocking Cleveland. I’m saying that’s your name.” It was another absolute.

  “Cleveland?”

  He nodded. “Cleves for short.”

  “Perfect. I’ll put in the paperwork.”

  While this might not be the expected conclusion to an encounter between a creeper and a human magnet, we had thoroughly boredom-proofed the summer and crafted the foundations of a truly beautiful friendship before our fellow Overachievers had even vacated the dance floor.