Anne & Henry Read online

  I flick it aside.

  “She drank a lot of tequila,” John says, a little quiet, almost nervous.

  I’m only a third of the way through the stack and the knot in my stomach has already grown to the size of a walnut.

  “She doesn’t like tequila,” I say.

  Rick scoots back in his chair, scraping the metal legs across the floor. The noise grates on my nerves. When I look up, my gaze settles on the bar where the waitress pours coffee, adds flavoring, whispers with customers and coworkers. Her lips are so thin they almost disappear, but there’s something compelling about them, something that makes me stare a little longer than I should.

  She looks up and for a quick second our eyes connect. It happens so fast, blink and you’d miss it.

  How much did I miss about Anne?

  My mother’s advice echoes in my subconscious. I rewind my actions, everything I’ve done, or not done, in the months since I met Anne. The missed speaking engagements, the deception, standing up for her in front of Catherine, John, and all of my friends.

  This isn’t me.

  No matter how hard it is to live in Arthur’s shadow, to live up to my family’s expectations, I’ve never resorted to—

  I’m a damn walking cliché.

  The king of fools.

  I flip to the next image. Anne with some guy I don’t know, can’t place at school, in Medina. Her head tilts back like it does when I say something funny, when she’s joking with me. The picture’s grainy, but I’m positive that guy’s hand is on my girlfriend’s ass.

  A jealous charge surges through my muscles, making me twitch. “Who’s this goof?”

  John leans across the table for a closer look. “Geoffrey? Joffrey? Fuck. Can’t remember.”

  I add that picture to the one of Anne licking her wrist. Create a small pile on the table. The other photographs are easy to rationalize, to excuse—I know Anne is just trying to be one of us, to really fit in.

  She doesn’t.

  Maybe I’ve always known, but the hard realization burrows under my skin and hollows out my bones. Her outburst at my dinner only strengthened the nagging doubt that’s lingered since the party. I’ve got to break it off.

  Another set of images shows Anne in various poses, most of them without a drink in her hand. It’s hard to believe she’s drunk. But her arm is draped around Catherine in one, eyes a little too red. I’ve known Catherine long enough to read the body language—stiff, uncomfortable, looking for an escape. There are two pictures of Anne doing tequila shots. The background is fuzzy. Geoffrey—Gregory?—makes an appearance in one of them. Anne is pressed up against him, looking up in adoration as though she’s tripped and he’s saved her.

  “So, she drank too much,” I say, trying to ignore the growing lump in my gut. It’s twice the size now, two times as heavy. If I stood in the middle of the floor, I’d drop straight through. “People do stupid things when they’re drunk.”

  I shove the stack of remaining pictures aside and lean back, take a sip of cold coffee. The excuse doesn’t sit with my friends. Hell, it doesn’t even sit with me.

  Rick nods, slow, as if he’s taking time to form the right words. “For sure,” he finally says, and rests his hands on the table to lean forward. “But she’s out of control. Look what happened last time she got drunk.”

  Neither of them knows the real story of the accident, but the rumors are hard to ignore—especially when I know they’re true. The waitress walks by again, glances at our table. The surface is peppered with inappropriate photographs—I’m almost embarrassed to know what she’s thinking.

  I gather them up quickly, but in my rush the bottom picture floats onto the table, image side up.

  A sharp pain radiates through my chest.

  Two bodies press together, heads angled, lips interlocked. Even without asking, without absolute confirmation, I know that’s John’s mouth on Anne’s, his hand on her ass.

  A growl rips through me.

  I reach across the table and grab John’s collar, yanking him close. Rage explodes through my muscles. My face is so hot I’m sure it will burst into flame. “You bastard.”

  “Back off, Henry,” Rick says, always the mediator, the voice of reason. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Bullshit,” I say. A fleck of spit lands on John’s cheek. He doesn’t flinch. The back of my neck heats up, and I release John’s hoodie, aware we’ve attracted attention.

  “We had a deal,” John says, his tone gruff. “She’s a tramp. This is proof.”

  “You set her up.”

  “No one poured the booze down her throat,” Rick says.

  I rub my hand across the photograph and close my eyes, remembering a time when Anne danced for me. How my heart raced and my blood boiled. How I would have done anything then, anything she wanted, to make her mine.

  A low groan of denial explodes from my lips.

  I have sacrificed so much.

  My eyes fall back on the photograph. I can’t help it. “Looks like you enjoyed yourself,” I say to John.

  He shrugs. “We were drinking, man. Shit happened.” He hangs his head. “Maybe it shouldn’t have, but the way she was going . . .” A long sigh, and then, “. . . if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else.”

  I snarl. “It should have been.”

  “Maybe,” Rick says. He spreads out his palms. “But you and I know this isn’t about John. She’s dangerous, Henry.”

  “She’ll destroy you,” John adds.

  I start playing the familiar game of What if. What if I’d fought harder, defied my mother and gone to the party? Could I have avoided all of this?

  The sharp, stabbing pain in my rib cage betrays the truth. I’m tired of the questions, the assumptions, the complications. I can’t live my life with Anne on pins and needles, waiting to get stabbed.

  “She’s not for you,” John says, and points to the pictures. “Even without all of this. She’s not right. Your mother will never accept her. None of us will.”

  No matter how many times I blink, I can’t erase the images of Anne dancing, smiling, touching someone else’s body. The snapshots play back like a film in slow motion, but the reel stops just before the party, before everything started to go wrong. I’m numb. I can’t even remember how it feels to be with her.

  “What’s the play, man?” John says.

  All of this evidence is contrived. But even when I look past it, try to see through to the other side, to her side, set up or not, she still did those things.

  And because of that, I can’t navigate the path to a future with her. I know it, my mother knows it, hell, the bloody mayor knows it: She doesn’t fucking fit.

  “With the right mix of pictures, we could have her expelled,” Rick says, a little too casual, like he’s trying to make it my idea, trying to gauge my consent. I can tell it’s something they’ve talked about—the climax of their plan. I chew on my bottom lip, consider the options, the implications of what they’re suggesting.

  “No,” I say. “It doesn’t need to go that far.”

  The waitress passes our table.

  “Huh,” John says, catching me staring a little too long. A leer plays on his mouth. “You like that? She looks a little plain to me.”

  Despite everything, my lips curl into a smirk. “Keep it that way.”

  Rick reaches across the table, picks up the pictures, and stuffs them in his backpack. “You don’t worry about this,” he says. “Whatever happens, the key is that you see who she really is, right?”

  “Sure,” I say, though my mind is jumbled. My heart sore. I can’t imagine how to exist with Anne now that I’m no longer under her spell.

  As my friends leave, I grab my coffee cup and stand, make my way to the bar.

  A few customers wait in line ahead, giving me the opportunity to study the way the waitress works, interacts, smiles. I like how she wipes her hands on her apron after pouring a drink, the way her glasses slide to the bridge of he
r nose when she’s steaming milk.

  “You again,” she says. There’s no edge, no animosity to her voice, just a light teasing that stirs something in my chest, a tingling feeling—of renewed hope.

  “How’s the caffeine working on that physics homework?”

  “Got anything stronger?” I say, and set my cup on the counter.

  “Espresso?”

  “Only if you make it the way the Italians do,” I say, voice low, like we’re sharing some dark caffeinated secret. “There’s this cute little café in Tuscany. Serves the most perfect espresso . . .”

  “Tough to compete with that,” she says with a little wink.

  I can’t tell if she’s impressed or indulging me, and decide it almost doesn’t matter. I smile.

  When she hands me the coffee, our fingers touch a snapshot too long. “What’s your name?” I say.

  “Jane,” she says, and my pulse ratchets up a beat. “Jane Seymour.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Seymour,” I say, and pump my eyebrows. Twice. “Maybe I’ll see you around some time?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Anne

  Pushpins press into my fingers, feet, and neck, stab the six photographs on the corkboard, each more incriminating and embarrassing than the next. Is this really how it ends?

  I sit tall, press my thighs into the hard wooden chair. Scan the room.

  Row upon row of bench seating fills with students. The buzzing of gossip vibrates in the room, floating up whispers and accusations and assumptions and lies. At the front, Catherine, Liz, and Marie sit, legs crossed, uniforms pressed, skin properly covered. I find Rick and Thomas near the back, and then there’s John.

  His dark suit can’t mask his smarmy underbelly. He sneers and I shake with disgust. Maybe sensing my discomfort, he winks, kicking my gag reflex up a notch. This whole thing makes me sick.

  To my left, the lectern remains empty, the cherrywood handle of the gavel pointed toward me like an omen, as if “court” is already adjourned, judgment passed. As if in the haze of the past week, day, hour, somehow I missed—

  The end.

  Henry hasn’t waited at my locker in days. Hasn’t texted. Hasn’t called. He hasn’t made time for me, for . . . us. Despite his promise to “talk tomorrow”—tomorrow never came. And when the summons from Student Council arrived a few days ago, Henry wasn’t there to say everything would be okay.

  A dull ache swells in my chest and I blink away a tear.

  A commotion at the door pulls my focus to the front of the room.

  Henry.

  He looks fine on the surface, polished and professional in a charcoal suit, hair slicked back, every strand gelled, stuck, glued into place. Like he’s nervous if one comes loose, it will kick-start his unraveling. But beneath that perfect exterior, I can feel his pain.

  Maybe that’s why he won’t look at me, can’t meet my gaze.

  On his way to the front of the room, he nods at his peers, offering a tight smile to Catherine and his fellow Student Council members. I don’t recognize this version of Henry. He is serious. Pulled together.

  Foreign.

  A regression to the man I first met at the charity gala, a perfect portrait of the Tudor he is destined to become.

  The tiny hairs on my arms stand upright.

  I finger the necklace Henry gave me.

  He takes his position behind the lectern and pauses. Sam approaches to his left, whispers something into his ear, and looks at me over his right shoulder with pity. It’s more than I can bear. I’ve tried to apologize for my abrupt text during the party, even asked for her advice, sought her out in the halls. She’s avoided me too. I’m very much on my own.

  Henry taps the gavel with a hollow thwack. A hush falls over the room.

  I’m worried. Even in Henry’s profile, I can see the weariness in his eyes, the heaviness in his brow, the stiff set of his shoulders. Whatever act he’s putting on for his peers doesn’t work on me—I know him. He can’t fake his feelings with me.

  He clears his throat. “On this nineteenth day of December, I hereby call to order the Court of Student Affairs in the matter of Medina Academy versus Boleyn.”

  A murmur ripples through the crowd.

  Henry shifts his body in my direction, but he doesn’t look at me—not right at me, anyway. He stares over at the wall and the long line of presidential photographs, the students who are important, have done important things, will make history: Henry’s grandfather, father, brother.

  Soon another Tudor’s picture will hang in the succession.

  “Thank you for attending,” Henry says.

  The low baritone of his voice curls my toes with longing, and I want to melt into him, beg him to stop this before it goes too far. But I won’t bow to this makeshift courtroom. “Not like I had much choice.”

  Henry hesitates and for a moment my pulse quickens. Waits for the spark of hope. But he recovers fast, and when he finally settles his cold gaze on me, my blood hardens like ice.

  “Ms. Boleyn, you have been charged with inappropriate conduct, as per section ten, paragraph three of the Code of Conduct written and enforced by the Medina Academy Student Council.” Through his suit jacket, his chest contracts like he’s swallowed a giant hot-air balloon. “If found guilty, you will face immediate expulsion with no opportunity for a retrial. Do you understand this charge as stated?”

  I nod, unable to speak. No one has granted me permission to object, or enter a plea, but I know without question, beyond reasonable doubt, no matter what transpires here, whatever verdict Henry declares, I am already guilty.

  Sam stands, clears her throat. “Council calls Geoffrey Spence to the stand.”

  My eyes flit to the pictures on the corkboard. Geoffrey is Exhibit C.

  I almost forget what he looks like until he’s halfway up the aisle. Broad chest, thick arms, flat abdominals, like he spends a little too much time at the gym. The scent of body wash sweeps under my nose as he walks in front of me, takes his position, swears to tell the truth and all that BS.

  Sam unpins Exhibit C. Holds it up for the room to see, pretending the entire school hasn’t seen the pictures, hasn’t whispered about them for days. “This is obviously you in the photograph,” Sam says, and offers him a sympathetic grimace.

  The routine fact check is nothing more than a smokescreen for what is clearly a witch hunt.

  “Can you tell me where you are in this picture?”

  Geoffrey nudges his chin toward the front row, at Liz. “House party,” he says.

  “And do you attend Medina Academy?”

  “No. I’m a senior in Seattle. I play football.” A slight pause, and then he says, “Tight end.”

  A collective giggle whispers through the room. Fuck, I hate jocks.

  “And what were you doing at the party?”

  He turns to me, stares right into my eyes, and delivers a bold-faced lie. “I was invited by Anne Boleyn.”

  “Bullshit,” I say, the denial rocketing from my lips. Maybe I’m going down, but not without a fight.

  A collective gasp silences the room.

  “This court will not tolerate that kind of language,” Henry says, and raps his gavel on the stand—twice.

  It’s like I don’t hear him, blinded with desperation and rage, motivated by a primal need to defend myself against this shit. “Before the party, I’d never even seen that fucking guy.”

  “Language, Ms. Boleyn,” Sam says, her tone professional and curt. “You will have an opportunity to speak.”

  She addresses Geoffrey again. “What did you bring to the party?”

  He drops his head. “Tequila,” he says. “Ms. Boleyn requested it.”

  What did they do, hire this guy specifically to screw me over? God knows they can all afford it. I scoff loud enough for Henry to turn to me, eyes blazing, lips set to a thin, immobile line.

  “This is ridiculous,” I snap. “I don’t even like tequila. You know that, Henry.”

>   He hammers the gavel against the top of the lectern with a resounding crack. “That’s enough. One more outburst and I will hold you in contempt of this court.”

  My blood boils, threatens to catch on fire and burn down this whole mockery of a courtroom.

  Next, council calls Liz to the stand and asks about the nature of the party.

  “Get together,” she clarifies. “I specifically requested that nobody bring alcohol. A rule Anne clearly didn’t respect.”

  I resist the urge to give Liz the finger. I’m such an idiot to have believed her.

  Sam clears her throat. “And why didn’t you ask her to leave?”

  Liz looks down, like she’s gathering her thoughts. She raises her head and turns to me, eyes welling with false tears. “We were all just trying to help Anne fit in. I didn’t want to single her out.”

  “What a freaking actress,” I mutter.

  Henry’s posture stiffens but he doesn’t object.

  The court hears similar testimony from Marie, who claims happiness rather than excessive drinking inspired the now famous table dance. Ironic how most of the pictures are of my performance, not of the whole group’s.

  “Things got crowded when Anne joined us,” Marie says. “She was out of control—we didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  I begin to grow numb. Wyatt, Rick, even Charles each offers up some kind of evidence that I’ve violated the Code of Conduct, not just at this party, but since the day I set foot in Medina. Inappropriate dress. Uniform violations. Misdemeanors they’ve put up with, allowed to slip, to help me fit in.

  I can hardly hear them anymore, their sentences pieced together like Silly String, and looping into the noose I know waits for my neck.

  By the time Catherine is called to the stand, I’ve almost stopped caring. I already know everything she’s going to say. Despite Sam’s promise, I doubt anything I have to offer will matter in the end.

  I watch the clock, listen to the hollow echo of my heart. It beats too fast against the empty cavern in my chest, threatens to kick and punch its way straight through. I imagine it lying on the floor in a pool of my blood, still beating, pulsing, breathing. My head fills with dizzying confusion, is blown up so full that I’m sure with just one tiny pinprick, my brain will pop.