Page 1 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Prologue

We

W e were athletes and anarchists, band geeks and gamers, virgins and sluts.

But mostly virgins.

We were dyslexic, and desperate for someone to notice us.

We came from a constellation of small towns in the lower left corner of southwest Indiana, all tipped into the gravitational pull of the Woodward Central School District.

We came from farms out past the Lincoln Walmart and condos near the College of Southern-Indiana at Housataunick.

We came from the McMansions of Granger North, with Byron Park and the golf course, and the trailers of Granger South, with a Waffle House, an IHOP, and a pizzeria rumored to include a dime bag of weed when you ordered a veggie slice with extra green.

We were Christians, mostly. The Sandhus were Sikhs; the Kornsteins were Jewish; Olivia Howard claimed she was Wiccan.

We were aspiring politicians and future farmers, violin players and JROTC cadets.

We owned guns. We protested guns. We followed each other on Instagram. We wanted more followers on TikTok.

We dreamed of trending someday, for something, going viral for a spontaneous act of courage or for rocketing Cheetos out of our noses at the doctor’s office. We envied Jack Hamlin’s older brother, Paul, who had 1.4 million subscribers on YouTube—even before the whole stampede debacle.

We could have told him bulls have no sense of humor, especially during breeding season.

We were hicks. We were pathologically shy. We didn’t want to be famous. We wanted to influence . To matter, to be special, to stand out. We wanted to be accepted.

We didn’t believe in cliques . We’d left cliques behind in middle school. But we stuck with our own kind. We believed in friend groups. Common interests. Extracurriculars. Sports. Clubs. Finding your people. To hell with all the rest of them.

We were different. We were ordinary.

We were the roughly thirty-six members of the private Discord server WoodwardSchoolBored , and before anything ever happened to Lucy, Lucy Vale happened to us.