Page 104 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

@badprincess:what do you mean, back here?

@sunshineandhugs:you didn’t know?

@sunshineandhugs:Lucy’s mom used to spend summers down here

@sunshineandhugs:she knew Coach Steeler

@sunshineandhugs:I mean sheknewhim, knew him

@sunshineandhugs:she published on substack about it

@badprincess:link please

Charlotte sent us the link.

That was it. That was the moment. In a split second, the foundation of our entire lives—our image of the swim team, of the legendary Coach Steeler, of Woodward, of the whole county—caved. It came crashing down on the Sharks and the club team, on Noah Landry and his wins, on Alec Nye drawing Lucy’s name at the Winters Dance because he’d made a bet that he could get with her first, on Noah Landry cutting in because he wanted to win. It collapsed in an upward plume of all the rumors we’d been trying to discount and ignore.

Woodward swimmers can get away with anything.

They never get in trouble.

They make the county too much money.

They could literally get away with murder.

They already have.

@badprincess:Hang on Hang on Hang on

@safireswiftly:are you saying Coach Steeler slept with Lucy’s mom??

@sunshineandhugs:I’m not saying it. Lucy’s mom is saying it

@sunshineandhugs:she’s saying he slept with Nina Faraday, too

@badprincess:I might actually puke

@sunshineandhugs:can you please let Reese in now?

@sunshineandhugs:we’re literally wasting minutes

We were too shaken to respond. Even Spinnaker went silent.

Then Nick Topornycky pointed out that Reese’s handle, @reesespieces1698, looked familiar. Why, he asked Charlotte Anderson—or at least the user claiming to be her—had Reese chosen those specific digits for her username?

@sunshineandhugs:bc they’re the last four of her cell phone number

@sunshineandhugs:easy to remember

We knew then what he was angling at. Nick’s question had touched off a series of associations that hopscotched us through the archives of the internet and landed us back in time, before the Vales had even arrived in Indiana—back to when an unknown user, ANONYM1698, first blinked into existence and slowly began to spread the gospel of the swim team’s dirty secrets.

We’d been looking for a mole, someone with insider access to the team and the Administration.

We wondered now, though, if all along we’d been looking in the wrong direction.

By almost unanimous vote, we welcomed Reese Steeler-Cox onto our server and vowed to track down Lucy Vale.

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