Page 18 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Two

We

T he news that half a dozen Sharks had been jumped by a rival team on their way out of Lucky Strike bowling alley ricocheted around social media and blasted onto Discord on a Sunday, twelve hours after the county sheriff had allegedly been called to break up the fight.

We were just trickling out of various church services, and our outrage that day was appropriately biblical.

The Jalliscoe Wolverines were one of a handful of Indiana high schools that counted a roster of excellent club swimmers on their teams, and we hated them.

The whole town was a hellhole of fork-tongued devil-worshippers.

Their mascot represented a clear psychic attraction to the beast, a magnet for the deceitful and corrupt.

The general channel that day was a ruin of informational shrapnel.

Contradictory facts sparred for screen space.

The Wolverines had used a baseball bat. A beer bottle.

Both. It had taken two deputies to break up the fight.

One of the Wolverines was in the hospital.

Aiden Teller was in the hospital. The Wolverines’ head coach was threatening to press charges.

Coach Radner was going to suspend Ryan Hawthorne for throwing a punch at a deputy.

Coach Vernon was going to boot Teller from the club team.

We rushed to the County News website to check the police blotter.

But the most recent post was from Friday: a handful of misdemeanor possession charges, a suspected arson reported on Donahue Road, half a dozen DUIs.

We pretended not to notice that Topornycky’s uncle had been booked again; it barely counted as news anyway.

We obsessively hunted down accounts for the Wolverines and shadowed anyone they’d recently tagged in their photos.

Sofia Young logged on.

She wanted to know if it was true that Jeremiah Greene had been arrested.

We freaked the fuck out.

@badprincess: Jeremiah was arrested????

@mememeup: wait wait wait

@mememeup: Are you positive?

@goodnightsky: I’m pretty sure one of the Sharks was arrested

@goodnightsky: This girl at Waffle House said her stepbrother works at Lucky Strike

@goodnightsky: And she mentioned Jeremiah

@badprincess: wow

@badprincess: institutionalized racism much

@nononycky: #defundthepolice

@brentmann: we need to get all the facts before we start jumping to conclusions

@nononycky: the criminal justice system says otherwise

@brentmann: so Greene was arrested because he’s black?

@safireswiftly: I don’t think so

@kash_money: watch out, your white privilege is showing

@safireswiftly: I’m literally Black

@safireswiftly: I’m saying I don’t think Jeremiah Greene was arrested

@safireswiftly: He was at church at like 9 a.m.

@ktcakes888: ?? You’re supposed to message me when you change handles, Alyssa

@skyediva: your church starts at 9 a.m.??

In the absence of hard facts, we floated suspicions of conspiracy.

Lucky Strike was right on the border of Willard County, only twenty minutes from the pool where the Willard Swimming Club trained.

A solid portion of Willard Club swimmers competed for the Jalliscoe High School team during the fall season.

Maybe the whole fight was a Jalliscoe plot, a ploy to get the Sharks suspended, or to break Alec Nye’s elbow, Tonya Harding–style, with a baseball bat.

It wouldn’t be the first time Jalliscoe had plotted to take down the swim team.

As far as we knew, every deputy on the Willard side of the county line was protective of their home team, and as crooked as the teeth of a zipper.

Then Nick Topornycky reminded us darkly about That Time with Will King.

Meeks sent him a question mark.

Ethan Courtland asked whether Will King was the alien abduction guy. Scarlett Hughes said that she could totally imagine Jalliscoe full of aliens. Alyssa Hobbes accused her of racism. Scarlett clarified that she meant ETs, not illegal immigrants.

Nick Topornycky clarified that Warren King was the alien abduction guy. Will King was a swimmer who graduated with his older brother.

Friske made a joke about anal probing.

Olivia Howard wrote at the same time as Meeks to ask about the alien abduction.

Alyssa Hobbes wanted to know what happened That Time with Will King.