Page 2 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

One

We

N one of us know what happened to Lucy Vale. But all of us agree that by the time she set fire to the school mascot in front of Admin, it was too late to do anything about it.

At the time, we weren’t thinking about Lucy; we were thinking about dying, and how we really didn’t feel like doing it on a random Tuesday in March of our junior year.

Shunted into closets, barricaded in our classrooms, sweltering inside the boiler room, we all imagined we were getting stormed by some psycho with a semiautomatic.

We heard the fire trucks approach with the shrill of their alarms. We strained to hear gunshots.

We speculated about the most likely culprit.

Wyeth Boone. Allan Meeks. Lee Mailer. It’s always the quiet ones you can’t trust.

We texted our parents. There’s something happening at Woodward. We’re locked inside the art closet. I’m so scared. Are they saying anything on the news?? I think the cops are here. Pray for us . We reunited on Discord and complained about the smell in the art closet. Someone had farted, for sure.

We googled Woodward High School. We had shit service in the boiler room.

We realized we had to shit. We prayed that we wouldn’t crap our pants in a closet crammed with peers.

Then the loudspeaker spat out a burst of static, and Principal Hammill cleared his throat across the entire campus. “Sorry, kids,” he said. We’ll never forget that. Sorry, kids . “Looks like someone lit a fire in a recycling bin. We’re still clearing the grounds. Back to you as soon as possible.”

About sixty seconds later, he was back, this time sounding slightly annoyed.

“To clarify, there is no active or inactive shooter. This has nothing to do with a gun. Like I said, it appears someone lit a fire in a recycling bin. Unfortunately we need to wait for the police before we can lift lockdown, so please stay where you are until I give the word.”

It wasn’t until we were funneled into the parking lot for a school-wide head count that we got a glimpse of the recycling bin, now a blackened deformity with a volcanic residue of char around it.

A dozen firefighters and cops milled around the world’s most pathetic crime scene.

We figured it was an accident, or a hack to avoid class.

We were dying to know who did it.

There was a brief panic when we found out that Connor Williams and Hannah Smith—the one in band, not the one who played soccer—hadn’t made it with the rest of the woodwinds into the parking lot.

Mr. Cower, the band teacher, was practically molten with panic.

He shoved through the crowd like one of us might secretly be concealing Connor and Hannah in our backpacks.

We tossed around the idea that these two were the culprits because it was so absurd; they were both the type who actually got sad on weekends when they didn’t have any homework to do.

The mystery was short lived anyway. A hastily organized search party of theater geeks and brass hounds homed in on the sound booth, which was locked from the inside.

A few minutes later, Connor and Hannah emerged, clearly in a conflagration of embarrassment, and it was pretty obvious to all of us what had happened.

We started firing messages back and forth while waiting to return to our classes.

@geminirising: Anyone catching serious walk of shame vibes?

@mememeup: You mean walk of Fame

@badprincess: Is @hannahbanana’s sweater on inside out??

It was, actually.

@safireswiftly: omg

@safireswiftly: were Connor and @hannahbanana hooking up ?

They were.

We found out later that Connor and Hannah were in the bathroom when the alarm triggered.

Connor, who’d been in love with her forever, had been desperate to make sure Hannah was safe.

It was kind of heroic actually, especially since we had all assumed there was an active shooter on campus at that point.

They had bolted to the sound booth, the closest secure space.

We heard from Allan Meeks, who’d heard the story from Connor, that they were holding hands in the dark, and one thing led to another.

We heard from Willa Barrens, who’d heard from Hannah, that the one thing that had led there was Hannah’s crashing realization that she did not want to die a virgin.

It was unbelievable. Connor Williams was getting laid, and most of us couldn’t even get a hickey.

For a few days, we tossed theories back and forth while the school launched yet another investigation, its second in six weeks.

But it didn’t occur to us that Lucy Vale’s absence the day of the fire might be connected, because by then her absence wasn’t special or significant.

We weren’t even sure that she was planning to finish out the school year.

She’d been absent since the Investigative Committee had wrapped its findings about the night of Ryan Hawthorne’s New Year’s Eve party.

Most of us figured she had already dropped out.

We didn’t know how she could come back. Her reputation was permanently destroyed. We figured she would be too ashamed.

We never, ever, ever dreamed that she would be angry .

It wouldn’t have occurred to us in a million years that she would drive to school, sneak into Aquatics, and steal Sean the Shark from storage.

That she would take the time to wheel a recycling bin up to Administration, keeping her hoodie pulled low and a sweatshirt zipped over her chin so she was practically unrecognizable.

We didn’t believe it at first, even after we heard that the sheriff was looking for her and Administration had leaked security footage from the Aquatics Center lobby to the local news.

Back then we’d worshipped Lucy, envied her, exalted and then hated her.

We’d constructed her in pieces. We’d finally solved her like a puzzle.

We knew by then that Lucy was a pathological liar, just like her mother.

Some of us thought Lucy was an expert manipulator, a covert narcissist, a con artist, or all three.

Some of us thought she was just cracked.

Damaged, desperate, and suffering from major daddy issues.

But she wasn’t batshit . And she had no reason—no reason—to be angry at us . It didn’t make any sense.

Lucy Vale? we all kept saying. Our Lucy Vale?

Because even then, after everything that had happened, we still thought Lucy Vale belonged to us.

Then she torched our mascot, and we realized we were wrong.