Page 34 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Five

We

T he story coalesced like usual, in dribbles on Discord and in homeroom.

First neither Akash nor Lucy showed up for the bus.

Then Layla Lewis logged on to ask if anyone knew why there had been cops at the Vales’ house in the middle of the night.

Kyle Hannigan tagged Sofia Young to ask whether she’d heard about a disturbance in the neighborhood.

Hannah Smith messaged Nick Topornycky to ask if he’d texted Akash.

Scarlett Hughes messaged Alex Spinnaker, who went on a rant about Akash’s dismal performance under the onslaught of demonic attackers the night before.

And Will Friske got a message from his cousin, who was pissed.

Apparently they were going to have to resod the Vales’ whole fucking yard.

@stopandfriske: motherfuckers

@stopandfriske: those dipnuts dug up my whole weekend

@ktcakes888: what dipnuts?

@stopandfriske: the ones who turned up at the Vales’ last night

@badprincess: ???

@highasakyle: gonna need some context, buddy

@ktcakes888: what do you mean turned up ?

@badprincess: what do you mean dug up ?

@stopandfriske: He didn’t tell me much. Just that there were trespassers at the Vales’ last night. Lucy’s mom called the cops when they wouldn’t leave

@safireswiftly: What were they doing there?

@nononycky: yard work, sounds like

@ktcakes888: in the middle of the night??

@stopandfriske: alright. Here’s a pop quiz

@stopandfriske: Three strangers with two shovels can dig fifteen holes an hour

@stopandfriske: If they all met on the internet

@stopandfriske: Then what do you think they were digging for?

For a second, no one answered. We floundered on the edge of Lucy Vale’s front lawn, rutted now with imagined holes, trying to see a pattern. But there was no reason to dig up the Vales’ yard. There was no reason for three strangers to arrive carrying shovels.

Not to Lucy’s house anyway.

Then, in an instant, the mental distance between the past and the present, the Vales and the Faradays, collapsed, and we understood.

We channeled our shock into another second of silence.

@gustagusta: shit

@stopandfriske: nope

@stopandfriske: try again?

@badprincess: please tell me it doesn’t have to do with the Faradays

@stopandfriske: no hints allowed. Anyone else?

@highasakyle: * hits buzzer *

@highasakyle: I’ll go with bones for five hundred

@stopandfriske: ding, ding, ding

By midmorning, everyone in school knew about the trespassers, strangers from Montgomery County who’d come digging for Nina Faraday’s remains in the middle of the night.

From the beginning, the operation wasn’t exactly professional.

One of the intruders broke the latch on the front gate before realizing it hadn’t been locked.

They’d brought a six-pack, headlamps, and portable recording equipment.

Of course there was a podcast involved.

Some gossip had to travel, and some had to breed like bacterial mold in wet showers. But some stories simply hit everyone at once, like landmines laced underneath our awareness that exploded in a single instant.

The news about the intruders was like that.

Suddenly no one could talk about anything else.

Maybe it was because so many of us had a farming family somewhere in the blood, but trespassing on someone else’s land—and disturbing the ground, no less—was deadly serious business in southern Indiana.

The NRA crowd made jokes about home security systems manufactured by Glock.

The gun control faction lashed out at them for trivializing the impacts of gun violence on young people.

As usual, jokes about trigger warnings abounded.

As usual, we weren’t sure if we really found them funny.

Akash arrived just before the end of third period with his first ever late pass and new social currency.

Since Lucy was still out, Akash temporarily absorbed the role of leading star.

We could barely get near him at lunch. The Echelon crowd was suddenly interested in his friendship with Lucy Vale.

Even Sam Harris, who in seventh grade tried to cut Akash’s hair with a pair of garden clippers he’d smuggled in his gym sweatshirt, was acting friendly.

Akash confirmed that, yes, the trespassers had come looking for evidence of a violent crime.

Yes, the Friskes would have to resod the whole yard; it looked terrible, like it had fallen prey to a small army of oversize gophers.

Yes, the trespassers had brought shovels, headlamps, and a variety of podcast equipment.

No, Akash didn’t know the name of their podcast.

We’d heard through Evie Grant, who’d heard from Mrs. Rowe at 4 Lily Lane, that there had been a verbal altercation, a shouting match that had drawn the Vales’ neighbors onto the street. Akash confirmed it. But according to him, it was mostly Lucy Vale doing the shouting.

@kash_money: can you believe that the ass wipes who broke in thought the Vales were the ones trespassing?

@kash_money: I guess they thought the house was still vacant

@gustagusta: really? the welcome mat and the porch furniture didn’t tip them off?

@kash_money: they actually wanted to search the basement

@moonovermatter: are you Kidding Me ???

@geminirising: so which conspiracy camp are they in—do they think a mystery man snatched Nina or that her mom axed her?

@kash_money: neither

@kash_money: They think it was Tommy Swift

@kash_money: And that Coach Steeler alibied him

@gustagusta: Coach Steeler, every other swimmer, and the pizza guy who delivered a pepperoni pie to Steeler’s house that night?

@kash_money: all liars

@badprincess: poor Lucy.

@badprincess: Can you imagine finding out that way?

@badprincess: Like about your own house??

@kash_money: she didn’t

@kash_money: Apparently the Vales know all about the Faradays

@kash_money: Lucy told my dad that’s why they took the house

We were stunned. In the sharpening silence that followed, our ideas about Lucy Vale siphoned off into a question mark and an imprimatur of wonder.

Clearly we’d underestimated the girl.