Page 38 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Three

We

A week before Halloween, a package showed up on the Sandhus’ front porch for R.C. Barnes, a name none of us recognized. Akash later swore he’d opened the package before checking the delivery address; he’d been waiting, he claimed, on a delivery of new computer speakers.

@mememeup: who the hell is R.C. Barnes?

@kash_money: apparently, someone who lives at 88 Lily Lane

@mememeup: And writes books

He sent a photograph of the package’s contents: a dozen copies of a single book titled The Monster in the Basement: The Abduction of Grace Wallace , authored by R.C. Barnes.

@safireswiftly: Who is Grace Wallace?

@badprincess: are you kidding?? There was an entire Netflix documentary about her

@mememeup: can we stick to one mystery at a time, please?

@mememeup: Who is rc Barnes ??

The question temporarily united us in a shared digital crawl across the internet.

R.C. Barnes, we learned, was the pen name of an investigative journalist who had, among other things, gone undercover for years to investigate the mafia’s continued connection to Chicago politics and who, early in their career, had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for their work exposing the serial rapes committed by a prominent businessman in Akron, Ohio.

@hannahbanana: soooo ... why are his packages coming to the Faraday House?

@lululemonaide: do you think RC Barnes is Lucy’s father??

@goodnightsky: ummm, sexism much?

@gustagusta: not really. Pretty sure you still need a father to make babies

@ktcakes888: that is very transphobic

@spinn_doctor: okay, snowflake

@goodnightsky: I meant that RC Barnes isn’t necessarily a man

@pawsandclaws: Didn’t Lucy say her mom was a journalist?

We racked our brains. Had Lucy mentioned her mother’s job?

There had been so much speculation about Lucy’s mother and what had motivated her to move to the area, and to the Faraday House specifically, that we had trouble separating the threads of fact and fiction.

Lucy’s mother was an escaped criminal, an impoverished ghost hunter, and an eccentric heiress, all in different retellings; she had been a tragic divorcée, a hot lesbian, and even the escaped acolyte of a Chicago-based cult that had briefly swept national attention after a raid in late summer of their Evanston-based compound.

But Olivia Howard was insistent: Lucy had certainly mentioned that her mother worked in journalism at the fake birthday party.

Skyler Matthews backed her up. She remembered talking to Lucy about her mother’s career on a crime desk, back before Lucy Vale became a Strut Girl, back when she was still alternating between the gamers and the literary geeks at lunch.

We tracked all the biographical parallels to Rachel Vale we could find in descriptions of R.C.

Barnes’s career path. The more we rooted through details about the author, the more compelling connections we found to the Vales—including an obsession with privacy that might explain the Vales’ pathetic digital footprint.

@ktcakes888: check it out. RC Barnes used to write for the Chicago Tribune

@ktcakes888: Didn’t Lucy say that she and her mom lived in Chicago?

@hannahbanana: she’s definitely been to Chicago

@kash_money: no mention of a cat

@gustagusta: no mention of a kid

@meeksmaster: this article says RC Barnes is the pen-name of a Michigan-based journalist

@nononycky: It’s gotta be her

Within twenty-four hours, Skyler Matthews and Kaitlyn Courtland had made an impressive graphic—modeled after the murder boards they’d seen while binge-watching old episodes of Law the fact that she had so many tattoos; the fact that the Vales leaned progressive.

According to Spinnaker, it was impossible to make it in media these days unless you voted Democrat or took to Twitter.

Sensing a forthcoming rant about the deep state, @ktcakes888 briefly muted his account.

Our excitement snowballed quickly into hypotheses about the Vales’ net worth and what the rumored Netflix docuseries based on R.C.

Barnes’s first book meant for the rest of us.

We wondered if she had been to LA, had met any of our favorite YouTube stars, or could get us our own series.

Skyler Matthews, who was by then floating the idea of her own podcast, suggested she might invite R.C.

Barnes on for an interview. Olivia Howard outrageously claimed to have known all along that Rachel Vale was an artist just from reading her aura.

Jackson Skye countered that journalists weren’t artists.

Allan Meeks fired off a dozen eye-rolling emojis in a row.

@meeksmaster: what are you talking about?

@meeksmaster: All they do is creative writing

@spinn_doctor: never trust the #fakenews

@geminirising: okay qanon

@geminirising: Put the crazy down

Will Friske reminded all of us, irrelevantly, that he’d dropped a deuce in Rachel Vale’s toilet back when he and his cousin were clearing their yard.

If Rachel Vale was famous, then so was her toilet.

Then Peyton Neely introduced a new line of conversation. Wasn’t it odd that only months after a famous writer had moved into the Faraday House, a bunch of supposed strangers allegedly broke onto their property to try and excavate the yard for Nina Faraday’s body and then made a podcast about it?

Wasn’t it . . . convenient ?

@badprincess: you think it was a setup??

@badprincess: Like some kind of publicity stunt?

@safireswiftly: omg

@safireswiftly: Did Rachel Vale Plan the podcast???

@geminirising: what do You think?

@mememeup: I think that makes zero sense

@mememeup: If Rachel Vale is RC Barnes

@mememeup: and she wanted to blow up a story about Nina Faraday

@mememeup: why wouldn’t she just write one herself?

Ethan Courtland’s question was meant to be rhetorical. But it shuddered us all into silence, struck down by a heart-stopping idea.

@badprincess: oh my god

@badprincess: Do you think that’s what she’s doing???

@mememeup: wow

@skyediva: welp, I guess that would explain why she moved into a literal crime scene

@skyediva: Maybe she wanted to get closer to the subject matter

The idea was thrilling, and terrible. We didn’t believe it could be true.

At the same time, it made an awful kind of sense.

We had to confront Lucy about her mother.

We had to force a confession from Rachel Vale.

Alex Spinnaker suggested that Akash hold the books hostage until Rachel Vale fessed up.

Evie Grant suggested that Coraline Winters contact Barnes’s publisher pretending to be Rachel Vale.

Olivia Howard suggested we write R.C. Barnes a fan letter, deliver it to the Vales, and see if we get a response.

Akash logged on and apologized for disappearing for a few minutes. We hadn’t noticed and were gracious about it.

@kash_money: sorry guys

@kash_money: Guess who just rang the doorbell??

@badprincess: Lucy???

@kash_money: nope. Her mom

@kash_money: She wanted to know if we got a package of her books

We recovered from the shock in record time, then rushed to spread the news. Of course we did.

That’s how Discord was.

That’s how we were.

Swapping messages, shit-talking, hoarding our phones like gateways to a secret world. We clung to the threads like they might lead us somewhere—out of our bedrooms, out of Indiana, out of our skin. We unraveled the world into sound bites. Everything was just talk.

Everything was just a topic.

In boredom, we burned everything into the bones of a story.

We had no way of knowing that, someday, Lucy Vale would burn right back.