Page 43 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Eight

We

If the Vales were, in part, poking fun at the house’s reputation, we were outside the joke.

To us, the curtains drawn against the sunlight and fake cobwebs veined over the furniture felt ominous, like a staged reproduction of the Faradays’ history, our history.

The deep shadows and the atmosphere of quiet, the strangers wandering room to room in silence, reminded us of a memorial service.

We wandered into the kitchen aimlessly and picked through Halloween candy on the table where Nina Faraday had eaten her last breakfast. We drifted into the den, now full of the Vales’ books, where Nina and her mom used to watch TV.

We paused in front of the windows Nina had passed on her way out the door, peering out through the lattice panes that cut the outside world into a neat geometry.

Nick Topornycky was the first to suggest we duck the rope blocking off the staircase so we could get to the attic where Nina had slept.

Alex Spinnaker tried to claim the idea as his own, and Meeks seconded him.

The argument quickly devolved into old grievances about Topornycky’s rejection of his former Dungeons her mom must have taken her away.

We saw the Grim Reaper on his hands and knees, searching for something in the grass.

A vampire crouched nearby was moving a hand through the rhododendron. Something was lost.

In the street, Lucy Vale was modeling her costume. We heard the Strut Girls shrieking laughter as Mia Thompson tried to shunt them into a photograph for a selfie. Alec Nye and the swimmers hung back a few feet, watching them.

We felt suddenly invisible, and cold. Lucy Vale looked somehow as if she were receding, drawn out by the tide of attention.

Or maybe we were the ones pulled backward. Behind us, in the recesses of the house, something dark gathered force in our imaginations. An idea taking form on the staircase; it swayed on the upstairs landing as if hesitating.

Rachel Vale, we realized, had answered Sofia’s question only in part.

“There’s Noah Landry,” Evie Grant announced into the silence, as if we’d all been waiting for him.

His arrival sent a visible ripple through the party. Everyone stirred slightly, angling toward the street. A kid dressed as Batman nudged shyly toward him, clutching a piece of paper for an autograph.

We saw Landry’s eyes gloss toward the other swimmers as they registered each other. Maybe we imagined the brief pause before he extended a fist to Alec Nye, the way his smile snagged slightly before touching his eyes.

We watched him greet Lucy with a one-armed hug. He was so big, she practically disappeared in his embrace. Whatever he said made her laugh, a sound that touched us all the way up on the porch.

Akash turned away and banged inside the house.

“Poor Akash,” Peyton Neely said.

“Where’s Spinnaker?” Sofia Young asked.

That was when we realized that Spinnaker, Meeks, and Topornycky weren’t with us on the porch.

But we didn’t know for sure that they had, in fact, slipped past the rope and made it upstairs until hours later, when we saw the proof on Discord.

By then we were all home, still working the chill out of our fingers, safely scrolling through photos of the attic.

We were scandalized when we found out that Spinnaker had peeled off from the others to venture not just into the attic but into Lucy’s bedroom. We called him a stalker and a creep.

@kash_money: seriously, wtf is wrong with you?

@spinn_doctor: hey. Don’t look at me. They’re the ones who decided to have an open house

@badprincess: you went into her drawers??

@meeksmaster: he got some of her drawers

@badprincess: omg

@badprincess: @spinn_doctor is seriously going to wind up on the news someday

@spinn_doctor: thank you

@gustagusta: it wasn’t a compliment, dude

Still, we were interested to find out that Lucy Vale was on birth control.

Lucy Vale wasn’t necessarily a prude, we felt.

But she wasn’t like the other Strut Girls.

She wasn’t a partier. She wasn’t like that .

She claimed she wasn’t even interested in having a boyfriend, and we privately doubted she ever had.

She wasn’t necessarily naive. But we all felt she was somehow an innocent: a girl so pure, she didn’t even know to be afraid of ghosts.

If she noticed the pair of underwear missing from her drawer, she never said anything to us.