Page 6 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Five

We

I t was an ordinary Thursday. Muggy. Full of mosquitoes.

Even Discord was listless.

Then, suddenly, our phones went hysterical with notifications: one after another, rapid fire, belling our brains into shock.

@moonovermatter: New girl

@moonovermatter: Here

@moonovernatter: Lucy

@moonovermatter: Just moved

@moonovermatter: Heard music from my bedroom this am

@moonovermatter: shitty

@moonovermatter: *shitty music

@moonovermatter: looked out my window, saw the moving van across the street

@moonovermatter: Went out back to yell

@moonovermatter: girl came outside

@moonovermatter: saw me

@moonovermatter: fuck I was dumb

@moonovermatter: but I was in shock

@moonovermatter: like why FH

@moonovermatter: why would you do that

@moonovermatter: she doesn’t seem crazy

@moonovermatter: mom’s sus

@moonovermatter: garden gnomes etc

@moonovermatter: we’ll see I guess

@badprincess: what the fuck is happening?????

@mememeup: is this a joke? I don’t get it

@moonovermatter: shit gotta go at work

@skyediva: Who is this ???????

It was a scandal. It was chaos. Who was @moonovermatter? Why were they on Discord? How did they know about Lucy? What the fuck was the deal with the garden gnomes?

Spinnaker was losing his mind, of course, over compromised cybersecurity and lax protocol for changing usernames. We figured we only had a few minutes before he started expounding on cryptocurrency again and tried to cut his paranoia off at the pass.

@highasakyle: does anyone know who @moonovermatter is?

@badprincess: isn’t @ktcakes888 an admin??

@ktcakes888: yeah but I don’t have an updated list. Akash does

@badprincess: this is so fucking creepy

@skyediva: Where’s Akash when you need him

@moonovermatter: That was Akash on my phone. We’re at work

@moonovermatter: he forgot his cell

@highasakyle: my brain is melting

@badprincess: doublefuckingcreepy

@nononycky: who the fuck are You

@moonovermatter: oh sorry

@moonovermatter: This is Scarlett!

@moonovermatter: I changed my username

@moonovermatter: Do you like it?

Scarlett was, presumably, Scarlett Hughes, who did in fact work with Akash. But we were in no mood to give her feedback on her hippie-ass username, and still suspicious that we were being trolled for reasons unknown.

Meeks suggested that we go to Blue Hills Mall, where Scarlett and Akash worked, which was a great idea except we (a) had no cars and (b) had no licenses, permits, or ability to drive.

We texted Akash to confirm and heard nothing.

We DMed him on social media with no luck.

We lost our minds trying to find someone who knew Scarlett Hughes’s cell phone number.

Nick Topornycky texted Sahara Richards, which did nothing but confirm that Nick and Sahara were hooking up.

Sahara redirected us to Hope Gonzales, who was visiting her grandparents in Mexico and had turned off her phone.

We had a stormy few minutes before @lululemonaide thought of simply calling the mall, but that was a dead end too. We couldn’t just ring up the food court, and the number listed for mall security was out of service.

We started poring over the messages again, parsing every letter for legitimacy. We couldn’t see why anyone would go out of their way to impersonate Scarlett or Akash, let alone both of them at the same time.

But the claim about meeting Lucy Vale made no sense.

The geography of the story, the blocking of it, fell apart under scrutiny.

Akash’s house was at the very end of a cul-de-sac, first of all; he had no neighbors across the street.

Plus, @brentmann pointed out that Akash’s bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking the deck.

He couldn’t even see the street from his bedroom window. All he could see was his backyard.

@meeksmaster: and the Faraday House lol

@brentmann: true and FH

@lululemonaide: Akash lives next to the Faraday House??

@spinn_doctor: yeah. Their backyards are almost touching

@badprincess: wait—Akash mentioned FH in his messages????

No. No way.

We scrolled up to double-check. But for a minute, we couldn’t believe it. Even as the messages splintered into proof—FH, across the road, behind the house—we couldn’t believe it. It was impossible.

One of the server bots kicked back a welcome to @gustagusta, who’d just logged on.

@gustagusta: The New Girl is Living in Faraday House !!!!!!!!!!!!

For more than a minute, the words just hung there, floating in black space, waiting for a response. But none came.

@gustagusta: ??

@gustagusta: um hello ?

Our brains went dark, tapped out of battery.

@gustagusta: Hello ??

@gustagusta: I said Lucy Vale just moved into the Faraday house

@gustagusta: Any comments? Concerns? Ideas? Questions?

Actually, we had only one, and @mememeup said it perfectly.

@mememeup: why