Page 60 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Three

We

I n October, Woodward announced a Casino Night fundraiser in honor of Mr. Cross, a beloved math teacher who’d been found dead over the summer with a needle in his arm.

We all pitched in to make Casino Night a success, temporarily making peace with the Student Council Mafia and the rest of the Student Leadership shills, and signed up for various committees.

We designed graphics and drummed up new raffle items. Made cold calls to local businesses and wrangled donations of food, soda, and prizes.

Event attendance was open to Woodward students and their families.

But our volunteers drew from all over. Big Lou, the cashier at the 7-Eleven off Route 12; Mrs. Harbor; and Hunchback Fred, who wasn’t actually a hunchback but did have bad posture, suited up in formal wear to deal cards at the game tables.

The new sheriff, Horne, with her hair slicked neatly into a bun, mixed drinks for half the night.

We dared each other to ask her about Lydia Faraday’s case, whether she really thought Lydia might have been murdered.

The cafeteria was dazzlingly remade into a Vegas casino, glowing with green felt and sophomores in shimmering dresses who circulated with plastic martini glasses full of lukewarm pop.

Poker tables dotted the hall, with crowds jostling to get into the games or heckle the players for bad bets.

Mrs. Santiago’s health classroom, STD poster and all, played host to several roulette wheels and even a craps table.

The nurse’s office across the hall, guarded strictly by both Vice Principal Edwards and Old McVeigh, was repurposed as a bar.

Attendees who’d been properly ID’d and stamped at ticketing could find plastic tables draped with tablecloths, cluttered with donated Jim Beam, Gordon’s gin, and Stoli vodka.

We wasted a large portion of the night observing the entrance and trying fruitlessly to plot a way inside.

Nick Topornycky and Will Friske, meanwhile, were being coy about whether or not they had beer in the car.

Most of the boys’ swim team had rented tuxes from Angela’s Formal in Housataunick, like they did for the Winters.

It didn’t matter that Angela’s Formal hadn’t been properly stocked this early in the season so that many of their jackets were too small, the cummerbunds held together with safety pins or abandoned altogether. We thought they looked amazing.

The girls wore sequins and high heels and showed off legs luminescent and pale from fall hibernation.

They wore smoky eye shadow they’d applied in tandem, squinting over YouTube tutorials.

Their hair was straight and a little frizzy and smelled of hair dryer static, and they were beautiful.

The Strut Girls, including Lucy, dressed up like glamour girls from the 1920s.

We side-eyed Lucy, checking her for evidence of embarrassment.

A slick of whisper trailed behind her wherever she went.

She kept her head high, a smile spackled to her face. We were impressed that she’d come.

It had been only two weeks since we’d all seen her photographs.

The scandal had practically exploded county cell phone towers; for at least three days it had swallowed the whole school like a whale taking down a goldfish with hardly a burp.

Lucy Vale, perfect Lucy Vale, had been keeping secrets from all of us.

She’d been lying about what kind of girl she really was—or, at the very least, letting us believe something that wasn’t true, which was almost the same thing.

We noticed she hemmed close to Bailey and that she and Noah were avoiding each other. We thumbed sly jokes about trouble in paradise and felt vaguely vindicated.

Apparently Lucy Vale was not so perfect after all.

The only bummer was the weather. The day before the event, the temperature plummeted, and a queasy mix of rain and sleet presaged the early arrival of winter. Frozen mud skid-marked across the hallway linoleum. The parking lot was sheeted with patchy ice.

This is important.

Because it is very, very possible that Lucy Vale only slipped.

It was nine o’clock and we’d lost most of our money before we saw the SOS from Evie Grant on Discord.

There was something wrong with Sofia Young.

She was pounding on the door of the Aquatics Center, claiming she needed a swim.

She seemed confused. She kept claiming to be a dolphin.

Evie Grant was pretty sure she was on something.

@nononycky: no shit she’s on something

@nononycky: what did she take?

Evie didn’t know. But she needed help. Sofia Young needed water.

We absolutely could not breathe a word about this to Sofia Young’s mom, or we were dead.

Nick Topornycky suggested we tell his uncle, Woody.

He knew all about overdoses and how to reverse them.

Evie Grant quickly nixed the idea. Woody was checking coats for new arrivals and was dressed in a suit jacket; for the night, he was as good as an Administrative appendage.

We rushed instead to the refreshments table to get water and chips, which were being sold for an outrageous four dollars.

We briefly complained about the price tag.

Akash reminded us this was a fundraiser; Evie Grant told us to focus.

@ktcakes888: Help

@ktcakes888: Mrs. Young just straight up asked me if I’d seen Sofia

@ktcakes888: what should I do?

@badprincess: what do you mean, what should you do?

@badprincess: Make Some Shit Up

@mememeup: #obviously

Evie reminded us that Sofia Young was our friend. She was our problem.

That was just part of our code.

We kept secrets. We kept quiet.

We lied, and we protected our own.

We hurried into the cold, slipping out from various exits to avoid suspicion and reconvening in the front courtyard.

From there we navigated through the parking lot, clutching our phones for light and navigating slicks of unexpected ice.

We found Evie Grant outside Aquatics, beneath the overhang of the construction scaffolding that had gone up over the summer, trying to wrangle Sofia Young away from the front doors.

“They’re locked,” Evie said when she saw us coming, as if that explained everything. She had Sofia by the waist, barely. Sofia squirmed and slurred that she needed to go swimming, she was too hot, she would die if she didn’t get in the water.

Alex Spinnaker uncapped a bottle of water and slugged some of it at Sofia, barely grazing her face and mostly dousing Evie Grant.

“I’m trying to help,” he said when we accused him of being a dick.

Sofia Young swiped for the water bottle, tipped some into her mouth, and then spit it out again in an arc.

“I’m a dolphin,” she said. When she laughed, she nearly pitched off her feet. “No. No. I’m a shark .”

We agreed: she was definitely on something.

We talked idly about finding her boyfriend, but nobody moved. Already we regretted leaving the cafeteria. It was deep dark where we stood, and the air was sharp with tiny points of sleet. Will Friske asked Sofia what she’d taken. That snuffed the laughter right out of her. She turned pouty.

“Ask Aiden,” she said. We all looked at one another, bewildered. “Ask him about Mr. Cross. Aiden knows.”

We felt something then, an unconscious shiver that ran back to Mr. Cross lying dead in a bathroom with a needle in his arm, and to Aiden Teller returning so quickly to the pool after injuring his shoulder in a fight.

Suddenly Sofia broke away from Evie Grant and started running. A few of us sprinted after her. Nate Stern caught up with her first, pinioning Sofia around the waist, spinning her back toward Aquatics.

A violent cataclysm seemed to shudder her whole body. Just as Evie Grant caught up, Sofia puked. She erupted. It was like something out of The Exorcist . Evie screamed as vomit patterned her face, her dress, her bare arms. We shouted, barely dodging the flow.

Evie started crying. Nate let Sofia go, pitching her toward the planters at the entrance to Aquatics. She fell to her knees, still retching. Everyone was talking. It was a mess. Olivia Howard and Hannah Smith left with a promise to find paper towels. Evie Grant wailed that she needed a new dress.

Peyton Neely hushed us sharply. She’d heard something.

Heard what? we wanted to know, and Peyton shushed us again.

“Voices,” Peyton said. “Someone’s coming.”

Evie Grant was still crying softly. Kaitlyn Courtland was crouched next to Sofia Young at the planters, rubbing her back, murmuring indistinctly.

The rest of us stood motionless, our fingers numbing against soda cans and bottles of water.

The wind slid fingers down our necks. We imagined McVeigh prowling somewhere out of sight between the cars.

Watching us. We scanned the parking lot for movement.

Up on the hill, the darkness shuddered, rippled, and shook loose a pair of silhouettes.

“Do you think I’m stupid or something?”

Noah and Lucy. They were standing farther up the hill, a few hundred feet from where we were gathered, just outside the circle of light cast down from the overheads braced to the cafeteria.

“Answer me. Do you think I’m stupid?”

We heard the pitch of Lucy’s voice in her response. But whatever she said was lost by the distance, muzzled by the fizz of indifferent rain.

Then Noah again, his voice edged with warning. “I know who you are, Lucy. I know everything about you. Don’t forget.”

We stood there helplessly, signaling to one another in the dark. Neither Lucy nor Noah looked in our direction. Even if they had, it wasn’t clear that they would be able to see us where we were, lost in the folds of darkness that curved down the parking lot and puddled at the bottom of the hill.

From a distance we saw Lucy Vale step into the light, swiping her eyes with her arm. She wasn’t wearing a jacket. Her voice canted suddenly down to us.

“You know what, Noah Landry? Everyone thinks you’re so nice. But you’re not. You’re a fucking asshole .”