Page 69 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Ten

We

Mrs. Steeler-Cox was the only woman appointed.

The Investigative Committee convened daily for two weeks in the media room just off the SLD Tutoring Center.

Even when we saw no proof of their activity, we could feel their foreign influence.

It was in the muted quiet of the halls between classes as we shuffled fearfully past one another under the watchful stares of the hallway monitors, whom we were sure had gone turncoat.

It was in the uneasy sensation of being watched and the paranoia that made us spin around in empty hallways and clam up in crowded ones.

It was in closed doors and open ones. It was in Principal Hammill’s disapproving squint and the fact that Ceecee in the front office no longer had a candy bowl on her desk or smiled and called out when we passed by Administration.

It was in the seat, mounded with jackets and backpacks, that Lucy Vale had once occupied at the Strut Girls’ lunch table.

It was in the way the Strut Girls closed ranks, moving in a tight huddle, often gripping hands as if they were facing an invisible menace.

It was in Lucy’s locker, now defaced with graffiti.

Periodically, turning the corner to grab a soda from the cafeteria or a book from our locker, we were startled by a vision of a sheriff’s deputy lingering outside the front office, or of Ryan Hawthorne somberly pulling on his winter jacket as if layering up for an outdoor funeral.

We came to dread the announcements that spiked our days with adrenal shots of anxiety.

Savannah Savage, please report to the front office.

Jeremiah Greene, please report to the vice principal.

Nick Topornycky, please come to the front office after your next class.

The sound of the intercom cracking to life puddled our stomachs with dread. We grew to despise the sound of reverb.

Bailey Lawrence was called to give her account. Lucy was upset, she said, because some old photos of her had spread around the school. She and Noah had been fighting about it. It was one of the reasons they’d broken up. It was Lucy’s idea to go to Ryan’s party. Lucy was embarrassed and angry.

She wasn’t going to just stay home and cry about it.

Savannah Savage reported that the morning after the party, Lucy Vale had seemed confused about what had happened the night before. Uncertain. She’d said she thought she and Noah had done things in front of Ryan Hawthorne and JJ Hammill. She thought that she’d been raped. Maybe.

Noah Landry said Lucy had called him three times in a row from the party. He was worried about how drunk she’d sounded. His friends had texted him to come get her.

Lucy Vale had wanted to get back together, he said. It was her idea to hook up that night. It was her idea to go all the way.

He denied that JJ Hammill or Ryan Hawthorne had been in the room.

Ryan Hawthorne and JJ Hammill denied that there was a video.

Still, they were all suspended from competition until further notice.

The news was as good as nuclear. It exploded our lives right before championship season. Our hopes of another state trophy vanished in a mushroom cloud of Administrative interference.

Right away we spoke of protests, of organizing a picket line, a sit-in, or possibly a hunger strike. We wondered if the Investigative Committee had violated any fundamental rights. We dangled the possibility of suing.

@stopandfriske: this is bullshit

@stopandfriske: what happened to innocent until proven guilty?

@spinn_doctor: the woke mob

@lululemonaide: do you have to make everything political?

@lululemonaide: this is about money

@lululemonaide: admin is just afraid of losing booster money

@spinn_doctor: you think money isn’t political?

We tried to distract ourselves, but it was no use. During January, the gravitational pull of Lucy versus the swim team was so heavy, it warped every conversational thread, every piece of gossip, somehow back to the same place.

@stopandfriske: have you guys talked to Hannah Smith?

@badprincess: which Hannah Smith?

@stopandfriske: the one who got called into Committee this morning

@badprincess: that doesn’t help

@hannahbanana: we both got called

@hannahbanana: we both showed up, anyway

@geminirising: what did they ask you??

@hannahbanana: they wanted to know about the pictures

@hannahbanana: they wanted to know where they came from

@badprincess: please tell me you lied

@stopandfriske: That’s it?? They didn’t ask about the party?

@hannahbanana: they did. They asked me if I knew that Lucy Vale was drinking

@badprincess: lol

Even time seemed to deform, pulling us backward into the past, into the slow horror of sheriff’s deputies materializing in the Woodward hallways, squinting when we passed as if they suspected us of something.

We lived in terror that the press would get wind of the story: another girl and her mother with another claim about the swim team.

Another championship season lost.

We all suffered. We felt our suffering keenly; we googled articles about collective trauma and confirmed that we all shared symptoms of PTSD.

Administration was traumatizing us. Our parents’ questions, their insensitivities, their insistence that we do our homework and stop obsessing over school gossip, was a form of gaslighting.

We felt minimized and marginalized, both victims of and incidental to the drama.

Evie Grant confessed that she’d doubled up on her antianxiety medication and was now running low.

Allan Meeks kept having dreams that he’d been called to the SLD Tutoring Center to report to the Investigative Committee but couldn’t find his way there.

Will Friske started smoking weed daily before school just to get through the day.

But the idea that he might encounter the sheriff on campus made him panicky, which meant he needed more weed and couldn’t focus on any of his classes.

His parents were threatening him with therapy, or rehab.

Aubrey Barnes said she would pray for him at church. Friske told her to go to hell, then apologized. Evie Grant asked Will Friske if he could get her more antianxiety medication.

Our anger deepened, gathering force, buoyed by Noah’s insistence that everything that happened at the party was Lucy’s idea.

Of course we couldn’t know what had happened behind the locked door of that first-floor bedroom.

And we believed in accountability. We were champions of transparency.

We demanded it—from our brands, from our churches, from our teachers, about their politics and their grading system.

We were feminists. Well, most of us were.

Brent Mann was a sexist. Alex Spinnaker was a conspiracy theorist and a proud Libertarian.

But this was different. It was personal.

It was about us . The swim team was ours.

Noah Landry was ours. We knew him. We’d fished tadpoles with him from the murky shallows of Byron Lake in elementary school.

We’d jostled next to him at the Fourth of July parade for a better view of the floats.

We’d sung in youth choir with him, yawned next to him in church.

We’d known Lucy Vale for barely a year and a half.

And as it turned out, we hadn’t known her at all.

Still, the summons kept coming. Ethan Courtland. Alex Spinnaker. Evie Grant. Akash Sandhu .

Please report to the front office.

Please report.

Report, report, report.

One by one, we waited to be called.