Page 70 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Eleven

We

W e didn’t know which of us was idiotic enough to mention our server to the Investigative Committee, only that soon afterward the Student Leadership Department began an email campaign about Discord’s perverting effects on young minds.

When Mrs. Steeler-Cox’s first letter to our parents was posted on the student portal, our stomachs curdled.

We had the disconcerting sense of hovering above our laptop screens.

It was like one of those dreams where we were naked at a pep rally, or like coming home to find one of our parents rooting in our drawers where we stashed weed and Adderall or kept condoms in the hopes that they might someday be necessary. We felt exposed. Violated. Helpless.

Right away we went on a hunt for the traitor.

@stopandfriske: who told Steeler-Cox about Discord??

@pawsandclaws: maybe she just knows about it from Reese?

@nononycky: afraid not.

@nononycky: the Investigative Committee asked me about our server

@nononycky: They warned me the sheriff’s department might want access

@badprincess: To Our Server ?????

@gustagusta: you’re fucking joking

@meeksmaster: we’ve got 54 subs right now

@meeksmaster: can we be sure we don’t have an administrative mole?

@badprincess: no way

@badprincess: @ktcakes888 is tracking usernames

@badprincess: right??? @ktcakes888

@ktcakes888: um, I think so

@badprincess: what do you mean, you think so??

@meeksmaster: do we know everyone on this server, or not?

@spinn_doctor: I told you we needed a double-verification system

@ktcakes888: I mean I’m pretty sure I know everyone

@meeksmaster: who is @flywheels12? Who is @lululemonaide?

@lululemonaide: um, hello? I’ve had this username since seventh grade

@spinn_doctor: but who are you??

@lululemonaide: Layla

@spinn_doctor: can you prove it??

@badprincess: this is stupid

@meeksmaster: seriously, who is @flywheels12?? They’re lurking

We panicked. We sensed disaster—or, at minimum, a lifetime of detentions.

@spinn_doctor: we’ve got to delete

@ktcakes888: delete our server????

@badprincess: Over My Dead Body

@spinn_doctor: it will be, if admin gets access

@spinn_doctor: ** message deleted by user **

@nononycky: what?

@spinn_doctor: nothing

@nononycky: you just deleted a message

@spinn_doctor: what message?

@nononycky: the one you just deleted, you cockwipe

@spinn_doctor: I have no idea what you’re talking about

@spinn_doctor: see how that works?

Later it turned out that our Discord was not, in fact, the impetus for the Student Leadership Department’s sudden hysteria, which roiled our parents into long-winded and nonsensical speeches about group think, online predation, and the benefits of exercising outdoors.

Apparently someone had alerted the Investigative Committee to a private server, the one putatively launched by Ryan Hawthorne’s older stepbrother, the one where Woodward girls were ranked according to their hotness and willingness to give blow jobs.

But it didn’t matter. The next few days saw an exodus of subs from our Discord.

Coraline Winters had been one of the last to join; now she was one of the first to leave.

We didn’t fully blame her. Coraline had been selling forged permission slips, doctors’ notes, and even midterm teachers’ reports.

After initially deleting almost her entire archive of exchanges, she sent a final cryptic message:

@winteriscoming: I was never here. And I’m not Coraline Winters.

Then she went dark.

The rest of us erased as much as we could. When deleting wasn’t sufficient, we attempted revisionist history. Will Friske made a last-ditch attempt to redeem the validity of his cousin’s landscaping business just in case our server fell into the hands of the cops or, God forbid, a DEA agent.

@stopandfriske: if anyone needs help this spring/summer

@stopandfriske: please consider Friske Landscaping

@stopandfriske: for edging, planting, clean-up, tree removal, etc.

@brentmann: how about WEEDing? Does your cousin do any WEEDing?

@stopandfriske: not sure what you mean

@stopandfriske: it’s a super legitimate business

@stopandfriske: five stars on Yelp

We sifted through avalanches of conversation and gutted whole threads. Thousands of messages selling homework. Hundreds of messages about being stoned. Pleas for Nick Topornycky’s older brother to get us more Adderall.

Obsessive threads about Lucy Vale, dating from before she’d even moved to Indiana. Speculation about Lucy and her mother. About Lucy and Noah Landry. Blurry photos of the two of them together.

@kash_money: does anyone think it’s weird that Noah texts Lucy like every five seconds?

@stopandfriske: did you guys see the video of Landry talking about the dress code?

Delete.

Sideways snapshots of Lucy Vale chewing on a pen cap in homeroom. Points awarded for intel about the new girl.

@mememeup: ten points for an Instagram photo older than six months

@nononycky: twenty for a secret Instagram account. Hers is sus

Delete.

Spinnaker was adamant. Everything about Lucy had to go. Otherwise we would be accused of fixation. Harassment. We might even get roped into an investigation about the threats Lucy and her mom had been receiving for months.

We would lose our chances of going to college. Worse, we might lose our driver’s licenses.

@pawsandclaws: Lucy said that Alec Nye rigged the raffle at the Winters

@pawsandclaws: she says the whole team knew about it, even Landry

Delete.

We knew nothing. We’d seen nothing. We’d tell nothing.

Otherwise we were fucked.

After all, we were the ones who’d found Lucy Vale’s old photos and leaked them to the swim team.