Page 72 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

One

L ucy dropped out of school right around the time the Investigative Committee concluded that the school had no further role in what happened at Ryan Hawthorne’s party.

There was no official confirmation that she had, in fact, withdrawn.

But that’s what everyone was saying. Her absences hung closer and closer together, until they beaded into a week, and then two.

The surface of her locker was bleached clean until only the barest trace of graffiti remained.

The Investigative Committee, and all proof of its activity, evaporated.

The loudspeakers patched into silence again, except for morning announcements and the occasional reminder to stay clear of the active construction site on the north side of Aquatics.

The SLD Tutoring Center reopened its media room for student use.

Slowly we saw it repopulated by the LARP crowd, acting out their fantasy worlds in relative privacy between periods.

The paranoia that had roiled us since February broke suddenly into relief, followed quickly by exhaustion.

@badprincess: after all that drama, nothing??

@badprincess: no explanation, no apology, we just act like nothing ever happened?

@spinn_doctor: because nothing Did happen

@ktcakes888: we don’t know that for sure

@spinn_doctor: ??

@spinn_doctor: that’s what the Investigative Committee decided

@badprincess: oh, so Now you trust admin??

@spinn_doctor: so now you trust Lucy Vale?

@badprincess: I just think it’s weird that the committee is just Done

@highasakyle: I gotta be honest

@highasakyle: I’m pretty done too

Ostensibly the investigation was now entirely in the hands of the county sheriff’s department.

But as weeks passed with no news and no updates—as Noah Landry began making headlines again, this time for simultaneous early admission offers from Berkeley and UNC; as Lucy Vale dematerialized, withdrawn into the Faraday House like something submerged in water—so, too, did the lingering threat of charges.

We understood that the investigation of Ryan Hawthorne’s party had dissipated along with Lucy Vale’s material presence.

Instead we heard new rumors—that Administration was quietly planning the next phase of their war on Discord; that the cops were looking into whether there were, in fact, pictures of underage girls circulating on a private server associated with our school and possibly our swim team; that Sheriff Horne was focused on bringing a conclusive end to Nina Faraday’s cold case and, for the first time in eighteen years, calling up old and new witnesses, interviewing Nina’s teachers, reaching out for tips, and trying definitively to establish where Nina had been before and after Woody Topornycky saw her entering Aquatics by a side door.

In the raw early months of spring, after Lucy simply slipped away from Woodward like something lapsed in our memory, the sheriff’s department’s dual investigations became confused. Muddled. Past and present became curiously indistinguishable, like the reflection of sky thrown up by a palm of water.

@bassicrhythm: hey @nononycky

@bassicrhythm: did Woody tell you why he got called in to talk to the sheriff?

@nononycky: because the cops are finally doing their job

@nononycky: they’re taking him seriously for once

@safireswiftly: why are they talking to Woody about Ryan Hawthorne’s party?

@safireswiftly: was he there??

@lululemonaide: I hear they talked to Coach Radner too

@nononycky: not about the party

@nononycky: about Nina Faraday

@nononycky: they think he was the last person to see her before she “vanished”

@safireswiftly: and they think Coach Radner knows something??

@lululemonaide: no, no

@lululemonaide: I thought we were talking about Lucy

@bassicrhythm: my cousin says they’re reviewing all her old phone records, too

@safireswiftly: Lucy’s, or Nina’s??

@badprincess: probably both?

@bassicrhythm: Lydia Faraday’s, sorry.

@badprincess: this is so confusing

Rumors sifted to us, one after the other, until all the rumors were just stories and all the stories were just comments turned over on our server, through our fingers, into tidbits of data to digest and regurgitate and recycle and forget.

We moved on. As a raw spring wind began to scrub the green from the ground, we felt the fierce grip of the events on our subconscious begin to loosen.

With it, almost imperceptibly at first, came the slow unraveling of our obsession with the swim team.

The state championships had come and gone.

We’d felt nothing but relief when they were over; none of us had bothered to attend the meet.

Without some of our best swimmers, Woodward placed third behind Willow Park and Nyack, giving our enemies something to crow about on TikTok.

We pitied our rivals for their obsessive preoccupation with a single competition.

We had other things to worry about: college, and whether we would get in or could afford to go; the looming threat of the SATs, which suddenly edged into every conversation with our parents and every lecture from our teachers; whether or not we would be able to see Taylor Swift in concert.

We’d grown up and gained new perspectives.

It was as if the swimmers and their wins had slipped down the length of a telescope, grown increasingly distant from us.

Toward Noah Landry, our feelings turned fickle.

Fitful. With no punishment on the horizon, we were stirred by currents of unease.

His social media, we felt, was insensitive.

His headphones were outdated. His easy smile, suspicious.

We detected no signs of shame, no crippling grief, no self-flagellation or regret.

Spinnaker pointed out that Noah’s behavior was evidence of a clear conscience. Evie Grant floated the word sociopath .

Noah just kept swimming on the club team, and left all the bad feelings for us to work through.

We studied for our PSATs. We were buried under an avalanche of homework.

We started having dreams about college where college was a maze and we couldn’t ever find the dining hall.

We put our phones on “Do Not Disturb” for hours at a time.

We hunted for new Discord servers dedicated to our favorite gamers, our favorite channels, our favorite books.

We were hopeful, for once, about our basketball team.

We heard that freshman Theo Davis had sunk thirty points in one game. We followed him on TikTok.

In March we heard that Administration had been tipped off about a cheating ring that fed homework to the athletes for cash. Alex Spinnaker warned us not to say anything. He threatened to infiltrate our hard drives and leak our personal data if we even thought of confessing.

@spinn_doctor: no body, no crime

@spinn_doctor: remember that

@nononycky: whoever killed Nina Faraday did

@mememeup: that’s not funny, man

@lululemonaide: wait—do we really think Nina Faraday is dead???

@nononycky: no, we think she went on a 17-year-long vacation

We relaxed our imaginative hold on Lucy.

We let her slip away, lost inside the Faraday House, drowned somewhere out of sight.

The longer she stayed away from school, the less clear our memories of her were.

When we tried to get our imaginations around her, it was like plunging our hands into a stream to catch something we saw streak beneath the surface—a fish, a frog, a newt stirring in the mud.

Our fingers went quickly numb. Something vital slipped through the dark places in our memories.

Even Akash stopped reporting on the lights burning in the house or the twitch of a hand at the window, cinching the curtains shut.

He logged on only intermittently, usually with a question for Spinnaker and Meeks about a video game that had stymied him or an expletive about homework.

He spent most of his time with his new sort-of girlfriend.

He’d even moved lunch tables to sit with her.

And then, one day, without a word or a goodbye, his username disappeared.

Without Akash, our server began to fray.

Then Kaitlyn Courtland rocked us when she announced she was giving up the moderator role.

We weren’t convinced by her excuse either.

According to Kaitlyn, her parents wanted her to spend more time on her homework.

This was equivalent to announcing that Kaitlyn Courtland had parents.

It was our parents’ most common refrain, the rhythmic undercurrent that powered a whole generation of internet use.

We were always supposed to be doing our homework, or our chores, or getting outside, or making real friends.

True, Mrs. Steeler-Cox’s aggressive marketing campaign about the poisonous effects of Discord on young minds and moral development made things trickier.

Still, we wouldn’t have pegged Kaitlyn for a quitter.

Ethan Courtland had an alternate explanation for his cousin’s abdication of her responsibilities.

@mememeup: She feels bad about Lucy Vale

@badprincess: what do you mean? Bad how?

@mememeup: she just feels bad about what we did to her

@spinn_doctor: are you crazy?

@spinn_doctor: am I crazy?

@spinn_doctor: does anyone listen to me?

@spinn_doctor: do I exist?

@nononycky: unfortunately

@spinn_doctor: we did absolutely nothing to Lucy Vale

@spinn_doctor: we are innocent bystanders

@spinn_doctor: to a tragic devolution of power dynamics that have absolutely nothing to do with us

@mememeup: right, exactly

@spinn_doctor: thank you

@mememeup: no, I mean, this is exactly why @ktcakes888 is taking a step back

Discord was different once Alex Spinnaker took on the sole moderator role.

At least, it was quiet of conversation, more of a monologue.

Spinnaker went on frequent long-winded rants, changed themes and channels with obsessive frequency, and often cluttered the open channel with coding tips none of us could use.

A paranoid tone prevailed. Conversation bubbled up and fizzled out as if depressed by the heavy atmosphere.

We frequently woke to ominous warnings about everything from an institutional shortage of Dr. Pepper to the imminent collapse of civilization.

We silenced notifications to avoid spam: links to articles about Russian trolls, government cover-ups, and bacterial outbreaks in national salad bars.

Every time we signed on, we had to dodge a litter of Spinnaker crazy. In the end, it was easier to disengage.

Week by week, we shed subscribers.

We lost Skyler Matthews only a few days after Alex Spinnaker became moderator.

Skyler’s podcast had been on hiatus since January, when the news of Lucy Vale’s allegations had paralyzed us.

It hadn’t helped that, shortly before then, a cabal of Jalliscoe haters had tracked down Skyler’s YouTube channel and started flagging her en masse for violating YouTube’s terms of service under the pretense that she’d been distributing fake news.

Skyler originally railed against the bullying, refusing to be cowed. She wrote impassioned Tumblr posts about the dangers confronting United States journalists and celebrating the value of free speech.

But that was before Ryan Hawthorne’s New Year’s Eve party and its fallout swallowed our lives.

After, Skyler’s attitude was fitful. Uncertain.

We perceived flickers of doubt. It was as if all the time she’d spent researching our most insistent critics had turned her slowly in their direction, confusing her, leaving her mired in doubt.

She was distrustful of the Investigative Committee’s bias.

She was the one who’d pointed out that Mrs. Steeler-Cox was its only woman and that several other appointees had signed on to support the new Jay Steeler Legacy Pavilion, helping push the project past the town board, in opposition to Rachel Vale and a small community of dissenters.

Skyler had doubts, she told us, that Lucy Vale had gotten a fair trial. We pointed out that Lucy Vale hadn’t been on trial at all.

Then Skyler said we were either dumb or in denial.

It was harsh and unexpected criticism, especially from Skyler, to whose podcasting efforts we’d been critical.

Meeks suggested that Skyler was PMSing. Skyler called Meeks the “walking embodiment of toxic masculinity.” Meeks replied that comments like that were the reason so many people hated feminists.

Skyler said that our server had gone to hell and she was out.

Our numbers continued to dwindle. We dropped to thirty. Then twenty. Then twelve.

We sensed the end of an era.

In a way, it was a blessing when Lucy returned to torch our mascot a few weeks later.