Page 74 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Three

W e felt it fitting that Akash, who had reported the first sighting of Lucy Vale, brought us our last solid news about her.

It was a Saturday, a few days after the fire, and we were all bleeding time away on Discord.

That’s how the weekends felt spring of our junior year.

On Saturdays we congealed inside our boredom, coagulating on our beds and sofas and laptops.

On Sundays we were gutted, spilling unchecked toward the school week.

Our parents were newly suspicious. They scented trouble in every text alert.

They hovered around us constantly, like a foul smell.

We were dissatisfied and disconcerted. That morning we’d been batting around theories about Reese Steeler-Cox’s latest TikTok video, an unexpected tirade about the swim team and the special privileges they enjoyed from Administration.

We were baffled. We were nonplussed. We were jealous that she’d gotten so much organic engagement.

Reese Steeler-Cox was one of the most dedicated swim team shills. She was a Student Council princess. A student hallway monitor. Practically an Administrative appendage.

She was in love with Noah Landry, for Christ’s sake. That’s why she’d defended Lucy Vale to the Investigative Committee back in January—to get back at Noah Landry for picking a different girl.

It was known. It was the only thing that made sense.

Like the fact that you couldn’t trust a girl from Jalliscoe.

Like the fact that Lydia Faraday was a nutjob.

Like the fact that she’d been found hanging in the apple tree.

These were the stories we’d grown up with, and the stories that had grown us.

We didn’t need proof. Some things, we just knew.

April had the raw, wild smell of manure and new things growing out of sight.

Akash logged on.

@kash_money: Has anyone heard from Lucy?

It took all of us a second to get over the shock of seeing Lucy’s name. We seesawed momentarily over a bad feeling, like we’d been tipped down into a pit.

@mememeup: ?

@badprincess: what do you mean?

@lululemonaide: why would we have heard from Lucy?

@spinn_doctor: does anyone still talk to her?

@kash_money: that’s what I’m asking. Has anyone talked to her?

@nononycky: the answer is no. no, we have not talked to Lucy.

@mememeup: the question is why are you asking?

@kash_money: the sheriff is looking for her

@mememeup: ummm ... try the Faraday House?

@meeksmaster: why? What’s she done now?

@kash_money: she’s not home. Her mom hasn’t seen her. The car is missing

@kash_money: she set fire to our mascot, for one

@meeksmaster: the Toyota?

@geminirising: wait What

@geminirising: that was Lucy Vale ???

@kash_money: no, the civic. The one her mom bought her when Lucy passed her test.

@geminirising: can we Stick to one conversation at a time

@kash_money: The cops think Lucy was the one who set our mascot on fire

@kash_money: I guess the school had security tapes

@kash_money: They came looking for her last night

@kash_money: But she wasn’t home

@kash_money: Her mom doesn’t know where she is

@kash_money: She filed a missing person’s report last night

In the silence, we saw new alerts: @sunshineandhugs, @blackrainbows, and @swifty99 were asking to join the server. Soon requests from unknown usernames thickened in the waiting room.

It was only a matter of time before Spinnaker had a meltdown.

@spinn_doctor: who are all these people? Where are these requests coming from?

@highasakyle: look, we can’t trust anyone named @sunshineandhugs

@highasakyle: that’s a fact

@kash_money: I told everyone to meet here.

@spinn_doctor: confirm we have verification procedures in place @ktcakes888

@kash_money: we have to find her

@spinn_doctor: this server has protocols

@mememeup: Fuck you, Spinnaker

@mememeup: Let them in

@mememeup: Let’s find Lucy Vale

We scrambled to keep track of the inundation of new subscribers.

A rapid volley of new requests quickly exposed problems in our infrastructure, namely that Spinnaker was a control freak.

He proposed a system of verification questions that would ensure the new subscribers at least attended Woodward.

We scrummed first over the system’s viability, then over what the questions should be.

Akash accused us of wasting valuable time.

Evie Grant reminded us sanctimoniously that the first seventy-two hours after someone’s disappearance were the most important.

We told her we’d all seen old episodes of Law & Order .

Allan Meeks expressed doubt that Lucy Vale was missing at all.

He suggested she might simply be seeking attention once again, trying to leverage our sympathies.

Spinnaker said we should locate her just so she could be properly booked and charged with destroying our swim team mascot.

Hannah Smith lamented that we had so little compassion for mental illness.

Spinnaker called her a gullible simp. Meeks told her to go pop some Zoloft and cry about it.

Kaitlyn Courtland blocked him from commenting and threatened to boot him from the server until he apologized and, preferably, sought help.

Nick Topornycky recommended he try Zoloft.

Meanwhile, a backlog of new users were idling, waiting for our permission to join.

@nononycky: who is @reesespieces1698?

@sunshineandhugs: that’s Reese.

@badprincess: um, I’m sorry? Reese . . . ?

@sunshineandhugs: Reese Steeler-Cox.

@spinn_doctor: very funny

@badprincess: RSC wants to join Our server??

@spinn_doctor: and who are you @sunshineandhugs? Who let you in here?

@sunshineandhugs: it’s Charlotte.

@sunshineandhugs: Charlotte Anderson.

@sunshineandhugs: we heard Akash set up a Discord server to help find Lucy Vale

Even Spinnaker didn’t dare correct her. It was an extraordinary turn of events, completely unprecedented.

We were, of course, suspicious. All of us knew that Charlotte Anderson and Reese Steeler-Cox had once catfished Harper Rowe in seventh grade, permanently icing her out of the Echelon.

We couldn’t believe that a single member of the Student Council Mafia would deign to grace our server with her presence, much less two of them.

On the other hand, only someone like Charlotte Anderson—a Hello Kitty fanatic and Pinterest apologist—would choose a handle as flagrantly banal as @sunshineandhugs.

We rounded on Akash. We weren’t sure whether to count it as a coup or a betrayal. First Savannah Savage, Bailey Lawrence, and the other Strut Girls started following his socials. Now, suddenly, he was friendly with the Student Council Mafia.

@highasakyle: dude, since when do you know Reese Steeler-Cox, @kash_money?

@kash_money: since I found out who was putting threats in Lucy’s locker

@badprincess: it was RSC?? I knew it

@sunshineandhugs: it wasn’t Reese!! She would never

@kash_money: no, Ceecee

@badprincess: ??

@nononycky: our Ceecee?

@nononycky: from the front office?

@kash_money: she’s not our Ceecee

@kash_money: she’s married to a Steeler

@sunshineandhugs: can we please admit Reese?

@sunshineandhugs: she’s texting me

@badprincess: this is so chaotic

@brentmann: I thought Reese hated Lucy

@sunshineandhugs: Reese doesn’t hate anyone

@sunshineandhugs: she’s worried about Lucy

@sunshineandhugs: she tried to warn her to stay away from Noah Landry

@sunshineandhugs: she was afraid something like this would happen

For a moment we were all ricocheted back to January and the blow of cold air in our chests. Charlotte Anderson wasn’t done.

@sunshineandhugs: the Vales should never have come back here

@badprincess: what do you mean, back here?

@sunshineandhugs: you didn’t know?

@sunshineandhugs: Lucy’s mom used to spend summers down here

@sunshineandhugs: she knew Coach Steeler

@sunshineandhugs: I mean she knew him, knew him

@sunshineandhugs: she published on substack about it

@badprincess: link please

Charlotte sent us the link.

That was it. That was the moment. In a split second, the foundation of our entire lives—our image of the swim team, of the legendary Coach Steeler, of Woodward, of the whole county—caved.

It came crashing down on the Sharks and the club team, on Noah Landry and his wins, on Alec Nye drawing Lucy’s name at the Winters Dance because he’d made a bet that he could get with her first, on Noah Landry cutting in because he wanted to win.

It collapsed in an upward plume of all the rumors we’d been trying to discount and ignore.

Woodward swimmers can get away with anything.

They never get in trouble.

They make the county too much money.

They could literally get away with murder.

They already have.

@badprincess: Hang on Hang on Hang on

@safireswiftly: are you saying Coach Steeler slept with Lucy’s mom??

@sunshineandhugs: I’m not saying it. Lucy’s mom is saying it

@sunshineandhugs: she’s saying he slept with Nina Faraday, too

@badprincess: I might actually puke

@sunshineandhugs: can you please let Reese in now?

@sunshineandhugs: we’re literally wasting minutes

We were too shaken to respond. Even Spinnaker went silent.

Then Nick Topornycky pointed out that Reese’s handle, @reesespieces1698, looked familiar. Why, he asked Charlotte Anderson—or at least the user claiming to be her—had Reese chosen those specific digits for her username?

@sunshineandhugs: bc they’re the last four of her cell phone number

@sunshineandhugs: easy to remember

We knew then what he was angling at. Nick’s question had touched off a series of associations that hopscotched us through the archives of the internet and landed us back in time, before the Vales had even arrived in Indiana—back to when an unknown user, ANONYM1698, first blinked into existence and slowly began to spread the gospel of the swim team’s dirty secrets.

We’d been looking for a mole, someone with insider access to the team and the Administration.

We wondered now, though, if all along we’d been looking in the wrong direction.

By almost unanimous vote, we welcomed Reese Steeler-Cox onto our server and vowed to track down Lucy Vale.