Page 77 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Six

E veryone we knew, and hundreds we didn’t, turned out for the search party in Rockland County State Park. We navigated a thicket of local and state reporters angling for a view with their cameras, all of them trained on the crowd like lidless eyes.

We reported on the reporters’ reporting and captured videos of ourselves being filmed.

Bailey Lawrence, Savannah Savage, and Mia Thompson clutched hands in the parking lot, faces shadowed by matching dance team hats.

They stood with heads bowed like mourners while we received instructions from orange-clad volunteers.

Akash came with both of his parents and even his older sister who was home on college break.

He stayed apart from us, fists balled in his jacket, his eyes raw with grief.

It was possibly the first time we understood: he really had loved Lucy Vale.

Coach Radner and Coach Vernon were there, wearing matching blue-and-red windbreakers.

The Steeler-Coxes were noticeably absent.

According to Reese, the Steeler-Cox delegation was considering legal action against Rachel Vale for her claims about Jay Steeler.

Rachel Vale wasn’t the first person to accuse Jay Steeler of being a predator, but her report was the first to explode in the news cycle.

Since then, Reese told us, all of the Steelers had been receiving death threats online.

Mrs. Steeler-Cox’s beloved Facebook page, where she rigorously hyped the perfect family image, had gone mysteriously dark.

Reese Steeler-Cox, meanwhile, made furtive TikToks from her bathroom and sent sporadic messages to the server that carried the slightly hysterical tone of someone trapped in a bunker at the end of the world.

That day was no exception.

@reesespieces1698: who’s there?

@reesespieces1698: tell me everything

@reesespieces1698: I only have a few minutes

@reesespieces1698: it’s like a war room downstairs

@highasakyle: think Coachella

@highasakyle: but depressing

@pawsandclaws: Coachella is depressing

@reesespieces1698: is Noah Landry there for his photo opp?

@mememeup: haven’t seen him

@reesespieces1698: just look for the biggest camera

@reesespieces1698: and the tallest liar

@lululemonaide: where is this coming from?

@reesespieces1698: experience

@reesespieces1698: I tried to warn Lucy away from Noah Landry

@reesespieces1698: I told her to stay away

@nononycky: you stuffed her sweatshirt down a toilet bowl

@reesespieces1698: We were making a point.

@spinn_doctor: Landry was cleared.

@mememeup: True. Due process by a jury of school board shills

Reese Steeler-Cox was right about Noah. Minutes later, Alyssa Hobbes spotted him being interviewed by the crew from Spotlight Indiana .

Noah kept his hat ducked low over his eyes and his shoulders hunched forward, as if he had a stomachache.

His parents and Coach Vernon ringed him on either side; Alyssa snuck a picture, and we all had the impression of someone pinned into place.

@badprincess: wow. it’s like ... now he suddenly gives a shit about Lucy?

@bassicrhythm: Hammill and Hawthorne are here too

@badprincess: that’s convenient

@colonelmustard: I think it’s nice that the swim team showed up

@colonelmustard: you know, considering

@badprincess: please. all of them showed up for the publicity

@badprincess: meanwhile, they didn’t care at all when they were trashing Lucy’s reputation

@highasakyle: sure

@highasakyle: but you could say the same about us

@pawsandclaws: maybe they’re here because they feel guilty

@nononycky: what do you mean?

@pawsandclaws: why did Lucy burn our mascot?

@warcraftlordandlegend: idk. Because she’s deranged?

@hannahbanana: I thought we agreed that Lucy Vale has serious problems

@hannahbanana: right? Didn’t we all agree on that?

@hannahbanana: hello?

No one answered. We didn’t know what to say.

It seemed like Lucy Vale had problems, for sure. But standing there in the thin spring sunlight, hemmed in by the crowd that had come to search for her, we realized: we really had no clue where Lucy Vale might have gone.

In the end, we really didn’t know much about her.

We fanned out through the woods, staying arm’s lengths from our neighbors. “No point in getting a second person lost in these trees,” Deputy Stern joked. We didn’t laugh.

The sky was the chafed color of old denim.

The woods were full of desperate daffodils, pushing valiantly through a scrum of rotting leaves.

The trees were eking out their first green onto water-parched branches.

The ground covering was so dry, it cracked beneath our footsteps like the report of a gun.

The late winter snows had done little to resolve Indiana’s drought.

When we gathered at the lip of Fallow’s Creek, we found it gone.

The water was down to its last filthy dribbles, leaving a hollowed-out rut of sludge and fallen branches that whipped out of sight.

Four separate volunteer groups searched the state park, an unruly twelve-thousand-acre swath of woods and campgrounds, fishing ponds and bird sanctuaries.

Other volunteers gathered at a constellation of trailheads that bracketed the densest part of the forest, cordoning off a three-square-mile portion of the park where a hiker had reported seeing a girl who matched Lucy’s description, apparently headed north through the woods.

We learned later that more than eight hundred people convened over three days to search for Lucy.

We tried not to think about the Lucy we might find. We steered clear of the cadaver dogs straining at their leashes. We snuck messages to one another, trying to lighten the mood.

@mememeup: did anyone bring snacks?

@mememeup: I’m already hungry

@badprincess: I can’t believe Mrs. Devane brought her kids

@badprincess: this isn’t, like, a field trip??

@warcraftlordandlegend: depends on what we find

The woods rebounded Lucy’s name as we called out to her.

We slogged through the dry rot of winters past, pushing through tangles of witch hazel and chokeberry bushes that clutched our jeans as we navigated the slopes parallel to the exposed creek bed.

Volunteers in lurid orange looked like flames along the trails.

The trees thinned the sunlight into pinwheel shafts that barely warmed us.

A sharp wind rose, carrying the smell of ice.

Minutes cycled by, marking the repetition of our calls. Lucy. Lucy Vale. Lucy.

We lost track of time. Lucy’s name began to sound foreign, losing its tether to the girl, to the point. In the echoing shouts of distant search teams, we imagined a conversation. A call and response that held the mystery.

Lucy. Lucy Vale.

Where are you?

Suddenly there was a scream, a sharp wail—from our left, from our right, from behind us.

We broke rank. We shook loose from our assigned positions, forgetting what we had been instructed, and followed the thread of sound.

It was Olivia Howard, gasping, standing with both hands over her mouth.

“Look. Look at what they’ve done to her,” she was saying as we approached, crowding past the volunteers trying to herd us back in line, saying, It’s okay, it’s nothing, it’s just a deer.

Actually it was a fawn. A carcass. Long limbs, eyes open, blackened with swarming insects. Its stomach was missing, gutted by sharp teeth. Probably coyotes. Maybe a bobcat.

We were annoyed at Olivia, and told her so. Why had she screamed like that?

It was a deer, for Christ’s sake. Had she ever seen roadkill before? Hadn’t she been to Alex Spinnaker’s house and seen the deer hooves used to mount a rifle? It was one thing to be a Wiccan and a vegan. It was another to make her problems everyone else’s.

We thought she’d actually found something. When we heard the scream, we thought for a single electric second that she’d found Lucy Vale.

“Of course I didn’t find Lucy Vale,” Olivia fired back. She seemed annoyed. “You really think we’re going to find Lucy? You think she just—what?—wandered off? For no reason?”

Maybe. Maybe not. The state park was vast. The trails were poorly kept and wandered off like lapsed sentences into the obscuring underbrush.

As the afternoon wore on, we began to understand why Deputy Stern had counseled us to always stay in our places, to keep one another in sight, to move slowly in a single line, like a human tide.

The pine trees thickened. Great-bellied clouds cast a pall over the sun.

We lost our sense of direction. If it wasn’t for the hollow of the creek bed, gouging an enormous rut between the trees, we might have been circling.

We paused every so often to sip from water bottles, even though we weren’t thirsty. Our fingers numbed from cold. We could barely thumb messages to each other.

@badprincess: anything over by you guys?

@bassicrhythm: just more trees

@lululemonaide: I’m freezing

@lululemonaide: how long do we have to stay out here?

@mememeup: shit

@mememeup: shit

@badprincess: ??

@mememeup: give me a minute

@mememeup: I’m pretty sure they found something ...

@badprincess: oh my god

@hannahbanana: please tell me it’s not Lucy

In the distance, we heard the sharp rap of a dog barking. The sound was quickly silenced. The command to hold where we were shuddered down the line. We idled in groups, checking our phones, anxious about service, which for many of us had winnowed down to a single bar.

@badprincess: what’s happening??

@skyediva: ugh my battery is low. Any news??

@mememeup: idk

@mememeup: There are deputies heading down to the creek

@mememeup: They’re looking at something

@ktcakes888: something?? Or someone??

@mememeup: something

@nononycky: maybe it’s another deer

@pawsandclaws: not funny @nononycky

@mememeup: It looks like a backpack or something

@badprincess: ugh @bassicrhythm can you ask your cousin??

@mememeup: wait no

@mememeup: not a backpack

@mememeup: a duffel bag

@mememeup: yellow and black

@badprincess: like a Woodward duffel bag????

@hannahbanana: did Lucy even have a Woodward duffel bag?

@mememeup: not sure

@mememeup: but Nina Faraday did