Page 81 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Ten

W e’d long graduated high school by the time Rachel Vale released her book about the Faraday murders and her relationship to Jay Steeler as a young woman. This time she published under her own name.

The book’s release drew some of us back to Discord for the first time in years.

Senior year we’d disintegrated, as so many things had—our booster funds, our swim team program, the Steelers’ reputation.

Our final year at Woodward felt grim and embattled as an interminable series of investigations swallowed Administration, froze our athletics funds, and blackened our reputation with endless bad press.

Mrs. Steeler-Cox abruptly resigned. Principal Hammill retired early.

Our only decent math teacher was fired in the cheating scandal that engulfed the athletics department.

Still, the club team swimmers kept competing. Noah Landry kept winning. Some people are like that. Untouchable.

At least for a time.

It was weird being back on Discord, like walking through an abandoned graveyard overrun with dead threads and years-old comments.

@stopandfriske: whoa. This is trippy

@courtlandia: it’s like a time machine in here

@stopandfriske: who are you?

@courtlandia: oh, sorry. It’s Ethan Courtland. I got rid of my old handle

@ktcakes888: who posted all these links about Noah Landry qualifying for the Olympics last year?

@courtlandia: someone named @ninjaterrier, apparently

@nononycky: who’s @ninjaterrier?

@ktcakes888: a Noah Landry fanboy, obviously

@nononycky: Welp, that narrows it down

@nononycky: to half the country

@spinn_doctor: you’re still a mod, aren’t you @ktcakes888?

@spinn_doctor: you should know your own subs

@ktcakes888: um, I have a life

@ktcakes888: besides, last I checked, you’re still a mod too

@spinn_doctor: and I have two other Active servers

@nononycky: so that’s where all the far-right fringe theories are these days ...

@spinn_doctor: sure. since the far-left bought out mainstream media ...

@lululemonaide: what did you guys think of Rachel Vale’s book?

@lululemonaide: did anyone else read it?

@courtlandia: did you?

@lululemonaide: it’s on my dresser

@lululemonaide: but this semester has been crazy

@moonovermatter: I hear she got pictures from the Swifts

@ktcakes888: maybe we should all read it together

@lululemonaide: ohhh. Like a book club??

We agreed that yeah, sure. We could read it together, like a book club. But after finals wrapped up. After we finished our crit lit essays, our biology labs, our coding assignment. Maybe over the holidays, or after the holidays, which were always nutty.

We skirted uneasily around the subject that had made our server, broken it, and then brought us together again after all that time, verbally sidestepping the topic of Lucy until the omission itself became a kind of presence. Finally Evie Grant spoke up.

@badprincess: did you guys see that post from Lucy Vale?

Just like that, the tension collapsed.

@lululemonaide: um Yes

@lululemonaide: I almost died

@lululemonaide: she tagged Noah Landry !!

@courtlandia: Which post?

@courtlandia: I’ve seen like 20 accounts claiming to be her

@ktcakes888: only 20?

We’d noticed the accounts popping up soon after Rachel Vale’s book hit the bestseller list. I am Lucy Vale , read the bios.

All of them featured the same profile picture: a graphic of a single flame burning against a dark background.

I am Lucy Vale. One account posted a picture of the Las Vegas strip.

Another, a mountain overlook. A third, the Chicago River.

Faster and faster they thickened online as more and more people changed their profile pictures to match, changed their bios to read, I am Lucy Vale .

We didn’t know whether Lucy Vale was really behind it or whether her story had simply fractured, germinating new voices, new stories, new victims who were now coming forward under her name, new survivors.

Either way it felt like a gathering storm, like a pressure massing from all corners of the internet, like Lucy Vale’s story was about to explode from a thousand different directions.

@spinn_doctor: It’s not her

@spinn_doctor: someone’s trolling us

@courtlandia: I’d say more than one someone

@courtlandia: #IamLucyVale was a trending hashtag last week

@lululemonaide: I don’t think it’s about us

@lululemonaide: not everything is about us

@nononycky: speak for yourself

@lululemonaide: I’m serious

@lululemonaide: people just identify with Lucy

@stopandfriske: I think she started it

@stopandfriske: she’s out there somewhere, living her best life

@stopandfriske: laughing at us

@badprincess: Good

@badprincess: I hope she is

@lululemonaide: me too

@courtlandia: co-sign on that

We dawdled awkwardly around the server for a few days.

We sent pictures of our dorm rooms or our employee badges.

We made plans to hang out over break that we knew would never materialize.

We joked about a party at the Faraday House—empty again after a fast rotation of tenants had cycled through after Rachel Vale moved away.

We asked whether anyone had listened to Skyler’s new podcast. Whether it was true that Reese Cox was no longer speaking to her parents and had gone goth, or whether she was just playing for her TikTok followers.

We wanted to know whether Sofia Young was out of rehab yet or whether anybody had seen Charlotte Anderson’s baby.

We asked about Akash and how he was enjoying the University of Michigan.

We missed Akash. We hadn’t talked to him in years.

@spinn_doctor: the Kash machine? He’s killing it

@spinn_doctor: his girlfriend’s premed, and a smokeshow

@courtlandia: tell him I said hey

@courtlandia: and that I still need some lumber. it’s an inside joke

@spinn_doctor: wow, you still play Catan?

@courtlandia: just tell him

@lululemonaide: do you think that Akash might want to join our book club?

@spinn_doctor: doubt it

@spinn_doctor: he’s moved on.

@ktcakes888: Lucky him.

As far as we know, it was the last message sent on the server.