Page 87 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Of course, we all felt at least partially responsible, although none of us said so, not out loud. Earlier that fall, as rumors about Lucy’s connection to the Faraday case had continued to fester, breeding gaseous suspicion that soured our moods, we’d turned on Lucy Vale.

She had rejected us. She’d leveraged our friendships, our welcomes, to stratospheric heights of popularity. She’d humiliated Akash at the Winters Dance. She’d claimed for months that she had no interest in dating, and especially no interest in dating a swimmer. She’d pretendednot to have entered the Balladeers’ Auction, then brilliantly manipulated the draw to her benefit. She’d refused to contribute to our podcast.

Slowly our resentments had stirred into whispers, creeping insinuations about Lucy and her mom.

Our fixation with Lucy had taken a darker turn, turning petty and vindictive. We’d snarked about Lucy in private. We’d floated insinuations about her in text threads and DMs. Lucy Vale had still been a Strut Girl, immune from direct attack, protected by the buffering force of Bailey Lawrence’s popularity. But within our Discord, we’d seethed. We were like a body suddenly inflamed with allergy; the Vales’ presence was an irritant, a foreign object. Dangerous.

We’d criticized what Lucy wore to school. We’d trolled her performances with the dance team—Lucy nearly always fumbled her moves—and reported on every awkward hallway interaction between Lucy and Noah Landry. When we heard that the threatening letters had tailed Lucy back to school, found their way into her locker, we’d been unpitying. Instead we’d ridiculed her for complaining to Administration—a sign of weakness and, in our opinion, hypocrisy.

@highasakyle:funny that Lucy’s crying to admin now about bullying

@highasakyle:she and her mom weren’t so hype on making friends when they spent all summer protesting the Steeler pavilion

@spinn_doctor:what do you expect from democrats?

@spinn_doctor:they’re always changing their position

Whereas over the summer we’d hunted for proof that would discredit our online attackers, now we tried to prove a connection between the Vales and the Faradays, tried to find evidence that the Vales might be profiting from the media around the case.

The more we leaned in to an ugly picture of the Vales and their intentions, the more Lucy’s reputation was colored with stories about why she’d left her old school and muddied with rumors about herfamily’s connection to the Swifts and the Faradays, the more Noah Landry sharpened in contrast into a figure of almost biblical perfection, we forgot our temporary misgivings about Casino Night, dismissed the memory of Noah’s voice rapping out across the parking lot as he seized Lucy. The impression of Lucy, huddled pitifully at his feet, evaporated.

Only Akash still insisted that Noah Landry was, in fact, a fraud.

@kash_money:he’s a predator

@kash_money:he only went out with Lucy because he made a bet with Nye just before the Winters

@kash_money:it’s all about the win with him

@geminirising:who told you that? Lucy?

@kash_money:Savannah Savage

@hannahbanana:I still can’t believe she follows you

@geminirising:okay, but Savannah probably heard it from Lucy

@spinn_doctor:say it with me, people

@spinn_doctor:Check Your Sources

@spinn_doctor:sounds like more #liesbyLucy

@brentmann:what do you expect her to say? She just got dumped

@kash_money:first of all, please don’t ever use that hashtag again @spinn_doctor

@kash_money:second of all, Noah didn’t dump Lucy. She dumped him

@spinn_doctor:see above re: #liesbyLucy

@kash_money:what happened to #believeallwomen?

@spinn_doctor:rationality?

We didn’t want to side with Alex Spinnaker sheerly on principle, and definitely not in public. His hashtags were dumb. But we couldn’t argue that he was right about Lucy.

Lucy Vale was not on our side.