Page 2 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
@safireswiftly:omg
@safireswiftly:were Connor and @hannahbananahooking up?
They were.
We found out later that Connor and Hannah were in the bathroom when the alarm triggered. Connor, who’d been in love with her forever, had been desperate to make sure Hannah was safe. It was kind of heroic actually, especially since we had all assumed there was an active shooter on campus at that point. They had bolted to the sound booth, the closest secure space. We heard from Allan Meeks, who’d heard the story from Connor, that they were holding hands in the dark, and one thing led to another. We heard from Willa Barrens, who’d heard from Hannah, that theone thingthat had led there was Hannah’s crashing realization that she did not want to die a virgin.
It was unbelievable. Connor Williams was getting laid, and most of us couldn’t even get a hickey.
For a few days, we tossed theories back and forth while the school launched yet another investigation, its second in six weeks. But it didn’t occur to us that Lucy Vale’s absence the day of the fire might be connected, because by then her absence wasn’t special or significant. We weren’t even sure that she was planning to finish out the school year. She’d been absent since the Investigative Committee had wrapped its findings about the night of Ryan Hawthorne’s New Year’s Eve party. Most of us figured she had already dropped out. We didn’t know how shecouldcome back. Her reputation was permanently destroyed. We figured she would be too ashamed.
We never, ever, ever dreamed that she would beangry. It wouldn’t have occurred to us in a million years that she would drive to school, sneak into Aquatics, and steal Sean the Shark from storage. That she would take the time to wheel a recycling bin up to Administration, keeping her hoodie pulled low and a sweatshirt zipped over her chin so she was practically unrecognizable.
We didn’t believe it at first, even after we heard that the sheriff was looking for her and Administration had leaked security footage from the Aquatics Center lobby to the local news.
Back then we’d worshipped Lucy, envied her, exalted and then hated her. We’d constructed her in pieces. We’d finally solved her like a puzzle. We knew by then that Lucy was a pathological liar, just like her mother. Some of us thought Lucy was an expert manipulator, a covert narcissist, a con artist, or all three. Some of us thought she was just cracked. Damaged, desperate, and suffering from major daddy issues.
But she wasn’tbatshit. And she had no reason—no reason—to be angry atus. It didn’t make any sense.
Lucy Vale?we all kept saying.Our Lucy Vale?
Because even then, after everything that had happened, we still thought Lucy Vale belonged to us.
Then she torched our mascot, and we realized we were wrong.
Two
We
Akash Sandhu was the first to talk to the new girl but not the first to hear about her. That honor belonged to Emma Howard.
Emma Howard’s mom was a real estate agent. It was already late July when Mrs. Howard got the inquiry: a woman named Rachel Vale from Michigan wanted to rent a house. Her daughter, Lucy, would be enrolling at Woodward as a sophomore in just a few weeks’ time.
The Vales were clean, quiet, and nonsmokers.
Also, they “might” have a cat.
Whatever that meant.
The news blew up on our Discord server. We were in the hardcore grips of midsummer boredom: we were too young to drive, too hot to work, and too afraid to steal weed from our brothers’ rooms. July was crawling on its hands and knees through a heat wave, and so far the most exciting happening was an algae bloom in Byron Lake that temporarily greened the water.
At first we assumed that Lucy Vale would be an athlete, a transfer student who’d slipped under the Indiana High School Athletic Administration’s radar. The only reason to move to Granger was to attend Woodward High School, and the only reason to attend Woodward High School was for its athletics programs. Our girls’ trackteam was thriving, and our dance team was no joke. The previous year, Bailey Lawrence and the other Strut Girls had flipped and shimmied and catapulted their way into state championships, and almost ten thousand YouTube views.
And then, of course, there was our swim team.
But the athlete theory got shot down pretty quickly by Riley French; her uncle told her that the school was no longer taking athletics transfers, to comply with IHSAA requirements that might otherwise penalize our teams. Since Riley French’s uncle, Judd French, was the assistant director of our athletics department, we figured her intel was legit.
We were so desperate for excitement that we packed this shrapnel of mystery—a new girl, our year, and moving midway through the summer—with as much meaning as possible. We bombarded each other with a rapid barrage, a cross fire of questions we couldn’t answer, and theories we couldn’t confirm one way or the other.
@ktcakes888:Does anyone know why the new girl is moving?
@geminirising:Does anyone think it’s weird they waited this long to find a house??
@badprincess:I was thinking about that. It feels like it must be a last-minute thing
@skyediva:who moves last minute?
@mememeup:maybe her mom got a job
