Page 27 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
The problem was, they were the wrong people to cross.
Stupid woman.
She hadn’t had a chance.
Five
We
Shark Week that year was violent with school spirit, and anti-Administration passion.
By then we’d figured out that it wasn’t Jeremiah Greene but Aiden Teller, one of our cocaptains, who’d been arrested. Even worse, we heard that Ryan Hawthorne had injured his shoulder in the fight.
@mememeup:welp, there goes the season
@bassicrhythm:should we be having a vigil or something?
@kash_money:for the season?
@bassicrhythm:for Hawthorne’s shoulder
@gustagusta:which means, for the season
@badprincess:how are you guys making jokes about this?
@badprincess:I’m sobbing rn
@geminirising:me too
@mememeup:co-sign on that
It didn’t matter, in our minds, who’d thrown the first punch. Clearly the whole thing was an ambush, and Jalliscoe was to blame.
@spinn_doctor:I’m telling you, this was coordinated
@spinn_doctor:Jalliscoe masterminded the whole thing
@highasakyle:Wouldn’t that require a mind?
@highasakyle:What is “too smart for the inbred bootsuckers who live in Jalliscoe?”
@spinn_doctor:apparently not, @highasakyle, since it worked
@spinn_doctor:This is straight out ofThe Art of War
@spinn_doctor:If you guys were actually literate, this wouldn’t surprise you
@ktcakes888:not the time, Spinnaker
The next day, half the Sharks came to school looking like rotten vegetables kicked around a field. The whole team was alternating between stoicism and grief, like prisoners facing a morning execution. Meanwhile, not a peep from Administration. Mrs. Steeler-Cox was allegedly locked up with Principal Hammill all morning, and none of us even had the heart to make a joke about what they might have been doing all that time.
Slowly we cobbled together a timeline. The swim team had gone for pizza with Coaches Radner and Vernon. This in itself was newsworthy, and suggested a new era of cooperation between the Granger Club Team and our high school Sharks, something that could only bode well for the state title—and make our competitors hysterical.
Afterward, some of the guys had gone bowling. Cocaptains Alec Nye and Aiden Teller were in one car. Ryan Hawthorne had Jeremiah Greene and some of the juniors in his jeep.
JJ Hammill was driving his dad’s 4Runner, even though it was after 9:00 p.m. and he technically didn’t have his driver’s license yet, only his permit. Hammill left the bowling alley early and was first out of the parking lot. According to Nate Stern, who heard it from Conrad Lyons, whose cousin Liam had just made the swim team, Hammill was turning onto the road when the Wolverines arrived. The two cars nearly collided. An argument broke out, then escalated. At some point, one of the Wolverines exited their car with a baseball bat and aimed it forHammill’s headlights. Hammill gunned it, and another Jalliscoe goon hurled a bottle at his fender.
Nye, Teller, Hawthorne, Greene, and a handful of other Sharks were just filing out of the bowling alley when they saw the bottle fly by Hammill’s car, missing it by inches. All hell broke loose; eventually three deputy cars dispatched to the scene.
