Page 24 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
In September, we had other things on our minds.
Two
We
The news that half a dozen Sharks had been jumped by a rival team on their way out of Lucky Strike bowling alley ricocheted around social media and blasted onto Discord on a Sunday, twelve hours after the county sheriff had allegedly been called to break up the fight.
We were just trickling out of various church services, and our outrage that day was appropriately biblical.
The Jalliscoe Wolverines were one of a handful of Indiana high schools that counted a roster of excellent club swimmers on their teams, and we hated them. The whole town was a hellhole of fork-tongued devil-worshippers. Their mascot represented a clear psychic attraction to the beast, a magnet for the deceitful and corrupt.
The general channel that day was a ruin of informational shrapnel. Contradictory facts sparred for screen space. The Wolverines had used a baseball bat. A beer bottle. Both. It had taken two deputies to break up the fight. One of the Wolverines was in the hospital. Aiden Teller was in the hospital. The Wolverines’ head coach was threatening to press charges. Coach Radner was going to suspend Ryan Hawthorne for throwing a punch at a deputy. Coach Vernon was going to boot Teller from the club team.
We rushed to theCounty Newswebsite to check the police blotter. But the most recent post was from Friday: a handful of misdemeanor possession charges, a suspected arson reported on Donahue Road, half a dozen DUIs. We pretended not to notice that Topornycky’s uncle had been booked again; it barely counted as news anyway. We obsessively hunted down accounts for the Wolverines and shadowed anyone they’d recently tagged in their photos.
Sofia Young logged on.
She wanted to know if it was true that Jeremiah Greene had been arrested.
We freaked the fuck out.
@badprincess:Jeremiah was arrested????
@mememeup:wait wait wait
@mememeup:Are you positive?
@goodnightsky:I’m pretty sure one of the Sharks was arrested
@goodnightsky:This girl at Waffle House said her stepbrother works at Lucky Strike
@goodnightsky:And she mentioned Jeremiah
@badprincess:wow
@badprincess:institutionalized racism much
@nononycky:#defundthepolice
@brentmann:we need to get all the facts before we start jumping to conclusions
@nononycky:the criminal justice system says otherwise
@brentmann:so Greene was arrested because he’s black?
@safireswiftly:I don’t think so
@kash_money:watch out, your white privilege is showing
@safireswiftly:I’m literally Black
@safireswiftly:I’m saying I don’t think Jeremiah Greene was arrested
@safireswiftly:He was at church at like 9 a.m.
@ktcakes888:?? You’re supposed to message me when you change handles, Alyssa
@skyediva:your church starts at 9 a.m.??
