Page 35 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
Principal Hammill, a college football star and former marine, was famously implacable; when a raccoon got loose in the cafeteria the previous year, Hammill instructed everyone to clear the place and lock the doors, got in his car, drove home, and returned with a shotgun to plug the thing. But even he lost it after nearly an hour of back-and-forth. “Just ... dress like normal people. Okay? That’s all we’re asking. Dress normally, in normal clothing, like you’d wear with your family.”
That directive was, as it turned out, a fatal mistake.
Friday, Fancy Dress Day, fell with a heavy hand of gray mist. The weather was locked in an atmospheric stalemate somewhere between rain and evaporation. It put us in a strange mood; we felt as if we were waiting for something to happen.
Lucy Vale wasn’t in homeroom, and even Akash couldn’t tell us where she was. He hadn’t spoken to her since the night before, and we wondered if something terrible had happened—if Lucy Vale had even been expelled. The arrival of a local news crew, and the sight of the deputy’s vehicles straddling the bus drop-off lane, gave us phantompremonitions of school shooters. The patrolling staff members had doubled overnight. The atmosphere before first bell was disconcerted, and disconcerting; with the Sharks, the Student Council, and the cheerleaders preparing for the pep rally, the school felt like it had been gutted of all its life force.
Bailey Lawrence and the other members of the dance team huddled, unusually quiet, at their table in the cafeteria before school, glaringly conspicuous in jeans and hoodies, as if to shock us into constant awareness of their exclusion from the pep rally lineup. It worked. We drifted aimlessly, in meandering silence, through the cafeteria in our fancy dress, unmoored without the Echelon’s gravitational pull. Suddenly we felt stupid in our long gowns and contour makeup, felt the pinch of our dress shoes and heels or the scrape of collared shirts on our necks.
After homeroom we were directed to the gym. Normally the march from main campus down to the athletics complex was triumphant. That day, sutured in between teacher chaperones and the hawkeyed student monitors serving as SLD rats, the girls wobbling on their heels and the boys twitching in their suit jackets, the procession put us more in mind of a funeral. We could hardly bear the sight of Aiden Teller, walking head-down with the boys’ basketball team, or muster up a fake smile for theCounty Newsphotographer who paced next to the flow of students, snapping pictures with a cigarette clipped between his lips.
The familiar smell of the gym and the pressurized squeeze of the bleachers shook us out of our oppression. We had to give Student Council credit for their decorations, which had seemingly exploded like a molting of cicadas all over the gym. The walls were shaggy with yellow and black bunting. Thick ropes of matching balloons strapped between the ceiling lights made colorful clouds overhead. Principal Hammill gave his usual speech, the bald dome of his head reflective in the glare. Then Vice Principal Edwards took the stage to a scattering of boos, quickly dwarfed by thunderous and deeply ironic applause. After that, the improv troupe performed a boring skit that was salvaged bythe intercession of Mr. Harbinger playing a psychotic villain from a rival swim team, which earned him a standing ovation.
After that it was time for the cheerleaders. There was no denying that the squad was good that year—Reese Steeler-Cox was a savage flyer, and the tumbling happened in perfect synchronicity—but we didn’t miss the venomous glances the Student Council Mafia tossed off in the dance team’s direction. Theirs was a rivalry that extended deep into the pageant circuit, and this time the cheerleaders had clearly notched a point.
It was the only time in our lives we could remember feeling sorry for Bailey Lawrence and the Strut Girls.
Lucy Vale arrived just before the cheerleaders had finished their routine. She was dressed normally in jeans and a T-shirt. She looked tired at first—and then, when she realized that everyone was staring, embarrassed. She probably hadn’t meant to bang the door so loudly when she entered, and it was only coincidence that it happened during a split-second break in the music. Still, half the school turned in her direction at once.
As she stood there, scanning the crowd for a familiar face, a place where she belonged, Sofia Young half rose from her seat and began to wave.
Then Bailey Lawrence stood up and yelled, “Over here, Luce.”
Luce.
That was it.Luce.In just a split second, Lucy Vale transformed.
A towering human pyramid was stacking into shape on the gymnasium floor, and Reese was finding her balance at the top. We didn’t see her fall, but we were aware of a tremor that rippled through the formation, and we heard Reese shout before she dropped. There was a moment of confusion while the pyramid shifted underneath her—and then she disappeared behind a wall of bodies.
By then Coach Radner had taken the microphone to announce the swim team, the county photographer had dropped to a knee to snap their entrance, Reese was back on her feet, and so werewe—cheering, roaring, thundering our applause as twenty-four members of the boys’ swim team flowed to the gymnasium floor,appropriatelyandnormallydressed in knee-length skirts and women’s tank tops with regulation-width straps.
It was epic. It was an amazing time to be alive and on Discord. We agreed afterward that the best picture went to Will Friske, who’d ignored the swim team completely and zoomed in on Mrs. Steeler-Cox’s face, clenched like an asshole around a fart.
It was the first time we’d fought back against Admin—and won.
After that the dress codes came down, and we declared victory.
We were proud of that.
Eleven
Rachel
Lucy settled, finally, on a bedroom in the attic. For weeks Rachel had joked that her daughter was like Goldilocks, carting her mattress and box spring between both spare bedrooms on the second floor, including the one that shared both a bathroom and a view of the backyard with her mother’s—then, after a few nights, declaring that they didn’t have the right “vibe.” Maybe wouldn’t settle in either one and instead kept finding her way to the attic. It was a sign, Lucy said. The energy was better just below the roof.
“Is that what your friend Olivia told you?” Rachel asked, remembering that Lucy had mentioned that Olivia Howard was Wiccan.
“Olivia’s not my friend, Mom,” Lucy said. That was news to Rachel. “We’re friendly. There’s a difference. Bailey and Savannah are my friends.”
“What about Mia?” Rachel asked. In the dwindling days of September, Lucy had seemed to bloom these new ties overnight. Pretty girls, all of them, especially Bailey with a slim ballerina body, proportioned face, and expertly applied makeup.
“Mia’s a noodle. All she cares about is Taylor Swift and getting a boyfriend,” Lucy said. Rachel was amused to hear the note of scorn inLucy’s voice. “But we’re friends,” Lucy conceded after a pause. “She won’t even go to the bathroom without us.”
“Well, as long as they’re nice to you,” Rachel said.
“Thenicest,” Lucy affirmed.
Rachel had met her daughter’s new friends several times by then. The first time Lucy invited them over, all three arrivals had shuffled wide-eyed through the house, cooing over details that Rachel had grown to love: the carved wooden paneling, the large fireplaces, the bay windows that bowed out over the front porch. They were conspicuously courteous, almost to the point of irony, eager to please, quick to say ma’am and thank you. Polished, Rachel thought. Used to performing for a crowd. Bailey, Lucy gushed, had been crowned Miss Southern Indiana two years running and was the youngest dance team captain ever. Rachel didn’t point out that only weeks earlier, Lucy had lamented the idea of going to school with a bunch of beauty queen types, just like she barely blinked when Lucy, famously unathletic, suddenly announced that she was joining the dance team. Secretly Rachel had been hoping that Lucy might wind up with friends like hers had been at that age: artist types, theater geeks, kids who slurped along the edges of the high school social ecosystem and then seemed to blossom in college. But at least Lucy had found a group.
