Page 38 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
Free will was an illusion, and consent was not ours to give.
Part 3
One
We
The Church of Noah Landry formed quickly, almost overnight. One second Noah was just another solid swimmer, loping through the halls giving fist bumps to teachers, including thousand-year-old Mrs. Constantine who would reach out to grip his fist instead of grazing knuckles; or reconfiguring his six foot four inches around a desk he almost looked like he was absorbing into his rib cage; or hunching over his laptop in the SLD Tutoring Center, headphones on, jogging his knee in time to a secret rhythm.
The next second, suspicion was everywhere, like bacterial mold, or a stain on the bathroom ceiling we couldn’t unsee once we’d spotted it. Noah Landry had gotten good. Noah Landry had gotten very, very good. Noah Landry was something extraordinary.
That’s why Jalliscoe was freaking out. That’s why our rivals were poisoning the internet with accusations of cheating and dredging up old rumors about Coach Vernon, Tommy Swift, and Nina Faraday. It was all to make our swimmers look bad. It was because of Noah Landry.
It was because he was going to help us win state.
It was because he was going to qualify for nationals.
For once it turned out that no one was exaggerating.
Even before we first saw the video of Noah Landry swimming in the Ohio River, we’d been curious about him simply because he was swimming for the Sharks for the first time. Since seventh grade, he’d trained with Coach Vernon on a club team based in Waukaumet, a full hour-and-a-half drive into Illinois. We knew, vaguely, that he’d been something of a star—but in exile, swimming on one of the B-tier club teams, Noah Landry had been peripheral to our collective obsession.
That began to change when he returned with Coach Vernon to the Granger Club Team and agreed to compete for the high school during the fall season. For one thing, he’d grown into his shoulders over the summer. For another, it was obvious to us that Reese Steeler-Cox was angling to date him. They knew each other from church; both were Hoosier back to the 1800s. And once Noah Landry made the Sharks and Minnows list, Reese hung on his attention like a coat on a peg.
By then we were all convinced: the sweet, serious Eagle Scout was a full-on snack.
We didn’t know why the video of Noah Landry, Alec Nye, JJ Hammill, and Ryan Hawthorne racing in the Ohio River had taken so long to circulate or who had made the original recording. We could tell from the white caps that a stiff wind was blowing up that day. Even the voices closest to the phone got snatched away intermittently by the wind. Down river, boaters steered bloated sails across the widening churn of water. ANo Swimmingflag snapped back and forth near the dock, cracking a rhythm into the audio track.
Six swimmers entered the mud-colored water; we recognized Nye, Hammill, Hawthorne, and Noah Landry, plus two other guys we later identified as cocaptains of the Willow Park swim team. Even Nye and Hammill were fighting for speed. We could tell the effort of every stroke by the churn of the water. But Noah Landry ... the first few seconds he lagged behind, almost floating. Like he wasn’t in the water exactly but suspended slightly above it, hovering on the surface tension where the current was nothing but a shiver down the spine. Not pressure. Information.
Then, after a second, maybe a second and a half, he just ... moved. There was no other way to describe what his body was doing. It wasn’t swimming. It was ... flowing. It was flowing across the river like a current moving sideways, barely kicking up any resistance when he stroked. Next to Landry, the other swimmers looked like they were drowning.
Within seconds, he’d pulled ahead. Then he was leaving Nye and Hammill behind. His body in the dark water looked fluid and long, fishlike. There were times watching him when we had the distinct impression of a tail.
Whoever recorded the video had maneuvered onto one of the docked speedboats to get a better view. Even so, Landry and the others soon became nothing but dark specks in the water. Then they were returning, with Noah a full three body lengths ahead. We counted three and a half full seconds after Noah stood up, raising his arms and grinning toward the camera, before Nye made it back to shore. Three and a half seconds, atleast. Spinnaker insisted it was 3.86, Ethan Courtland argued it was pedantic to try and ascertain that level of accuracy without a touch pad, and Nate Stern wanted to know whatpedanticmeant.
Either way, it was unthinkable. Nye was the best swimmer on the team. He was one of the best swimmers in thestate. And yet Landry had thrashed him.
Which meant that Noah Landry was something different.
Noah Landry was unstoppable.
And that meant, in some small way, that we were too.
Two
Rachel
The Sharks’ first swim meet of the year took place on a Saturday, and it seemed to Rachel as if the entire county had turned out to attend. Traffic snarled to a crawl a quarter mile from the school entrance. As they nudged closer, Rachel saw a grizzled old man wearing a Styrofoam fin on a headband, inspecting the arriving cars as they turned down to the lower parking lot.
“That’s McVeigh,” Lucy said. “He’s a legend.”
“A legend for what?” Rachel asked.
Lucy paused. “I don’t actually know,” she said. “He’s just been here forever.” She waved as McVeigh eyed their vehicle warily, as if he suspected them of smuggling in anti-Shark sentiment, before gesturing them on. “I bet he’s checking for Wolverines,” Lucy said, twisting around in her seat to watch him proceed down the line of cars, scowling. “I heard they might try and sabotage the meet.”
“The Wolverines ...?” Rachel noted, uneasily, two sheriff vehicles parked directly in front of Aquatics. The image flashed of a sullen kid in a trench coat training a gun meant for the military at the crowd, then she quickly forced the idea from her mind.
“They’re swimmers from Jalliscoe. They hate the Sharks. They got Aiden Teller suspended from competition forsix weeks. We’re all freakingout.” Rachel noticed, with some amusement, that her sports-indifferent daughter was once again including herself in the group. “His season is basically over.”
