Page 50 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

---

@safireswiftly:omg

@safireswiftly:Did Rachel ValePlanthe podcast???

@geminirising:what doYouthink?

@mememeup:I think that makes zero sense

@mememeup:If Rachel Vale is RC Barnes

@mememeup:and she wanted to blow up a story about Nina Faraday

@mememeup:why wouldn’t she just write one herself?

Ethan Courtland’s question was meant to be rhetorical. But it shuddered us all into silence, struck down by a heart-stopping idea.

@badprincess:oh my god

@badprincess:Do you think that’s what she’s doing???

@mememeup:wow

@skyediva:welp, I guess that would explain why she moved into a literal crime scene

@skyediva:Maybe she wanted to get closer to the subject matter

The idea was thrilling, and terrible. We didn’t believe it could be true.

At the same time, it made an awful kind of sense.

We had to confront Lucy about her mother. We had to force a confession from Rachel Vale. Alex Spinnaker suggested that Akash hold the books hostage until Rachel Vale fessed up. Evie Grant suggested that Coraline Winters contact Barnes’s publisher pretending to be Rachel Vale. Olivia Howard suggested we write R.C. Barnes a fan letter, deliver it to the Vales, and see if we get a response.

Akash logged on and apologized for disappearing for a few minutes. We hadn’t noticed and were gracious about it.

@kash_money:sorry guys

@kash_money:Guess who just rang the doorbell??

@badprincess:Lucy???

@kash_money:nope. Her mom

@kash_money:She wanted to know if we got a package of her books

We recovered from the shock in record time, then rushed to spread the news. Of course we did.

That’s how Discord was.

That’s how we were.

Swapping messages, shit-talking, hoarding our phones like gateways to a secret world. We clung to the threads like they might lead us somewhere—out of our bedrooms, out of Indiana, out of our skin. We unraveled the world into sound bites. Everything was just talk.

Everything was just a topic.

In boredom, we burned everything into the bones of a story.

We had no way of knowing that, someday, Lucy Vale would burn right back.

Four

---