Page 82 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
She broke off abruptly. Her hands spasmed in her lap.
“Ever since what, sweetheart?” Rachel reached out to stroke Lucy’s hair back from her forehead. Lucy’s skin felt warm, clammy. She recalled then the time that Lucy had gotten strep throat and a fever that had briefly touched 105. Rachel had stayed up all night monitoring Lucy’s fever and her agonized thrashing as she shivered under mounds of blankets in the June heat. Rachel remembered the smellof the bedroom—ripe, fruity, almost exotic, as if some strange fungal organism had taken over her daughter’s body.
Lucy fidgeted. “He knows about what happened in Michigan,” she said finally. “He saw the photos.”
Instantly Rachel’s blood pressure spiked. Her thoughts splintered into a whirl of alarms. “What?How?”
“I don’t know. Someone found them.”
“Whofound them?” Rachel got up and began to pace. Or more like prowl. She was suddenly enraged. Lucy had been only thirteen when she’d sent those photos to the boy she believed cared about her, a seventeen-year-old junior she’d been talking with over Snapchat. Soon everyone in the high school had seen them, and Lucy, already struggling in middle school, was the subject of bathroom graffiti and physical assaults in the hall. People started spreading rumors: Lucy gave out hand jobs for twenty dollars; Lucy had lost her virginity to everyone on the basketball team. Rachel had fought to hold everyone who’d circulated the photographs accountable, and eventually two seniors, both over eighteen, were charged with trafficking child sex materials and forced to register as sex offenders. But it had taken close to a year, and by then Lucy was ninety pounds, wizened like an old lady and picking at her skin until it bled.
“I said I don’tknow.” Lucy was close to tears again. “See? This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d freak out.”
“Of course I’m freaking out.” Rachel forced herself to sit down again. “When did this happen?”
“Forever ago,” Lucy said. “Like in September. Before Casino Night even.”
Now it made sense to Rachel—that time she’d found a clump of hair in the shower drain, those nights when she’d heard panicked whispering and muffled sobs from Lucy’s room. She’d been dealing with the fallout of those photographs—again. Noah must have seen them.Everyonemust have seen them.
She couldn’t believe that Lucy hadn’t told her. They’d sworn they would have no secrets.
“Casino Night,” Rachel repeated. “When you and Noah had a big fight? When you came home in tears?”
Lucy looked away. She was silent for a bit. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said finally, almost ferociously. “So what? So now everyone knows what I am.”
“Those photos,” Rachel said, “are not who you are.”
She reached out to place a hand on Lucy’s knee.
Lucy squirmed away. “Just forget I said anything,” she said. “Please.”
Rachel shook her head. “If those photos are still out there, still circulating—”
Suddenly Lucy clapped both hands over her ears, squeezing as if she could cave in her head. “Mom, please. Please. I just broke up with myboyfriend.” Her voice pitched to a desperate wail. “Noah’s like the only person who ever even loved me.”
“Noah’s not the only person who ever loved you,” Rachel said. She ached to put her arms around Lucy, to hold her like she would have when Lucy was a child awoken by a bad dream. To rock her until the billows of feeling rolled through, until the dream was fully dispelled. “I love you. Alan loves you. Your friends love you.”
“You know what I mean,” Lucy said.
They sat in quiet for a bit—Lucy still sniffling, shrunken into her oversize hoodie, turtle-like. The winter sun was dwindling on the floorboards even though it was barely four o’clock. The radiators hissed at the cold that blew through the gaps in the window frames.
“How did Noah take it?” Rachel asked once Lucy’s breathing had settled. “Was he angry?”
Lucy’s laugh was mangled. “Noah’s never angry,” she said bitterly. “Noah’s justdisappointed.”
Rachel knew the type. Greg, her college boyfriend, had been like that: withdrawing into wounded silence when he felt Rachel had slighted him, punishing her with small cutting comments about herwriting or her friends or her hairstyle. He had even used his warmth as a weapon, turning it on their friends and even on strangers so that Rachel could detect it landing on someone else.
“Do you think you’ll stay friends?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure that I want to,” Lucy said. “IloveNoah. But ...”
“But what?” Rachel prompted.
“I don’t think he’s that nice to me,” Lucy said.
Rachel felt a surge of love for Lucy that was almost overwhelming. There were so many ways to learn about parenting—so many books and websites and experts to consult. But no one could prepare you for the love, and how often it felt just like pain.
“I’m proud of you, sweetheart,” she said. This time, Lucy let Rachel kiss her on the forehead.
