Page 85 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
It finally clicked. “What is it? Some kind of party?”
“I wasn’t there,” Noah said quickly, all but confirming it. “I only went because JJ called me about Lucy. He said she was passed out.”
Now Rachel felt a spike of anger. So Lucy had simply lied to her from the beginning. Mentally she cycled through a list of appropriate punishments. She would take Lucy’s phone. She would ground her for a month. “Well, just pull over if she has to puke. And Noah—please drive safely. The roads are icy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Noah said. Rachel had never convinced Noah to call her anything else, even after months of seeing him almost as much as she did Lucy. She’d always felt that it was somehow retrogressive—gendered, of course, and so old-fashioned. The way he lilted the syllables brought to mind southern belles and statues of Confederate heroes. But right thenshe experienced a rush of real fondness for Noah, for his manners and his strict moral code. He was bringing Lucy back home, where she would sleep off whatever she’d consumed in her own bed, safe. She briefly wondered how Noah must be feeling, coming to Lucy’s rescue so soon after she’d dumped him. She sympathized with him, felt sorry for him even.
He was a good guy. And Lucy ...
Well. Lucy had her own issues to work out.
When Rachel saw headlights through the kitchen windows, she slipped on a ski jacket over her pajamas and shoved her bare feet into Lucy’s UGGs. Outside the air razored through her lungs. The sky was clear, pristine with stars hanging like shards of ice against the black. She crunched down the driveway toward the garage, where Noah was just coaxing Lucy out of the back seat.
“Come on, Luce,” he was saying. “Almost there.”
“Did you talk to my mom?” Lucy’s voice was still thick with alcohol. She could barely keep her head up. She didn’t seem to register Rachel approaching. Her eyes slid from Rachel’s, bounced over the house, rolled back toward the sky. She reeked of liquor, and something else; Rachel saw vomit on her sweatshirt, which engulfed her all the way to her bare thighs.
“I don’t know what happened to her jacket,” Noah said apologetically as Rachel took Lucy’s arm and helped steer her back toward the house, half-relieved and half-furious. Lucy still had her bag at least, but she was wearing flip-flops. Underneath the sweatshirt, a ridiculously short skirt was twisted around backward. What the hell had she been thinking?
Noah helped Rachel maneuver Lucy up the stairs to the back door. Lucy stirred into sudden motion when he reached for the door handle, swatting away his hand.
“Go away,” she slurred. “I don’t need you.”
Noah took a step back, looking wounded. Again Rachel felt sorry for him and furious with Lucy—the chunks of vomit tangled in her hair, the acerbic breath.
“I’m sorry, Noah,” she said. “You should get home. It’s late. Your parents will be worried.”
Noah nodded. Still, he lingered, shoulders hunched to his ears, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The porch light threw his shadow, huge, almost back to the garage. “Is she gonna be okay?” he asked uncertainly as Rachel wrestled with Lucy at the door, trying to get it open.
“She’ll be fine,” Rachel said.
Lucy dropped her head on Rachel’s shoulder. She said, “Mom. Mom, I don’t feel good.”
Noah said, “I bet she won’t remember anything, though.” At the time Rachel didn’t think much of it.
Then Noah turned and headed back to his car, which was still running, spitting exhaust into the cold. Rachel got Lucy to the kitchen and made her drink some water. She guided Lucy up the stairs and into her bedroom. Lucy belly flopped onto the mattress.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said into the pillow. “I didn’t mean to.”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Rachel said. She sat Lucy up to get her out of the filthy sweatshirt. For a moment Lucy, now wearing only her bra, clung to her mother.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. Her skin felt cold and slick like something left out in a storm drain.
“Just go to sleep,” Rachel said. She leaned Lucy back onto the pillows. Even after Lucy was asleep—or passed out—Rachel got a comb and spray bottle from the bathroom and tried to tease out some of the vomit in her hair. She couldn’t sleep anyway.
She wondered what on earth had happened to Lucy’s shirt.
Seven
We
Sometime during the holiday break, in the brutal, icy headlock of midwinter, Lucy Vale and her mother went to the police to report that Lucy had been sexually assaulted at a swim team party on New Year’s Eve.
Slowly the whispers curdled into terrible, poisonous accusations. Noah Landry had done things to Lucy Vale when she was passed out. JJ Hammill and Ryan Hawthorne had watched.
There was a video.
Lucy Vale was devastated.
