Page 19 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
“So far I’ve mostly found mouse droppings and dead ladybugs,” Rachel said. She didn’t want to admit that she, too, had fantasized about discovering some remnant evidence of Nina and her mother in the house. Not a diary necessarily. But little details: glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, like the ones Lucy was so fond of; pencil marks in the doorframe where Nina might have stood to measure her growth. Details that might help Rachel draw closer to the girl and her mother at the center of so much gossip and speculation, a furious storm of language that had by now almost completely occluded the truth. “But let me know if you turn up a smoking gun.”
“I think she ran away,” Lucy said. “I think Nina’s mom was driving her crazy, and she just packed up and started over somewhere. That’s whatIwould do.”
Rachel turned around to give her daughter a look. “Except that your mom never drives you crazy,” she said. “She’s absolutely perfect. Right?”
Lucy grinned. “Obviously.” Rachel drifted back to the window, running her fingernail around the flaking paint, chunking it to the floor. “I wonder whathethinks,” Lucy said, gesturing to the stranger still wheeling his bike slowly just beyond the back gate.
“Well, maybe you should go out and ask him,” Rachel said, only half joking. She was curious to know, actually, what locals thought about the Faradays now, all these years later.
All these years later, without a word from Nina Faraday.
“Yeah, right,” Lucy said. She stuck out her tongue, made a gruesome face through the window, and waved.
Thirteen
We
We had to tell Lucy Vale that it was Olivia Howard’s birthday so she would agree to come. We were ambivalent about the lie, which immediately brought headaches. For one thing, Sofia was salty that she was suddenly responsible for throwing Olivia’s birthday party when Olivia hadn’t eveninvitedher to her real birthday celebration a few weeks earlier—and, even worse, had completely missed wishing Sofia happy birthday in February.
We pointed out that it was probably only because Sofia and Olivia weren’t friends.
@goodnightsky:exactly
@goodnightsky:Hosting a pretend birthday party for a fake friend is just as much work as hosting an actual birthday party for a real one
@goodnightsky:Cake is cake
@goodnightsky:You know?
We couldn’t argue the point. And ultimately, we had no choice but to go through with the fake birthday celebration. Akash had warned us that Lucy Vale didn’t seem like apartykind of girl, an impressionthat only a cursory glance at her Instagram account confirmed. Since moving to Indiana, she’d mostly posted stories about her cat, Maybe, sleeping in different boxes, plus a few shots of the wild roses crawling up the collapsing trellis on the east side of the Faraday property.
Obviously we couldn’t explain to Lucy that we weren’t exactly party people either—not without confessing to entrapment. But Olivia Howard figured that Lucy Vale wouldn’t miss a birthday party for one of the two Instagram mutuals she had in Indiana, and she was right.
On Tuesday, we heard through Layla Lewis, who’d heard through Olivia Howard, that Lucy accepted her invitation.
On Wednesday, we heard through Akash, who’d spoken to Lucy Vale, that she’d asked whether they could bike over to the party together.
On Thursday, it stormed. Rumors that the bad weather was going to last through the weekend started a brief hysteria of meteorology on the server. We swapped weather maps and resources, skimmed Wikipedia, and used “fast-moving pressure-system” in average conversation. Sofia reassured us: rain, shine, sleet, or shitstorm, her mom was leaving town to have sex with some slut named Jill, and we were having a party.
That week there was record collaboration and cooperation on the Discord server. We were excited about the ice-cream cakes Kyle Hannigan had scored from Baskin-Robbins—a low-key flex, since his dad was the regional sales manager. But we had no idea what to do about presents. Layla Lewis wasn’t very much help; it turned out she was still annoyed about the sterling silver bracelet she’d bought Olivia last year, which Olivia hadn’t worn even once.
Topornycky suggested that next time she add a pair of molars.
On Thursday, Aubrey Barnes offered Sofia Young her Party Supply discount card, and Peyton Neely scored a ride for them from her older brother, since Party Supply was only a few streets over from his dealer’s house and he needed to buy weed anyway. The marching band geeks volunteered to blow up the balloons, as if the risk of death-by-balloon were too great for anyone who hadn’t spent a decade huffing into a trombone.
On Friday, it was still raining, and Olivia Howard joined our Discord. Gifts, she told us, wereabsolutelynot expected. Cards were welcome, of course.
@pawsandclaws:but seriously, guys
@pawsandclaws:your presence is enough
We planned our Saturday night maneuvers like a military campaign—partly because Jackson Skye was a huge military history geek, and he was the one who started the thread about carpooling. Will Friske’s cousin, Josh—the one who ran a semifake landscaping business and a very real weed distribution center—offered to shuttle on Saturday night at a fair rate of five bucks a head. Nick Topornycky’s older brother, Dylan, threw in a free ride with the purchase of one of the six-packs that had been baking in his trunk.
By Friday afternoon, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. By Friday night, it had turned to a slow-moving drift of mist.
On Saturday, we woke to blinding sunshine and couldn’t believe our luck.
Normally, things didn’t work out like we wanted them to. Normally,disappointingwas the only luck we could count on.
