Exactlymay have been a stretch. Still, we all dutifully zoomed in and squinted until our eyeballs itched. We agreed it was verypossiblyRachel Vale holding aSolocup that matched her tank top.
But we didn’t understand what it meant.
Peyton Neely wondered whether Noah Landry knew that Lucy Vale had gotten friendly with the Swifts and what he would think about it. Akash replied that he must know; Noah Landry had Lucy Vale on a leash. In fact, he was surprised Noah hadn’t been there, lurking under the table. He hardly let Lucy out of his sight. She wasn’t even allowed to come over and play video games anymore.
We’d heard these complaints from Akash before and didn’t think much of them or bother pointing out that Lucy might just have been using Noah as an excuse to avoid him. She’d moved beyond us. She’d ascended.
She’d kept her secrets for herself.
All afternoon we heard thunder. The sky was a low-belly gray, roiling with frustrated currents. Our dogs whined at the doors. Our air conditioners growled their exhaustion.
Still, the weather held.
Part 7
One
We
We are not bad people.
If anything is true, it’s that we are not bad people. Most of us aren’t at least. Most of the time.
We are positive of this. At least, we are reasonably certain. At least, we are reasonably certain most of the time.
We can prove it.
Two
Rachel
In late September, Rachel had a startling realization: something was wrong with Lucy.
She was almost always in a bad mood. She complained that her antianxiety medication wasn’t working. One night Rachel woke up to muffled sobs coming from the attic. The next she found wads of hair in Lucy’s shower—clumps that looked as if they’d been removed by force.
It was Noah. She was sure it had to do with Noah. Lucy’s frenzied texts, the whispered nighttime conversations. The way Lucy skulked off to school with barely a word and retreated to her room as soon as she came home.
For days Rachel felt as if she’d been jettisoned out of the nucleus of Lucy’s life, landing back in a nightmare of confusion and helplessness. She skulked around the house like a foreign agent, looking for clues in Lucy’s bedroom about what might have happened, scouring her daughter’s Instagram account for indicators of trouble. She left two panicked messages with Lucy’s old therapist. She considered driving to Noah’s house to confront him about—what, exactly? She wasn’t sure.
And then, abruptly, Lucy announced that she would need a ride to school that one day, and the day after that. Without a word or explanation, Noah stopped picking up Lucy before practice.
When Rachel asked whether something had happened, Lucy snapped at her.
“Noah’s fine. We’re fine. Things are just complicated.” But Rachel took it as a positive sign when Lucy began to leak little complaints about her relationship, when she expressed irritation as opposed to simple despair. Noah was obsessed with body hair. He was even thinking of shaving his eyelashes. Who shaved their eyelashes? Or, Noah had terrible taste in music.
Then Sunday rolled around, and Lucy skipped church.
“What’s the point?” she told Rachel, yawning. “I’m going to hell anyway.”
“Is that what the pastor said?”
Lucy shrugged and looked away. After a pause she said, “Do you think I’m a bad person?”
Rachel’s heart lurched. “Lucy, no. Of course not.” She reached out and stroked her daughter’s cheek. For once Lucy didn’t pull away. “What gave you that idea?”
Lucy shrugged. She mashed the tines of her fork into her pancake. “When I came here, everyone thought I was so perfect.Noahthought I was perfect. He thought I was just as good as him.”
“Noah is definitely not perfect,” Rachel said.
