Hallowed by Hurley Tonya

Author:Hurley, Tonya [Hurley, Tonya]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7 Jesse waited patiently as the file loaded. The videotape of Lucy’s death was completely digitized, edited, and ready for upload. It would be his first post to Byte since he’d gotten back from the hospital. And quite possibly, he was thinking, his last.

His intention was not to surprise or provoke but to memorialize in a way that only he could. If he wanted to shock he would have just posted the raw footage, but that, he thought, was a snuff film, not a tribute. He added slates and type, quick cuts and slow-motion dissolves, whatever felt right, whatever put across her message. If Lucy was a guide, a light in the darkness, then this little piece would help her show the way. A sort of inspir-mercial-informercial for the directionless, the disillusioned, the despairing. Not a piece to tell you, but to show you. And one without an eight hundred number to call at the end.

The upload bar filled slowly with data, turning from white to blue. Jesse floated the cursor over the upload button, imagining what would happen once he clicked it. Byte was linked to virtually every major social media site possible. It might take a second for it to be discovered, since his blog had been inactive for a while, but once it was, he figured, it would travel fast. And then what?

Jesse decided it didn’t matter. He clicked play. He watched his clip as if he’d never seen it before. Watched gray words float over the black slate:

SEE FOR YOURSELF

They meandered by like a cloud across a darkened sky. Hopeful, but ominous. Paparazzi photos of Lucy from her earliest debut on the scene and some from his own personal camera roll filled the screen. Images of her alternately imperious and inviting flashed one after another. At clubs, parties, openings, premieres, charity events, and police precincts. Leaving Precious Blood after Sebastian’s death with Cecilia and Agnes and disappearing into a cheering throng. Dancing on tables in banquets, surrounded by adoring crowds on Brooklyn street corners, and bending to acknowledge a child. The whole of her short, controversial, and complicated existence boiled down to a handful of now-iconic images. Suddenly, the soundtrack stopped and the clip went silent. Voices rose. Questions. Answers. Demands. Refusals. A puddle of blood, a burst of light, and screaming. Lucy, blinded and crawling in her bloodstained clothes, struggling, Sebastian’s heart clenched tightly in her arms. It was hard for Jesse to watch, but then, it was supposed to be. Then news reports of her death, of the outcry, the lamentation and the indifference, and editorials on its meaning.

There was no accusatory finger pointed. No sinister portrait of Dr. Frey dropped in, devil horns Photoshopped on his head. No manipulation. No CGI. This was not about blame for Jesse. It was about Lucy. It was about truth. Revenge was his obsession, but not hers.

And finally, a cut to a single candle in the chapel that widened out to row upon row of them. As the camera pulled back, she was revealed in her glory.

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