Jennifer.
I typed the name into Facebook, hoping the girl had made a profile at some point. Obviously, Jennifer was an incredibly common name, but the search function on Facebook allowed me to filter the results by BHU attendance. That narrowed it down to sixty-two Jennifers who’d attended the university over the years.
From there, I narrowed it even further by age. The name Jennifer was very common back in the 70s and 80s, but the girl my friends had mentioned was supposedly a junior at BHU justa few years ago, which made her around twenty-four years old right now, give or take a year. That meant I could knock a lot of Jennifers off the list based on their birth or graduation years.
After that process of elimination, only five Jennifers remained.
I checked each individual profile. Two of the Jennifers had posted recently from overseas, which meant I could eliminate them. Another two didn’t post much on Facebook at all, but when I tracked down their corresponding Instagram profiles, I was able to determine that it wasn’t them either.
The final Jennifer on the list was currently twenty-four years old, and she’d gone from posting semi-regularly on both Facebook and Instagram for several years to posting nothing over the last three years. No photos. No updates. No trace of a life beyond that point.
It had to be her.Jennifer Albright.
I grabbed my phone to text Cherry. She’d described herself to me last night as a ‘total gossip queen’, so I figured if anyone in the group knew the girl’s full name, it would be her.
Hey,I tapped out.That girl you mentioned last night… was her name Jennifer Albright?
She replied a moment later.That sounds right, but I'm not 100% sure bc she was ahead of me. Give me a sec, I'll ask around.
Five minutes later, my screen lit up with a FaceTime request.
“Hey!” Cherry beamed, her curls bouncing as she settled onto her bed. “I just heard back from my older sister, and you’re right. That girl’s name was definitely Jennifer Albright. They actually had a business class together back in 2021.”
“I’m guessing the breakdown happened sometime in 2022?” I asked. “Seeing as you said it happened when you were a freshman.”
“Yep. Crazy stuff,” she said, widening her eyes for emphasis. “Literally.”
“Do you have any idea which hospital she ended up in?”
Her nose wrinkled. “Nope. But there can’t bethatmany psychiatric facilities in the state, right? So you should be able to narrow it down,” she said. “I mean… I’m guessing that’s what you want to do? Track her down and talk to her?”
“Exactly.” I nodded. “Although I doubt hospitals are allowed to give out patient info to random people.”
“Um, hello? I’m literally an actress,” Cherry said, giving me a mischievous smirk. “Just give me some time to call around pretending to be a distressed family member who desperately wants to visit my beloved Jenny, and I’ll get back to you.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Duh. I said I’d help you, Vee. We all did.”
“Thanks, Cherry. You’d be saving me alotof time and effort.”
“It might take a while. But I’ll get right on it.” Her expression shifted, concern flickering across her face. “Are you okay? You look exhausted.”
I opened my mouth to fill her in on the incident in my dorm, but then I clamped it shut again. I really liked Cherry and all the others, alot,so I wanted to tell them everything. About the blood, the message, the terror of waking up in the dark not knowing if someone was still in my room.
But at the same time, I worried what would happen if I told any of them about it. They might freak out and tell others about it, and then if word got around...
The Dionysus Club might come for them too.
I couldn’t risk that happening to them. Not when they’d already been so good to me.
“I’m just really hungover,” I ended up saying, giving her a tight smile. “We drank a lot last night.”
“Oh god, I know. But weirdly, I never get hangovers. Like,ever.It's my one superpower.”
“Thatislucky. But on the other hand, you can never enjoy the simple pleasure of a peanut butter sandwich.”
She laughed. “True. It all balances out in the end,” she said. “Anyway, you should rest up now. I'll start making calls and let you know what I find, okay?”
