Anna stumbles up the stairs, clutching a half-filled solo cup. Music pulses from behind her, worsening her growing headache. While going upstairs in her uncoordinated, inebriated state isn’t ideal, the bathroom on the main floor is occupied, leaving her no other choice. She hunches over, placing her free hand on the steps in front of her for balance, more climbing than walking at this point. She soon gives up on the solo cup and places it between columns of the banister, using both hands to make her way up. Finally reaching the top, she shuffles towards the room closest to her.

Just as she reaches for the door handle, she hears faint moans, muffled from behind the closed door. Her face, already flushed from the alcohol, reddens even further. Flustered and about to turn away, she makes out hushed speech.

“C’mon baby, I know you want it,” says a gruff male voice.

A quavering, high-pitched voice responds, “N-no I… unghh. Please… s-stop…” Though the voice is faint, Anna can’t help but pick up hints of distress. Something isn’t right here. She raps lightly on the door and puts her ear against it. There are sounds of frantic shuffling, but no response. She knocks again, harder, and hears the male voice swear, seconds before the door is flung open.

As Anna stumbles backwards and nearly falls over, she’s confronted with a buff, shirtless frat boy who dwarfs her in size. He looms over her, looking down with contempt. What sticks out to her most is his spiked auburn hair, seemingly as red with anger as his face.

“The fuck you want?” he says, slurring his words.

“I was… l-looking for… bathroom,” Anna replies, her mind panicked but sluggish.

“This look like the fucking bathroom?” he growls, glaring at her with frigid blue eyes. As Anna flounders to come up with a defense, a heavily intoxicated girl stumbles out of the room. She has messy pigtails, denim shorts, and a skewed crop-top revealing a glimpse of her lacy bra beneath.

“Where you going?!” the boy shouts, then mumbles under his breath, "things were just gettin' good..."

“Mmmf,” pigtail girl grunts in response, lurching forward. Anna barely manages to catch her, struggling to keep them both upright. After adjusting herself to better support pigtail girl’s weight, Anna shoots the boy an accusatory look.

He throws his hands up, making Anna flinch at the sudden movement. She worries that he’ll bring them down to strike her. Instead, he leans in and says in a harsh whisper, “The fuck you lookin’ at? The bitch was into me, I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.” Anna smells the alcohol on his breath and fights the urge to gag. With that, he goes back into the room, slamming the door in her face.

“Sure…” Anna mumbles to herself, turning back to the stairs. Wrapping one arm around pigtail girl’s torso and holding the banister with the other, she painstakingly drags her downstairs. Thankfully, pigtail girl isn’t much taller than her. As they make steady progress, hearing the pulsing bass of the music grow louder actually fills her with relief. Upon reaching the foot of the stairs, she hastily sets pigtail girl against the wall, glad to be free of the burden.

After catching her breath, Anna nudges her. Pigtail girl’s eyes flutter open and take a moment to focus on Anna’s face. “Whuh?” she mumbles.

Anna speaks slowly, taking care to enunciate as best she can, “Are… your… friends… here?”

She nods, pointing vaguely in the direction of the living room.

“Names?” Anna asks.

“M-Maddy… Lauren…” the girl responds.

Hesitant to leave her alone, but figuring that the main floor is crowded enough that someone would notice if something happened to her, Anna makes her way toward a crowd of dancing partygoers. She squeezes through the crush of bodies, calling out the names she’s been given. Eventually, a tall girl with intricately braided hair looks Anna’s way. “You say Maddy?” she calls out. Anna scurries towards her, despite being constantly bumped off course by the people dancing around her.

After reaching her, Anna asks, “Are you Maddy?”

“Yeah… why?” she says, giving Anna a dubious look.

“Your friend… needs help.” Anna grabs the reluctant girl’s hand and leads her around the edge of the crowd, towards the stairs. She’s relieved to find pigtail girl sitting exactly where she left her.

The tall girl brushes off Anna’s hand and rushes to her friend’s side. “Omigosh, Livie, what happened?!” She adjusts the girl’s shirt so that her bra is no longer showing.

Pigtail girl keeps her lips tight, pulling her legs inward and wrapping her arms around her knees. Anna opens her mouth, about to explain what she saw and heard, but quickly shuts it, feeling it wasn’t her place to say. “Mind if I go?” she asks instead. The tall girl nods and thanks Anna for helping her friend. With that, Anna leaves in search of her own companion.

Exhausted, she makes her way to the kitchen, where a familiar mop of dirty blond hair sticks out at the edge of the room. Picking up her pace, she calls out to Wally, who’s standing alone staring at his glass of water. His bored eyes light up when he sees her. “Anna, there you are! Wow, you look uh… worse for wear.”

Anna leans against the wall next to him, too drained to stand on her own. “Can we… go home?”

He pats her head and grins. “I thought you’d never ask.” Putting an arm around her torso to support her, he guides her to the front door.

As they walk home, Wally tells her about all the crazy things he saw other people doing at the party. “It’s pretty weird being the only sober one in the room,” he concludes as they enter the elevator of their dorm. Anna just nods, refraining from telling him about her own experiences that night. Once they reach Anna’s floor, Wally asks, “So, thoughts on partying? You were the one who pushed us to give it a try.”

“No more… parties…” Anna groans.

“Agreed,” Wally chuckles. After they part ways, Anna enters her room and collapses on her bed, not even bothering to change into her pajamas. Her mind replays the events of the party, tormenting her. She worries over whether she did the right thing by not saying anything until she slowly drifts off to an uneasy sleep.

***

I immediately texted Wally, sending him a screenshot of the email and putting an emphasis on when it was sent. As I waited for his reply, I continued to stare at those eight words for several minutes. For the past few days, I had been grasping at straws for leads, when this had been here all along. Not that I would’ve known what to do with it without Wally’s help.

My attention fixated on the computer screen, I nearly jumped out of my seat when Anna’s phone buzzed.

Wally, now

do you know what April 1st is?

Other than the date’s proximity to Anna’s death, I had no idea of its significance. No, please explain, I replied.

Wally responded almost instantly.

Hate to break it to you, but this is probably a prank. Look up April Fool’s day.

I took his advice and nearly had my hopes dashed. The email had been sent on a day dedicated to practical jokes and hoaxes. But I still couldn’t shake how ominous the message was. Might be a coincidence, I told Wally. After all, weren’t jokes supposed to have a punchline?

A few minutes passed before Wally got back to me.

Checked my inbox and didn’t see anything like this so wasn’t a mass email. Still think it’s probably a prank though. I have to sleep, we can talk more about it tomorrow.

I set the phone aside and returned to the laptop, trying to glean as much as I could from what little information the email gave me. First, if it really was from the killer, they must have known Anna personally. They had signed off with a single letter, ‘A’. Would they have been bold enough to use the first letter in their name, or did it stand for something like “anonymous”? And then there was the subject line: “party”. Was it a reference to a past event, or one that had yet to happen?

I thought it could be something perfectly innocuous, like wanting to keep Anna quiet about a surprise party for a friend. After all, there were no explicit threats in the message. But then I checked the sender’s address again. Replacing the numbers for letters, it spelled out “all gone”, which was eerie on its own. What’s more, it didn’t appear in Anna’s contacts, and when I looked up the domain name, I found that it hosted disposable email accounts. That ruled out all of the innocent interpretations I could come up with. The more I looked into it, the more convinced I was that the message was a threat on Anna’s life. A threat that the sender made good on.

Knowing I couldn’t get much more out of the email, I decided to wash up and go to bed. But even after lying down with my eyes shut for an hour, I was still too wired to sleep. Instead, I stared up at the ceiling, turning the message over in my head. It was agonizing, feeling closer to the answer than ever but having to wait until the next day to find out anything more. With sleep evading me, I passed the time coming up with different scenarios to explain why someone would want to silence Anna, each more absurd than the last.

Did she witness a crime? Was it gang-related? Was it a crazed hater from her vlog channel, trying to stop her from making videos? Could it be a government conspiracy? Maybe the ‘A’ stands for “Area 51”. Or “alien”.

Hah, I thought at that last one. I really need to sleep.