Kennedy’s a Samhattanite through and through. She was born here, raised here, could walk the streets with her eyes closed. Seeing that name in the text, she had to admit: it chilled her. Not because she believed in some brutal ghost story but because Kennedy just heard the name recently, for the first time in a long time. It’s a name from her past, but Kennedy isn’t one to forget. In fact, she prides herself on knowing the city’s history, the new restaurants in town, the successes of any locals. You didn’t have to be part of the daily grind to pay attention to it. Yet this name…and the sense that she’d long overlooked a topic specific to her hometown, feels wrong.

And what’s more, Beck Nelson confirmed the information Kennedy was given only days before Tammy Jones was murdered:

Sorry to bring it up. We’re not supposed to think of her.

It’s the reason she’s come early and alone to her own birthday party. Kennedy wants to clear her mind of that name.

Daphne, she thinks but does not say.

It’s a trick she learned from Patricia Maxwell at Third-and-Fourth-Eye Books. Patricia, a class behind Kennedy, is wise beyond her years. She recommended (then sold) a book explaining (in rich, smart detail) how a person chooses what they think about. Your Mind, Your Land blew Kennedy’s mind, indeed. It described bandwidth of thought like it was real estate, and says the landowner gets to choose what’s built there.

Not a bad philosophy, Kennedy thinks. And better: a tenet of the book was never to run from a thought but to endure it, let it live, then let it die. If you’re scared? Be scared. Don’t be angry at yourself for being scared. Jealous? Be jealous. Don’t be ashamed. As the author put it: a lot of uninvited guests claim that bandwidth, that land, if you don’t make a few rules.

Kennedy is scared right now. And she allows herself to be.

For her, the name Daphne isn’t quite as vague as it is for, say, Beck Nelson. And while Beck told her about the sleepover, about Natasha Manska’s story (a sleepover Kennedy didn’t attend), Kennedy didn’t tell Beck what she’d heard.

And why not? What stopped her?

It was almost as if, being a Samhattanite, she’d had it drilled into her head not to speak of Daphne, even with someone who was doing most of the talking.

Walking the graveyard gravel now, she recalls the time her mother scolded her, fifteen years ago: If you ever speak the name Daphne, I will spank you blue.

Yes. A story you weren’t supposed to tell. Weren’t even supposed to think about.

A story everybody wanted buried.

Yet…Zach…at work…only days before Tammy Jones…

A shift at Hi-Fi Grocery meant more money toward heading west. Now, graduated, that’s where Kennedy longs to be. My two favorite things to hear from the mouths of my friends, she’s known to say, are (1) I’ve quit my job, and (2) I’m moving somewhere I’ve never been. This is also true of herself: if there’s one thing Kennedy respects, it’s new phases. Plans for a new life. The nerve to attempt it all.