One night, a pair of roommates decided to play volleyball at the court underneath the Randy Pausch Bridge, right next to the Gates and Hillman Center. The two girls, Ann and Leslie, began to play, and after a few minutes the ball rolled away and they noticed another girl was sitting on the bench right next to the court. The ball stopped directly in front of her, and so Ann and Leslie went over to get it.
While reaching down for the ball, Leslie noticed that the girl also had one in her hands, so she asked, “Oh, would you like to play with us?”
All that the girl replied was, “have you seen my friend?”
Ann and Leslie looked at each other concernedly. “Well what’s their name?” Ann asked, “what does do they look like?”
And all that the girl said was, “have you seen my friend?”
After a few minutes of trying to get another response form her, Ann finally exclaimed “No! We haven’t seen your friend!”
After staring at the two for a few seconds, the girl got up and began to walk away without another word. Ann and Leslie shared a look, shrugged, and went back to playing their game. They played for a little while longer when Ann served the ball and it went over the side of the net, rolling down past the Gates and Hillman Center.
I’ll get it!” Leslie called to Ann. She began to run after the ball that had continued rolling behind the building.
Ann stood there for about ten minutes before she started to worry and went down the same walkway that Leslie had. Along the way, she asked anyone she saw if they had seen Leslie, but no one had. Finally she reaches the parking garage, and she notices the girl from the bench earlier standing just outside the entrance.
“Hey!” Ann called, running over to the girl. “Have you seen my friend? You know, the one I was with earlier?”
The girl responded, “Your friend is with my friend now.”
Ann stiffened and began to panic, asking, “What do you mean? Where is she?”
The girl stepped to the side, whispering, “You can see her if you want.”
Ann bolted into the parking garage and began to search for Leslie. After looking for a little while, she found her lying in a pool of her own blood in front of a white pick-up truck. Ann dived to see if she could help her friend but it was too late. Leslie had already lost too much blood and her eyes were glazed over.
Ann began to sob and went up to the window of the car to see if the driver was still there and could explain what happened, but there was only a volleyball lying in the seat. Going pale, Ann pulled out her phone to call for help.
The operator answered, “Hello, 9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
And all Ann could say was, “Have you seen my friend?”
When the police arrived at the scene, they saw Leslie lying there dead, but Ann and the volleyball were nowhere to be found. The story ran around campus for a little while, but quickly became old news in the bustle of everyday life. Until a couple of months later, another pair of roommates decided that they wanted to play volleyball. When they played, their ball rolled over to a bench where two girls were sitting, each with a volleyball in their hand.
And the girls asked, “Have you seen our friends?”