The note read, in clear 14-point Arial, “We want $1,000,000 or we kill your girl! We’ll be in touch.”

Only one problem: I had no girl.

My apartment was a mess when I got home, more than normal, as if a small tornado had ripped through it. I felt suddenly very unsafe as a 20-year-old female college student living alone in not the best of neighborhoods. But— in the middle of the chaos— there was the note on my broken coffee table.

I read it over again. It clearly said “your,” what girl were they talking about? The only other female left in my family, my mother, would by no means ever be called a girl. I had no female friends….

Was this some kind of joke?