SYBIL

I walked into the classroom with a stack of papers in my hands. I set them on the podium and shuffled through them, retrieving one.

“I have read your first essays. You are all off to a good start. There is one essay that I would like to read to you. I thought that it was particularly evocative. It is about a relationship.”

“Ms. Carpenter? Sybil Carpenter? Are you present today?”

The class looked around at each other. Nobody raised their hand. Finally, a young woman in the front row did and said, “Professor. I don’t think that there is anybody in our class with that name.”

And in fact, there wasn’t.