that part.” I’d cried for hours after Sirius Black fell backward through the veil. It only took six hours, even if you count the break I had to take for. “That one, and also that I read O-O-T-P ”-I spelled out the book’s initials as if I was typing an entry into my journal-“in eight hours. “I thought it was New York!” she offered meekly.

“ Jenna! ” several of the girls shouted in unison. It made sense to believe her she was my roommate after all. I waited an extra second, to see if anyone would veer from the path Jenna had laid. “Adopted brother and eight hours for Harry Potter are the lies.” “New York City is the truth,” Madison agreed behind me. The other girls nodded in agreement, though I had not spoken more than a few sentences to half of them directly. We still had some roommate bonding to work on. “Well, I know she’s from New York City,” Jenna called out immediately.

Three, I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in eight hours.” “One,” I said, when the eyes of the bus turned to me. Dalton had entirely lost interest in her own suggestion. As the manager (and resident weirdo, who no one wanted to talk to anyway), I sat near the back of the bus with the equipment, and there were only three other girls behind me-Madison, Kerri, and LoLo, offensive standouts on the field who were given the privilege of the long back-seat bench so that they could gossip privately and have a full view of their kingdom (the bus) in equal parts. Kitty revealed that she preferred 98 Degrees to N’Sync or the Backstreet Boys. I was on the older side of two, maybe three, and we were attending one of my father’s many bodybuilding competitions, because being a corporate banker in the early nineties meant living through a revolving door of plots from Michael Bay movies. My very first memory in life is being on a beach down the shore, surrounded by very brown, very shiny, very muscular men in Speedos, while also being very upset because my mother-who famously hated beaches throughout my childhood-would not let me go in the water. My younger brother was adopted by my parents as a baby, and no, I was not just saying that because I wished it were true.ģ. Yes, the real Jeopardy! with Alex Trebek, and yes, I did have pictures to prove it, and yes, I did lose quite impressively, but I still got to go to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, so what of it?Ģ. My three go-to truths at the time were:ġ.

“Two lies and a truth?”Ī veteran of church youth groups, I had a few standard answers and fast facts about myself prepared for games like this one. Dalton said one afternoon on our drive from a match at Deerfield Academy.

Kendra james taft