Apricot Press

When I met Sara, we had been randomly assigned into the same first-year orientation group. It was one of those things that was meant to introduce you to the university system while forcing you into friendships that would—inevitably—fall away by the end of the academic year. It’s not meant to be cruel, just transitional.

Some of us did seem more eager to make friends than others. A group of girls immediately clustered around their shared experience of being beautiful. A contingent of Iowa State fans were hemmed together through a string of nicknames that would fade away by winter. One couple paired up under the pretense that they both enjoyed running, but one turned out to be a liar. They slept together that first weekend and refused to acknowledge one another by the next. 

Of course, we’d been eager, too. We sat on the commons in a circle that our orientation leader, a senior with a stark widow’s peak, had oriented us into.

How strange to think there came a time when someone had to actually explain the rules of Two Truths and a Lie to us. By the end of our undergraduate tenure, we would all find it so commonplace, but then we’d listened closely, desperate to understand it correctly and nervous that we might make a fool of ourselves by forgetting to lie.

“I’m a Senior. I’m a marketing major. And I’m from Milwaukee.” He raised an eyebrow.

We all stared at his smile or his widow’s peak—I don’t remember which—and then the boy who claimed runner status cleared his throat with the blunt accusation, “You’re not from Milwaukee.”

And he was right. The widow’s peak had come from Chicago, just like forty percent of the students here. I was soon to find out that Chicago encompassed the greater part of the Midwest. (“I’m from a little place just outside of Chicago called Illinois,” someone would tell me later that weekend, and I’d find it funny enough to smile at but not to laugh.)

Somehow, I managed not to get too nervous as the series of truths and lies snaked its way towards me.

The girl on my left, her named turned out to be Ashley, had lied to us that she was from Des Moines. This trickster was also from Chicago.

“I’m a graphic design major,” I’d said. “I have a dog. Ashley is my identical twin, conjoined at birth.”

Ashley was quick to pull away, telegraphing a look of disgust from a safe remove. While the rest of the group tilted their heads sideways, I telegraphed back an apology for roping this poor stranger into my lie. Then, from across the circle, the loudest laugh. At its origin, I found her—Sara—beaming back at me. She looked from side to side before laughing again and shrugging in my direction. 

Who can recall the rest of the lies? We’d already found each other.

Photo credit: Brooke Cagle