––What had you hoped to achieve by lying?

Brinkman: By convincing the other kids that I had a sister, my idea of a sibling became almost real. Silent, smiley Katie, while she lasted, was a brief and happy dream. For the record, I’m still an only child— a fate I’ve never learned to appreciate, even though my siblinged friends like to tell me how spoiled and lucky I am.

Johnston: Is it too easy to say that I wanted to protect Rebecca as much as I wanted to protect myself?

Maazel: I’ve always liked to tell stories, mostly the kind where I come off looking stupid. They are entertaining. Before I started writing in earnest, I told so many lies, I couldn’t remember 95% of them. They were pointless, unmemorable—cocktail-party banter. But it made the parties fun. People laughed. After I started to write fiction with intent, I stopped telling stories and got boring real fast. If you ever see me at a party, I’m the one in the corner with nothing to say.

Rabb: To not feel like I was Edward Gorey in his raccoon coat, looking eccentric and kind of creepy. (Personally, I love Edward Gorey and would be entranced by anyone who showed up for a date wearing a raccoon coat, but that’s just me.)


––What happened when you told the lie?

Brinkman: Katie’s parents came to claim her. I was caught, and I’m sure my face turned red, because I’ve never been skilled at hiding my shame. The other kids acted like they’d known all along. I remember one particularly ruthless comment from a girl who also must’ve taken notice of Katie’s pink frills—“You’re not even dressed nice,” she blurted at me.

Johnston: Weeping, apologies, the quoting of scripture. You know, the usual.

Maazel: He laughed. Probably it doesn’t sound all that amusing here, but come on: it’s all in the telling.

Rabb: One night, I was set up with a friend’s cousin who turned out to be religious, and he took me to a kosher restaurant. Under the influence of large quantities of kosher wine and his line of questioning, I embellished my “out west” story into a tale of my parents’ happy existence in Colorado. I’d only been to Colorado once—but he had spent lots of time there. I kept evading his questions, and though he knew I was lying, I just couldn’t break down and tell him the truth. Afterward, I never heard from him again, which was definitely for the best.


––If you could tweak the lie, how would you tweak it?

Brinkman: I don’t know— I haven’t grown up to become a more convincing or sophisticated fibber. Plus, such a bald-faced lie probably doesn’t deserve to be tweaked.

Johnston: Honestly, I think about this from time to time, and I have no idea why I didn’t simply say that I’d lost the necklace. In terms of lying options, that’s certainly the one that corresponds most closely to Ockham’s Razor. Why such Byzantine scheming? Rereading this now, the whole thing does smack of a bad episode of the Brady Bunch, probably one involving Peter or Jan. It’s wholly embarrassing, as, I suppose, it should be.

Maazel: Why bother. Why look back?

Rabb: “They live out west” was way too spartan—I should’ve gone all out and created a whole clan for myself with many generations of aunts and uncles and numerous siblings and cousins, modeled after All My Children.


Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel WE’RE SO FAMOUS, editor of DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME: CONTEMPORARY WRITERS ON THE FILMS OF JOHN HUGHES, and co-founder of POST ROAD, a national literary magazine based out of New York and Boston.