LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT the first time I had to give an oral report in class: it was third grade, and I was incharge of talking about the kangaroo. They’re pretty interesting, you know. I mean, not only are they foundon Australia alone, like some kind of mutant evolutionary strain—they have the eyes of deer and the uselesspaws of a T. Rex. But the most fascinating thing about them is the pouch, of course. This baby, when it getsborn, is like the size of a germ and manages to crawl under the flap and tuck itself inside, all while itsclueless mother is bouncing around the Outback. And that pouch isn’t like they make it out on Saturdaymorning cartoons—it’s pink and wrinkled like inside your lip, and full of important motherish plumbing. I’llbet you didn’t know kangaroos don’t just carry one joey at a time. Every now and then there will be aminiature sibling, tiny and jellied and stuck in the bottom while her older sister scrapes around withenormous feet and makes herself comfortable.

As you can see, I clearly knew my stuff. But when it was nearly my turn, just as Stephen Scarpinio washolding up a papier-maché model of a lemur, I knew that I was going to be sick. I went up to Mrs. Cuthbert,and told her if I stayed to do this assignment, no one was going to be happy.

“Anna,” she said, “if you tell yourself you feel fine, you will.”

So when Stephen finished, I got up. I took a deep breath. “Kangaroos,” I said, “are marsupials that live onlyin Australia.”

Then I projectile vomited over four kids who had the bad luck to be sitting in the front row.

For the whole rest of the year, I was called KangaRalph. Every now and then some kid would go on a planeon vacation, and I’d go to my cubby to find a barf bag pinned to the front of my fleece pullover, a makeshiftmarsupial pouch. I was the school’s greatest embarrassment until Darren Hong went to capture the flag ingym and accidentally pulled down Oriana Bertheim’s skirt.

I’m telling you this to explain my general aversion to public speaking.

But now, on the witness stand, there’s even more to be worried about. It’s not that I’m nervous, like Campbellthinks. I am not afraid of clamming up, either. I’m afraid of saying too much.

I look out at the courtroom and see my mother, sitting at her lawyer table, and at my father, who smiles at mejust the tiniest bit. And suddenly I can’t believe I ever thought I might be able to go through with this. I get tothe edge of my seat, ready to apologize for wasting everyone’s time and bolt—only to realize that Campbelllooks positively awful. He’s sweating, and his pupils are so big they look like quarters set deep in his face.

“Anna,” Campbell asks, “do you want a glass of water?”

I look at him and think, Do you?

What I want is to go home. I want to run away to a place where no one knows my name and pretend to be amillionaire’s adopted daughter, the heir to a toothpaste manufacturing kingdom, a Japanese pop star.

Campbell turns to the judge. “May I confer for a moment with my client?”

“Be my guest,” Judge DeSalvo says.

So Campbell walks up to the witness stand and leans so close that only I can hear him. “When I was a kid Ihad a friend named Joseph Balz,” he whispers. “Imagine if Dr. Neaux had married him.”

He backs away while I am still smiling, and thinking that maybe, just maybe, I can last for another two orthree minutes up here.

Campbell’s dog is going crazy—he’s the one who needs water or something, from the looks of it. And I’mnot the only one to notice. “Mr. Alexander,” Judge DeSalvo says, “please control your animal.”

“No, Judge.”

“Excuse me?!”

Campbell goes tomato red. “I was speaking to the dog, Your Honor, like you asked.” Then he turns to me.

“Anna, why did you want to file this petition?”

A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when youpop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead. “Sheasked,” I say, the first two words that will become an avalanche.

“Who asked what?”