About a year after the hospital, a teacher called my house to report an obvious lie I’d told in class, something about witnessing a bank robbery downtown, an image off TV. Once I’d spoken the words, they seemed as good as memory. I loved everybody’s reaction. Suddenly my classmates wanted to get close to me, near to the source of excitement. It was the seriousness with which I told the lie that apparently troubled my teacher. I overheard Mom explain to her on the phone, “It’s a way she has, a creep toward fabrication.”

That’s what I came to call it, the creep, as if an unwelcome visitor were playing with my tongue.

It was only when I followed this passion for storytelling into journalism that I realized the scope of my problem. With excruciating clarity, I remember a professor at USC calling me into her office one day in junior year. My most recent assignment was on her desk. I’d written about a drunk driving accident involving some students. They’d survived, but the accident had sparked a broader discussion about the severity of campus drinking. The classmates I’d shown the assignment to all agreed I’d captured the terror of being in that car as the driver lost control.

“Heck of a story,” said the professor.

“Thanks.”

“So good, in fact, that I circled back on some of your reporting—like the minutes before the crash, and who said what, and when.”

She slid the paper across her desk. It was streaked with red lines, the creep diagrammed.

“You can see where this is going,” she added.

I had no words.

She got up and closed the door behind me, then sat down again. “What happened?”

My instinct was to spin another lie around the lie, but with a gulp, something cleared, and I broke. At first I covered my face. I’d heard Mom talk about crying students and assumed my professor would react with similar scorn, leaving me stranded with my weakness. But to my surprise, the professor came around the desk, kneeled in front of me, and held my hands.

“It’s okay,” she said, very softly. “Take your time.”

I looked down at my hands, her thumbs stroking my skin.

“That’s not me,” I said. “I promise, that’s not me.”

I still wonder what my life would be like if she hadn’t given me another chance.

The professor quietly placed me on academic probation, and I finished my time at USC actively fighting what had become an automatic, invisible force. From a certain viewpoint, my work declined—classmates weren’t amazed by my stories anymore, nobody was drawn to be near me—but I was writing solid, factual journalism. It was a start.

After my confession in her office, the professor took me under her wing, and when I graduated, it was she who recommended me for the internship in Seattle.