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Sarah Koenig
For the last year, I've spent every working day trying to figure out where a high school kid was for an hour after school one day in 1999-- or if you want to get technical about it, and apparently I do, where a high school kid was for 21 minutes after school one day in 1999.
This search sometimes feels undignified on my part.
I've had to ask about teenagers' sex lives, where, how often, with whom, about notes they passed in class, about their drug habits, their relationships with their parents.
And I'm not a detective or a private investigator.
I've not even a crime reporter.
But, yes, every day this year, I've tried to figure out the alibi of a 17-year-old boy.
Before I get into why I've been doing this, I just want to point out something I'd never really thought about before I started working on this story.
And that is, it's really hard to account for your time, in a detailed way, I mean.
How'd you get to work last Wednesday, for instance?
Drive?
Was it raining?
Are you sure?
Did you go to any stores that day?
If so, what did you buy?
Who did you talk to?
The entire day, name every person you talked to.
It's hard.
Now imagine you have to account for a day that happened six weeks back.
Because that's the situation in the story I'm working on in which a bunch of teenagers had to recall a day six weeks earlier.
Just for a lark, I asked some teenagers to try it.