First Chapter -- First Paragraph -- Tuesday Intros

Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea has started a fun new meme, First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros. Below is the first paragraph/chapter of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley:

There are only two birthdays that stand out in my memory as distinct, chronologically certain events. One: my sixteenth birthday, when we watched, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That was the year my friend Elizabeth, while using the swing anchored to the underside of our second-story deck, pushed off so hard that the whole shebang – girl, swing, unhooked chains – went sailing twenty feet out into the woods behind our house. Two: the year I got diagnosed with mononucleosis, too late to cancel an Italian themed dinner party. So I stood in front of a stove for two hours – achy, glands swollen, stone-cold sober – cooking pasta for two dozen while my friends went through six bottles of wine. That was, undoubtedly, my twenty-first birthday.