Maya Truitt

Age: Maya is in ninth grade and fourteen.

Hair: She has long hair which she gets styled once a week in
wonderfully creative ways (fancy cornrows, hair extensions, temporary
dye, and so on). She gets advice from her stylist, Zena, who always
wears a "Z" charm.

Eyes: Dark brown

Body: She's an African-American of average height. She's thin, due to all her nervous energy. She's in good condition due to her karate training.

Fashion Sense: She buys practical but not necessarily stylish clothes. Often they're stained or wrinkled.

Likes/Dislikes: She's a real trivia buff and knows facts and statistics about everything. She's on the trivia bowl team at her school. She also likes karate. She loves her little sister. She hates when things are out of her control. She doesn't like cooking or housework.

Parents: Her father, Harry, is an engineer and an absent-minded professor type. Her mother, Hope, is a lawyer and very efficient and organized. She is busy litigating a big trial.

Sisters: Tiffany, age seven. With her mother gone, Maya helps take care of Tiffany.

School: Maya does well in school. She's proud to say she's never been tardy nor handed in an assignment late.

Crushes: She has just developed her first crush, and she's got it bad. She's mad about Bud Bloom, a genius who hardly ever studies, wears sloppy clothes, and needs a haircut. But he's so darned cute.

Friends: Her friends, including Bud Bloom, are the four fellow nerds (and proud of it) on the trivia bowl team with her.

Secrets: She's finding it hard to study her encyclopedias and almanacs and flashcards, because she keeps thinking of Bud. Her guilty secret pleasure is watching Full House reruns. She feels like she doesn't fit in at school.