Although we just finished building a house, Philip is always the one making runs to the hardware store-not me. I’m regretting my offer to complete what should have been a quick errand, as it turns into a frustrating ordeal in this fairy-tale maze of jingling silver screws and cartoon sized hammers. I’m rounding an aisle stacked with outlet faces when I run into Lauren, nearly dropping the mirror fragment I’m holding. The harsh overhead lighting bounces off her shining forehead, cutting mean crescent-moon shadows under the bags of her eyes.

I spent weekends at her house as a kid. Our friendship was born from swim meets, Laffy Taffy, Jem dolls, and Madonna. We ate pizza and nodded at each other’s lies and painted ourselves in her dead mother’s make-up. We learned how to kiss boys by practicing on each other. We skipped through obstacle courses in her back-yard, spinning hula-hoops and dodging Frisbees.

 The excitement of our day would wind down as we’d watch TV in the basement. Her older brother, sitting slumped in his chair, sometimes watched Saturday Night Live with us silently; I only remember him speaking once. He peered at the screen from under a neutral brow, a placid countenance that seemed an unfit betrayal to the brooding remark that from his red-petal lips. “This shit is only really live at the end, where it’s unscripted”, he said in grey vapor breath, tapping ash into the empty bottle on the floor beside him, “and everyone’s pretending to give a shit about each other with hugs and waves.” Lauren rolled her eyes, and I followed her upstairs, pretending indifference, though years later I still wondered what he meant.

My mother learned that Lauren’s father wasn’t usually there during our visits, and that her brother usually was, and our weekends together became more seldom. By high school we had stopped nodding to each other as we passed in the hall. I was captain of the gymnastics team, and head of the recycling club. Lauren had an abortion and a school record for truancy. Her brother shot himself in the face.

This is the first time I’ve seen her in 5 years. I expertly summon a quick succession of plastic countenance: friendly surprise, to be followed by a joyful grin. Tugging the corners of my lips into the appropriate smile I trill too loudly, “Lauren! How are you!?” and step towards her, charitably opening my arms for a hug.

“Can I help you find anything?” with a cool stare she halts my advancing steps, shifting the weight of the dusty boxes in her arms to her left side. The cracks in her rough hands are filled with dirt. Stepping back, I look down at my own hands: clean, manicured, and poised daintily so as not to catch the sharp edges of the mirror I’m holding. The flash from my ring glances off the mirrors surface, a bouncing reflection that makes a prism that dances in the moons under Lauren’s eyes.