A knot, worn, splitting. Two children on either side, rope tied to their ankles, lunging in opposite directions. The knot does not give. 

. . . 

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of familiarity. Her smile, the slight curve of her lips that teases like a practiced coquette, yet gives away more than she’d ever intend. Or her laugh, pitch rising and falling like the flight of a bird. In those moments, she looks devastatingly identical to the person she used to be. It’s fleeting, an instant in the series of quick, successive instances that make up a day, but it resonates. For one evasive second, she doesn’t look like a stranger. 

But in every other way, she’s indecipherable. I remember meeting her, those months we spent together shortly after the awkward, shuffling introduction—the happiest time of my life, I had called it once. The heaviness of my heart was already wearing me down during those youthful days, as I learned what it was to feel helpless and purposeless. But every stupid little thing she said dissolved that crushing weight into thin air. The laughter unleashed itself from my throat, bursting like sunshine, until I wheezed helplessly. I remember the sensation of my body floating upwards until I could navigate the sky, caress the clouds and declare them my own, say with shattering, naïve decisiveness that there were no limits. 

That was a long time ago. 

The space in between then and now is fuzzy. I recall it in low-resolution, and my memory can’t be cleansed or focused. What did we do during that blurred-out time? We never quite lost

sight of each other, but the mid-hallway hellos stopped, and so did the joyous hilarity of our time spent sitting across from each other at cheap, greasy restaurants. Perhaps we “lost our way,” or we “drifted apart.” I can only say one thing for sure. 

She changed. 

If she dares to smile, it’s granted from little more than politeness. And she acts like laughing in front of people is identical—in terror and vulnerability—to stripping naked before a crowd. Every word is guarded, planting a wall of glass between you, almost in mockery: I will speak to you through this transparent barrier, it says. You will read my lips. And you will spend the rest of the day wondering about the true sound of my voice. 

I used to love her. I have lied to myself for years, saying I still do. I’m just waiting, I insist, for the perfect moment to reunite with her and rebuild what we used to be. Toothy child-smiles and shrill child-laughter. The days of dragging colored pencils across textured paper to create comic characters at the lunch table together, the nights of falling over each other at our local ice skating rink. The sleepovers with hours of movies and video games and popcorn kernels stuck in our teeth. But those days have passed, dissipated like receding fog. It takes effort to hold up a friendship with only one working side, and I’m getting tired. 

How many times have I gone out of my way to please her? To show her I still care? To prove to her I am not just some fair-weather friend? She makes me starve for her, and feeds me only when I’m beginning to think I should leave. She never fails to tell me when her next event is. Come see me in this, come see me in that. And I do. Over. And over. And over. She has never done so for me. 

Trying to get her back is a game with no winners or end points. I am aching from the effort of chasing someone who, I’m realizing, no longer even notices me. She is a shadow, a

phantom I can see but never touch, an enigma that seems alluring but is selfishly, bitterly incomprehensible. I am tired of loving a shadow. 

I smile at her, walking down the hall, and our eyes meet. But hers are severe, uncomfortable, too shiny and pulled at the corners. When she finally smiles back at me, it’s the kind of smile that breaks hearts—the kind that whispers, We’re not who we used to be. And I let go. 

. . . 

The knot comes undone. Two children run free in opposite directions, faces bathed in sun.