The Friend I Tried (and Failed) to Hide 🌑🕊️

I’ve always lived my life like it came with instruction manuals. I follow rules, I read labels, I sort my socks by color. If you’d asked my family to describe me, they would’ve said words like dependable and organized and maybe just a little too predictable.

Which is why no one—and I mean absolutely no one—would have expected me to befriend someone like Lyra.

To be fair, I didn’t expect it either.

It happened in the kind of place where you don’t usually meet lifelong friends. A DMV. The fluorescent-lighted purgatory of modern society. I was there to renew my ID, gripping my paperwork like it was a map to sanity, when I heard someone humming behind me.

It wasn’t a normal hum. It sounded like an entire melody trying to escape through a bottleneck of boredom.

I glanced back. There she was. A woman with hair the color of storm clouds—dark with streaks of silver that looked intentional—and an outfit that could best be described as “whimsical apocalypse.” Layers of scarves. Worn boots. Rings on every finger. A small tattoo of a feather on her collarbone.

She caught me staring and grinned.

“You look like you’re deciding whether to flee,” she said.

“Honestly? Maybe a little.”

“Stay,” she whispered dramatically. “This place eats cowards alive.”

And that was it. That was the first fissure in my carefully structured world.

We ended up talking the entire time we waited in line, which—because it was the DMV—was roughly long enough to train for a marathon. She had a laugh that filled the room, a chaotic joy that rolled off her like she didn’t know life could be anything but interesting.

I found myself telling her things I hadn’t planned to say. Small things, everyday things, but things I rarely shared with strangers. She listened like everything mattered. Like I mattered.

When my number was finally called, she said, “Hey, mystery friend. What’s your name?”

I gave it.

She smiled.

“I’m Lyra. You should come get coffee with me sometime. You look like someone who needs more coffee and less stress.”

I should’ve said no.

I said yes.

The friendship grew the way vines take over abandoned fences: quietly at first, then all at once. Lyra had a way of pulling me toward things I never would’ve done on my own.

She’d text me things like

Meet me by the river // bring something warm

or

I found a dog that probably isn’t a dog // come look

I’d roll my eyes and go anyway, because somehow every time I arrived, life felt… lighter.

We’d sit on rooftops and talk about the shapes of our fears. We’d eat lemon pastries by the fountain because she insisted lemons made “the world feel more awake.” She’d drag me to niche art shows and impromptu drum circles and thrift shops that smelled like forgotten decades.

She wasn’t my type—not even close.

She was wild, unstructured, unpredictable.

And I was the person who felt guilty returning library books one day late.

So I didn’t tell anyone about her.

Hiding a friendship sounds dramatic, but it was surprisingly easy at first. My family didn’t ask many questions about my social life. My coworkers had only ever known the buttoned-up version of me. My old friends were scattered across different cities, busy with the kinds of responsibilities that look impressive on paper.

And I… well, I was afraid. Not of Lyra. Of what people would say. Of the raised eyebrows. Of the teasing. Of being told she was too odd, too intense, too strange for someone like me.

I already heard the imaginary conversations.

You’re hanging out with who?

She sounds unstable.

This is a phase, right?

I didn’t want to defend something I didn’t fully understand yet.

So I tucked her away in a quiet corner of my life. A bright, wild secret.

But secrets are like water—they refuse to stay where you put them.

The first crack in the secrecy came when my mother called unexpectedly while I was at Lyra’s apartment. I should’ve let it go to voicemail. But I panicked.

“Where are you?” my mom asked.

“Out,” I said.

“With who?”

I hesitated.

Lyra mouthed, Tell the truth with an exaggerated hand gesture.

“A… friend.”

My mom perked up immediately. “Oh? What’s their name?”

There are two types of lies: the ones you can maintain and the ones that crumble instantly under maternal scrutiny. This one was the second type.

“Lyra,” I admitted.

“What a beautiful name,” my mother said suspiciously. “Who is she?”

“Oh, uh… someone I met. Recently.”

“Where?”

“Um… the DMV.”

Silence.

The kind that says what on earth is happening in your life.

Lyra burst out laughing so loudly my mother heard it through the phone.

“Is that her?” Mom asked.

Before I could lie again, Lyra leaned close and shouted, “Hi Mom!”

I considered jumping out the window.

But that wasn’t even the biggest reveal. The real disaster happened two days later.

My sister, who had a sixth sense for drama, decided to “drop by” my apartment unannounced. I was out walking with Lyra at the community gardens when my phone buzzed.

Open your door. I brought cupcakes.

I froze.

Lyra handed me a purple tulip she had just stolen—sorry, borrowed—from a garden bed.

“What’s wrong?”

“My sister is at my place.”

“Okay,” she shrugged.

“Lyra… I’ve never mentioned you to her.”

“Also okay.”

“No, it’s not okay. She’s going to interrogate me. She interrogates everyone.”

Lyra grinned. “Then let’s give her something interesting to interrogate.”

I groaned. “No. No interesting. I need normal. Stable. Acceptable.”

“You’re describing a lamp, not a person.”

It took ten minutes for us to walk home, and in those ten minutes I aged approximately forty years.

When I opened the door, my sister was standing in the kitchen with a box of cupcakes and an expression that could curdle milk.

“Who’s this?” she asked, eyes scanning Lyra like she was a cryptid sighting.

Lyra waved cheerfully. “I’m the DMV friend.”

My sister turned to me with one raised eyebrow. The explain this chaos eyebrow.

And I, despite rehearsing excuses in my head, couldn’t lie.

“We’ve been hanging out,” I said quietly.

My sister blinked. “Since when?”

“Since… a while.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

I shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t know how.”

My sister looked at Lyra again. At her mismatched earrings, her soft smile, the tulip still clutched in her hand. And instead of judging, she surprised me.

“Well,” she said, “are you happy?”

I nodded.

She shrugged. “Then whatever.”

To this day, I think her reaction stunned me more than meeting Lyra did.

After that, everyone found out. Not because I announced it, but because Lyra had a gravitational pull that dragged everything into her orbit.

She brought my neighbor soup when he was sick. She taught my coworker how to do a cartwheel in the office parking lot. She convinced my father to try vegan ice cream at the farmer’s market, and he shockingly liked it.

People who should’ve disapproved… didn’t.

People I feared would criticize… didn’t.

People I assumed wouldn’t understand… did.

Turns out the only person who had been afraid was me.

One night, months later, we sat on the roof again. The city hummed beneath us, warm and alive.

“You hid me,” Lyra teased, nudging my shoulder.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be. People hide the things that matter. Until they’re ready to share.”

“Are you mad?”

“No,” she said softly. “I just hope you see now that you don’t have to shrink parts of your life to fit what others expect.”

I looked at her—this wild, luminous person who had wandered into my structured world and rearranged the furniture of my soul—and I felt something like gratitude. Or awe. Maybe both.

“You changed everything,” I whispered.

Lyra’s smile softened. “No. I just reminded you that you’re allowed to choose color, even when everyone expects beige.”

We’re still friends.

She’s still unpredictable.

I’m still structured.

We’re still opposites in a thousand ways.

But now everyone knows her.

And they love her.

Probably not as much as I do.

But close.

It turns out some friendships aren’t meant to be hidden.

Some are too bright. Too strange. Too necessary.

Some arrive in fluorescent-lit places like the DMV.

Some grow in cracks you didn’t know you had.

Some set roots in places you assumed were barren.

And once they bloom, you wonder how you ever lived without the unexpected color of them.

🌑🕊️