Luna is the best friend and the worst hypocrite on the planet.

Even through the computer speakerphone, her tone is as jarring as ever. When it comes to giving advice, she is a drill sergeant. This week’s high-intensity combat training: learning to reach out to my friends when I’m stressed, rather than transforming into the Phantom of the iMessage. Luna does not know what I know: that she has yet to tell me of her declining well-being throughout this finals season. I know this in fragments— offhand comments from Maya, the odd-hour responses to the TikToks I send her, the bags growing under her eyes. I do not know this from the source.

Luna and I have been friends since middle school — close in seventh and eighth grade, then unclose in high school (or close by proximity) and close again after turning eighteen. There was a long period of time when I couldn’t answer basic security questions about her, but I still loved her fiercely. I hate the time I wasted not being with her when I was with her. We’re long distance now. Perhaps we have crossed it in grey, confusing areas (the week I spent on her bedroom floor in Toronto, the summer we both went crazy), but we do not live there. At the end of each vacation, we have to pack our bags and go back.

Luna is FaceTiming me from her gym cafe, and I know the call has taken a stark turn when she forgets that the people who may overhear her half of the conversation are the people she runs into daily. She does not whisper when she reminds me that nothing about my life will change until I change. She does not speak low when she tells me all of our friends are splitting custody of the same problems, and that the only one judging me is me. She is aggressive with her love and soft with her anger. From the precise phrasing and pauses for emphasis, I wonder if she has rehearsed her speech at least three times. I wonder if she practiced in the mirror — if she makes eye contact with her reflection the same way she makes eye contact with me.

Luna and I do not talk one-on-one often. Instead, we reconvene with a supervised audience: our close friends Auggie and Maya. Auggie and Maya have long since hopped off the call, especially after Maya spoiled early in our conversation that I needed time alone with Luna to talk about something. Luna is my unpaid therapist and frequently tries to change me for the better. I wish she’d let me, but I rarely let her.

I retreat from the conversation shortly after, commenting about the comical amount of work that needs to get done before I (don’t) sleep tonight. She claims she has the same, and sighs.

“Love you,” I sing-song. “I’m going to go lock in.”

“Love you,” she resigns. “Get some sleep.” Like we both don’t know about the Red Bull in my fridge, and the iced latte order she’s sure to place in seconds. Like we both don’t know about the boulder that needs to reach the top of the hill by tomorrow morning.