I became pretty good friends with Lyra/Lou Lomax(?) in college. She lived down the hall from me for two years. We used to hang out in my single because her roommate was some out of control billionaire's daughter who was wasted and obnoxious 24/7. So was most of the dorm, honestly - I mean, it's Stanford, so upper-middle was "poor." The two of us were doing this on our own, so we needed each other to stay sane.

What I remember: I thought she was weird as hell. She knocked on my door, told me about her roommate, and said that she needed some quiet. Which, okay. We all do. Also, she is truly one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen. I'm a fat gay dude and I let her in knowing it would earn me some respect, and it did. But when I realized, after the twenty most awkward minutes of my life, that by "some quiet," she meant "dead silence, as though you aren't actually here," I started to question if this was even worth it, because what the fuck? I'm trying to ask her how her classes are going and if she's seen any good TV lately, and she's staring dead at the wall and barely replying with annoyed "mm"s. But then I heard a mirror smash across the hall, and I realized how desperately she needed to not be disturbed. And so I let her use me for my single, because what the hell. I had no friends, and at least she wouldn't talk during movies.

She was also extremely outspoken, which was ... jarring. Literally never knew this til I transferred into a class she was in. The TA was a total dick. He was so condescending that people were nervous to speak up, and I guess this pissed her off so much that she'd talk over him/back to him constantly. She came right at him at every opportunity, and it was HILARIOUS. This boring seminar became a sparring match until he threatened to fail her, and then she started talking about how she could find and vandalize his car. Honestly, she's probably still plotting. She also went nuclear on guys who hit on her. You know the type.

So, she had kind of a bad rep, one where the "weird" in hot weird girl had eclipsed the "hot." Her grades started slipping sophomore year, and I thought she was either depressed, or that she was down because her hubris had finally burned just about every bridge in her life. Probably the latter. She wanted to get together less and less, and she missed quite a bit of class, and showed up late and exhausted when she did show up. The energy she'd once had to sass the shit out of terrible grad students was gone, and she was just ... there. We kept hanging out, but she never wanted to talk about it. And then she took off before finals. Apparently she was living this double life as a stripper/pornstar, which pisses me the fuck off because she was making thousands of dollars a night and still hit me up for beer money with these, like, sadsack tales of hardship. She suckered me out of at least four hundred bucks. And she was so good at it that I never realized that's how it happened until I found myself writing tl;dr askreddit posts about it ten years after the fact.

So, sorry for this unhappy ending, but: I'm unable to tell you how she's changed, because I obviously never knew her to begin with. Though I'm bitter about this now, I still remember the times I had with her fondly. She was fun, confident or maybe just delusional, and she made me laugh often and at things we'll probably go to hell for. That she's made it is no accident. I don't pity her for the path she's taken. She is not a victim of circumstance, and she has made all this happen herself. This I can say with certainty. And though I (and probably everyone else she's ever met) feel used and tossed away ... I miss her, and I don't blame her. I hope you're reading, Lou, because I want you to know that. All we ever wanted was to get out of our shitty situations. You just did it bigger.

eta: Woah, top of the page. Maybe she'll read this after all.