Lauren was my best friend from kindergarten through high school. When we first met, we played together with other girls after school. It wasn't very long, however, before we discovered that we shared something special, and we started to spend a lot, really a lot, of time together alone. We quickly became best friends, that unique kind of friendship that is somewhere between being like sisters and being like lovers.

I loved many things about Lauren. She and I shared some traits, but most she alone possessed. She was exuberant and lively and chatty. She amused my family to no end and could be a total charmer when she was of the mind. She did a wonderful impression of Rosanna Rosanna Danna. She purposefully frizzed out her hair and made herself sound like a New Yorker, and she was exquisite.

Sometimes Lauren was a complete ham, and she was always expressive. When we were in elementary school together, I would sometimes walk over to her house in the morning before school so we could walk over together. Lauren's expressiveness would really shine in the morning. There she would be in her bedroom, the walls partially covered in "Grease" posters and maybe a Diana Ross poster and she would be in the middle of getting dressed. I usually made it there by the time she was dealing with her hair. She could get so mad at her hair, at all the frizzies and the lumpies, that she would throw her hairbrush around the room and stomp around, I'd then start to giggle and scold her hairbrush, and that would make her laugh, and everything would be okay.

Sometimes Lauren's expressiveness got her (and, by extension, me too) into trouble. Talking in class was one of those things. She was a bit sassy and once managed to get us into a fight when she insulted a girl named Heather. Heather demanded that Lauren fight her and that Lauren pick a friend who would fight one of our mutual friends, Patty Metz. Naturally, Lauren picked me, and how could I say no? Neither one of us had ever been in a fist fight before, but we thought it was only honorable to assent to Heather's demand. What a fiasco that was. The four of us met the following day at a park and promptly started to fight. I had my hands full with Patty, but Lauren was in a terrible bind, being swung around by her hair, I think. I was really horrified. Clearly, Heather had more experience with that sort of thing than we did, so I called everyone's attention then to the fact that I'd just lost one of my earrings, which had the desired effect of stopping the fight. Lauren and I might not have won that fight, but we did walk away intact, minus a few strands of her hair, and with our devotion to each other proven in yet another zany manner.

Another thing I loved about Lauren was her questioning mind. She was never dogmatic at all. Some of the things she questioned were profound, such as religious and political issues. Others were slightly silly, but we delved into them all with great seriousness in order to find the truth. Take the time we were at McDonald's, eating cheeseburgers and french fries. Lauren paused after a few bites of her cheeseburger and eyed it suspiciously. "These burgers are really kind of gross. Do you think the special sauce would make them stick to the walls?" she asked. Well, I'd never considered the idea before and really couldn't speculate about it, so the only thing to do was to try it. So, we took the bun off of one, and pressed it to the wall. And I'm here to tell you the truth about this now: yes, it will stick to the wall. It will adhere to the wall for enough seconds or minutes it takes a McDonald's employee to turn the corner to warn a couple of hysterical girls to shut up and then see the damage done to the wallpaper and evict them out of the restaurant.

Lauren and I got ourselves into all sorts of fixes over the course of our friendship. We shared a love of adventure and plain willfulness that kept us in trouble for a few years. I have a number of memories of various scrapes we got into, taking the Mercedes out when we were only about fourteen being one of them. My mom told me after we did it that Lauren's mom had called her up and had tried to pin the whole escapade on me because Lauren couldn't drive. Well, she was right about one thing: Lauren couldn't drive! It took her about thirty minutes just to back out of the garage, and I think she was a little confused at one point about which gears did what and just how much pressure one should apply to the gas pedal, but once she rammed into the garage wall and left a small dent, she pretty quickly figured it all out. By the time we were in Montrose, she was a fairly good driver and that's saying a lot because we really were a little too short to see over the steering wheel very well.

Lauren and I weren't just friends because of a shared love of mischief. Lauren was kind, generous and thoughtful. When she was grounded from seeing me for a year, we agreed that we would obey her mom's injunction, but we also agreed that it wouldn't keep us from continuing to be best friends. So, when our shared birthday came around, Lauren called me and suggested that we meet halfway between our homes. We both arrived with presents for each other and hugged and told the other about what was going on in our lives. There was a special assumption that we had with each other that as I've gotten older, I've really come to see as something extraordinary. We knew how much we cared for each other, and we knew we could always rely on each other, and so we gave each other a lot of latitude and expected that though our differences might sometimes make us drift apart, our similarities and our feelings for each other would always keep us close and connected.

All of these memories I've recounted of Lauren reveal glimpses of the funny, effervescent, and soul-searching girl she was, but they can't capture her entirety completely. Lauren was many things to me that I haven't even tried to express. She was, for a few years, the one friend I felt I had who kept me woven into society. When I needed reassurance about who I was or where I was going or what I was going to do with myself, Lauren was always there to help me remember my self worth by showing me how much she valued me with an appreciative letter or a kind gesture. I don't think I'll ever have another friend who could know me so well, inside and out, and continue to esteem me as her best friend ever again. And that is a really lonely thought.

To me, Lauren was my better half. She possessed a unique range of qualities that I always admired. I think I was smitten by her right from the start. We used to imagine when we were younger that we had been born in hospitals across the street from each other and that after we were born, our mothers had held us up out of their respective windows for the other to see, knowing that, as improbable as it may have seemed, they had just given birth to two girls who were made for each other. I guess some people can go through their whole lives and never meet someone who seems to be the perfect complement to them, but I was lucky: I met mine right in kindergarten and consider myself blessed to have been befriended by her for as long as I was.

Lauren Lipkin, you will live in my heart for as long as I live.

Best friends forever,

Tanya Townsend