When you are young, you just assume similarity. I had a best friend, and we though we were almost sisters. We had everything (that mattered) in common.

Until one day - She disappeared off the face of the earth, and it woke me up.

I had never understood, or taken into account, why so many people lived in her big yellow house. Or why her mother, wearing oceans, only smiled and clasped her hands. Why her family never accepted our invitations. Why her father studied medicine by day - and drove a taxi through the night.

I hardly knew my best friend, and now she was gone.

It would be a lie for me to say I never heard from her again though. For a start, there were the phone calls.

In the first one - "I'm fine! I'm in Auckland!" before the line went blank. No one spoke in the others, but each time the phantom rang, I knew it was her.

I started seeing her in the street. Each dark ponytail was hers, until the owner turned around. Each high pitched ring of laughter was her trying to find me. For four years, I was haunted by the ghost of a girl who wasn't dead, only far away.

Still, gradually her brief appearances became less frequent. My mother called this "accepting", but really, I think I was just forgetting her.

Then one day - earlier this year, I heard the laughter again, and looked up into the almost-lost smile of the girl who had once known everything.

Our reunion was not tearful or joyous, but shy. We were strangers, with only nostalgia linking us together. We were so different, then and now. Only this time, the Second time, we knew it.