And she’s not exactly the Juliet she pretends to be. The trailer park left its scars. Not the place, but all that it entailed: being poorer than her peers, her single mom working nights to support three kids. Juliet had to figure out things on her own. Not until she got a job bagging groceries at Kroger did she get some of the things the rest of us took for granted, like school pictures. Oh, they snapped her photo, but she never received packets to take home. The rest of us exchanged wallet-size pictures signed on the back with sayings like “2 good 2 b 4gotten.”

Once, she said she’d already given hers away and shrugged her shoulders. The next year she said her mom was forcing her to give them all to her cousins.

“You should’ve ordered more,” said the girl sitting on the other side of her.

“That’s what I told my mom.” Juliet rolled her eyes with that universal exasperated look teenage girls perfect. I always gave her a wallet picture of me anyway. I was so dorky then, with my black glasses and bouffant hair. Once, I looked through her wallet and realized my picture and one of her mom and her brother and sister were all she had. The rest of the plastic sleeves were filled with notes and receipts. Then I understood the excuses she made. After that I visited her trailer.

Now her house, perfectly decorated in neutrals with only plants and cushions as spots of color, advertises her mobility. Inside, it is scrupulously neat and spotless. Outside, there is a garden of contained flowers, pruned trees, and a plane of smooth, even grass. So different from the cluttered two-bedroom trailer parked in a gravel yard and jammed with four people. She helped put her husband, Dan, through law school after she got her nursing degree. Her daughter is now a schoolteacher and her son is now in med school. Both are married. Her daughter has one child and her son’s wife is pregnant. A Hallmark-card family in a Hallmark-card house. Safe. Prosperous. Happy.

She works to keep this image intact. But there’s another side. I know partly because I happened to be there when it started. And partly because I always knew her. Juliet and Dan and Stephen and me were at a blues and jazz festival. It was a long time ago. Before things got squirrelly and awful with Stephen. When we all believed in monogamy, fidelity, loyalty, and that love could conquer all. Juliet and I had abandoned our husbands to their beers and chairs to get closer to Al Green. We were smashed in a group of other people, urging him on, but we were standing so close, when he held his hand down, Juliet reached up and touched it. Their eyes met.