lost boy.

Why are you on my mind this week, lost boy?

It's been four years.

We both moved to Wellington in early 2006 - you to study law at Victoria and me to study journalism at Massey. Sometimes, after classes were finished for the day, I would walk down to the law school to have coffee with you. At the end of the year I left Wellington for work in Whanganui, you continued with your law studies, and we lost contact.

We had met many years before, when we were in our early 20s, in a social anthropology class at university. Our professor insisted we introduce ourselves to the class by stating our cultural identities. You and I were the only people in the class who claimed Orange Irish as part of our cultural identities. I looked at you, you looked at me and I thought, You're all right. The following weekend we bumped into each other at the pub and from that day forward we were inseparable.

You were my best mate. We studied together, drank together, danced together, went on road trips together, planned to change the world together, raised hell together, even shared each other's beds. My girl friends were convinced you and I would marry, although to this day we have never so much as kissed. We did have a strange, other-world connection that I still can't explain. When I hurt you felt it. When you walked into the crowded pub I knew you were there, even if I had my back to the door.

You were my dark-haired angel but sometimes you acted like a demon. You were always right and you wouldn't back down over the smallest thing. You always got your way; it was easier for people to give in to you than put up with one of your ear bashings.

I argued with you, though, loudly and long. Sometimes the arguments became physical fights. I threw things at you in a rage and you held me down with a steely grip until I capitulated. You told me I was the most badly-behaved woman you'd ever known. One night, when we were both very drunk, we had a wrestling fight and you were too rough with me. I ended up in hospital with a twisted spinal cord, unable to walk for days. You were distraught.

Eventually the fighting got too much for me and I severed our friendship. My life was easier, calmer, with out you around.

Strange then, to find myself, about a year later, unable to stop thinking of you. Having dreams of you, in which you pleaded for me to help you. We bumped into each other at the library a week later. One glance was enough to tell me you were very ill.

The cancer had returned. You'd already had your right shoulder removed and reconstructed, thanks to the aggressive osteosarcoma that had grown there. This time you lost a lung, endured chemotherapy again, wouldn't let me see you during the treatment. You were angry and bitter. You refused to talk about a prognosis.

And then you were gone. You checked out of hospital for the last time and took a plane for Europe.

You dropped out of my life for a decade. I never thought of you - until you appeared in a dream. Not long after this, a man who worked for me gave me a message from you. My heart ached when I saw you again. You seemed worn down by years of battling through life. You had stayed cancer-free but your father had died of the disease. You were out of work, directionless, your long-term girlfriend had left you.

But those big hazel eyes of yours still bored into me as you challenged me: "What the fuck are you on about, Emerson?" Some things hadn't changed.

A different kind of friendship developed between us. More friendly, less crazy-making, less physically dangerous! You had become softer round the edges - a little - and I was not so reactive. We were both in our 30s now and more mature. We had long, satisfying, intellectual conversations, which continued when we moved to Wellington. Why and how did we lose touch?

I have barely given you a thought for the past four years. Now here you are nagging at my mind and stalking through my dreams again and I want to know why. I have no way of getting in touch with you. I don't even know where you are.

What's wrong, lost boy?