One of the most frustrating things about being a parent is the inability to peel back your child's skull, take out their brain and examine it closely to figure out just what goes on in there.

Sophia's at the age now - recently upgraded to five and a half - when friendship is a big issue. There are wheels within wheels in the highly-charged kindergarten society: One day Destiny is my girl's stalwart partner in their unceasing quest to chase and catch the boys at recess; the next she's downgraded to persona non grata.

Destiny and Sophia took one look at each other on the first day of school and fell in love. Tragedy struck when Sophia got moved from Room A-1 a few weeks after the start of the term – due to class-size reduction issues – but they still sit together every day at lunch, they still fight the powers of evil in tandem at recess, they still are joined at the hip every chance they get.

Unless, of course, they're busy not being each other's friend anymore.

"Tell me about your day," I urged the other night, just before story time. Sophia's confidences tend to come at day's end when we're snuggled up, using our quiet voices. That's when I get the inside dirt on who got in trouble for messing around or learn which boy is so cute that any mention of his name must be whispered. But this night was different.

"Destiny's not my friend anymore," she said. "Plus Isaiah got on the sad face. But not me. I haven't been on the sad face for Three Whole Days. Oh yeah, and Mark E. threw up."

"What do you mean, Destiny's not your friend anymore," I said, forgetting to whisper.

"Right in the middle of the classroom, he did it," she continued. "We had to eat snack outside where it didn't smell like throw-up."

"But what about Destiny?"

"Oh. She just wants to play on the swings," Sophia said dismissively. "So I have to chase the boys by myself."

She went to sleep without giving Destiny another thought, but I was curiously distraught about the girls' falling-out, probably because it brought back the drama of my own childhood friendships. At registration for first grade, I met Janice, who always talked too loud and had a pair of white-fringed go-go boots that she wore every day. It was love at first sight.

It was because of Janice that I first heard the phrase "diarrhea of the mouth" when our exasperated teacher made us change our desks so they'd be across the room from each other. Janice was the first girl to climb to the top of the monkey bars even though the boys would cluster underneath and make comments on our underpants. Janice didn't care; she'd just lift up her dress to give them a better look.

When somebody made me cry, it was Janice who stood up for me. When I got given the part of a piece of glass in the second grade play and had to say, "put me in the trash can," she made the other kids stop actually trying to put me in the playground trash can. When I wet my pants because the teacher said not to interrupt her for any reason, Janice told everybody that the big puddle under my desk was not either pee, it was left over from the rain the night before.

Yet somehow I let her slip away. I have a photo that was taken at our sixth grade graduation: Janice in a mini-skirt and lace-up black patent leather go-go boots, me in a polyester sleeveless turtleneck that emphasized my little potbelly. We didn't know then that things would never be the same. Just ahead of us lay the hell of junior high, which we faced alone from different school districts. But even though it's been years since I've seen her, I somehow can't bring myself to say she's not my friend anymore.

The next time I volunteered at recess, I tried not to grin when I saw Destiny and Sophia run toward each other with outstretched arms. They kept holding hands as they ran across the playground, chasing the boys and laughing out loud when they caught one.