Lisa's parents took her to the doctor when the skin began to flake off her other arm and inch across her chest from either shoulder. She was tested for allergic reactions for any substance she might have come in contact with. It turned out she was mildly allergic to cashews and strawberries, but neither seemed to be the cause of her skin rash. The doctors managed to rule out impetigo and ringworm and any other sort of common contagious skin condition. We were relieved at that, then felt guilty.

For a while they considered the possibility of athlete's foot -- that the fungus had somehow worked its way into the skin of her upper torso, but that, too, was ruled out. Then they started on the more serious diseases: Lyme disease, scarlet fever, cancer. But the blood work and scans always came back negative. Lisa's skin, for whatever reason, was simply shedding its top layer, as if she were a reptile.

Good-bye, beach summer. Just in case, Lisa's doctors instructed her to stay out of the sun as much as possible; even if sunlight didn't cause or aggravate the shedding, the new skin underneath might be extra sensitive. The closest she could get to outdoors was the back porch of her parent's house, one of those screened in affairs that looked out onto a yard bordered by thick century-old trees. It probably would have been okay to venture out into the backyard itself; the leafy branches filtered out all but a sprinkling of sunshine in most of the yard. But Lisa's parents hovered like vultures in the doorway, pouncing on Lisa the instant she considered defying a doctor's order.

Her mother swooped past me on one occasion, brandishing the latest bottle of gooey prescription moisturizer as if it was a diabetic's insulin. I found myself wondering what would happen when there was nothing left for the doctors to try. That was the first time I thought to be afraid for Lisa.

Kelly and I visited Lisa regularly, usually together. It was nice to have someone else to look at when looking at Lisa became too difficult. The skin on her face had begun to peel away, and sometimes loose strings of dead skin would be dangling from her jaw or across her cheekbone. The doctors had asked her not to touch it and she obeyed, though to do so she wedged her elbows tightly into the cushions of her favorite chair and sat rigidly straight-backed with her legs crossed Indian-style. The immobility was maybe the most unnerving thing about sick Lisa, a fidgeter by nature. We kept waiting for her hands to flutter out to accent her words; when they did not, we often failed to respond properly, not hearing her the way we wanted.

We were with her one day when her mother disappeared from her shadowy observation post to answer the phone. Lisa's hands flew to her face and began to knead furiously at her forehead.

"I can't stand it!" she cried, "It's like ants crawling all over me!"

"Lise," Kelly warned softly, but neither of us made a move to stop her or call her mother. It was a relief to us, too, this break in her unnerving restraint. This was the old Lisa, whose legs, in normal summers, bore tiny pink scars from mosquito bites she couldn't help scratching. She must have rubbed her forehead for a good minute without stopping. Suddenly she did, collapsing back into the wicker patio lounge with a satisfied sigh and a big grin.

Kelly started to laugh. "You look like you just had an orgasm," she said. Lisa cackled.

"Kelly!" I said, but I was laughing almost as hard. And then I looked Lisa full in the face for the first time that afternoon.

She was flushed from laughing and her rubbing had removed most of the dead skin, so she glowed with the shiny pink of what was underneath. Flakes of dead skin had stuck in her eyebrows and eyelashes, turning both from their usual dark brown to an odd cottony white. Mostly she looked as if she had glued on fake Santa Claus eyebrows, an observation I gasped out to Lisa and Kelly, who howled even more.

Lisa put her hand up to brush the flakes from her left eyebrow. The swipe from her hand brought away not just the flakes, but the hair of her eyebrow as well, leaving only her rosy skin, tight and ceramic smooth on the shelf of her eye socket. She sat there, the remaining eyebrow arched high, looking from Kelly and me to the clump of skin and hair that had a moment ago seemed a fairly permanent part of her face. I saw a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes and an odd swallow that could have been a gulped back sob. But she just looked so funny. With a comedian's timing, Lisa shrugged and wiped off the other eyebrow as well. We were beyond sanity by the time her mother returned. She stared, her eyes wide with the shock of her daughter's new look, but mostly she stared at all of us, doubled over in our chairs, as if our laughter was a language she had long forgotten. Tears ran silently down her cheeks. She handed Lisa a plastic baggie to save the mess in, in case the doctors wanted it for testing, flicked her daughter the tiniest of smiles as we continued laughing, and disappeared beyond the doorway again.