Column: Secrets and lies

The little black dress is hot. On the rack, it looks like it could shimmy and shake and swallow some guy whole. This is a little black dress that looks great with a cigarette and messy hair. This is a little black dress for dancing. This is a little black dress for taking off.

"How does it look?" asks my friend in the dressing room. And suddenly, this is a little black dress to cause a big bad fight. The dress is too small, and my friend knows it.

"I'm not sure it hangs right," I say, hoping she'll catch on. Instead, she glares at me. "Why not?" she growls. "Am I too fat?" Oh please. My friend isn't fat; she's gorgeous. The dress didn't fit, and I told her so, right before she stormed out of the store, her face on fire. "I know you were right," she said later, after borrowing a dress from me. "I just wish you would lie to me sometimes."

She's not the only one. Occasionally, being a friend means telling people what they need to hear. But if you can't count on your friends for truth, what are they for? And as we know, friends don't let friends look fat at formal.

So should you ever lie to your friends? "Sometimes," says a campus socialite, while raiding my closet. As she slipped on a slip-dress, she let it slip that she'd dropped her longtime boy. "Do you know what he told his frat brothers?" she moaned. He said, "I can't believe she dumped me. I spent so much money on that girl!"

As she sifted through my makeup, she continued: "I know he didn't just spend his money. He spent his heart too. But if lying about it makes him feel better, then I don't really care what he says." Later, this guy broke down on my couch, admitting he couldn't talk to his boys about his heart.

Sometimes, the truth can change to whom you talk. But sometimes, it's the unsaid stuff that hurts. My friend has a Not-Boyfriend. They're close, they're cute and they're terrified to talk about it. "I don't want to freak him out," shrugs the girl as we make our nightly trip to Starbucks. "If I ask what's going on, he'll know I want to get serious and that might push him away." But does she want to get serious? "Yes, of course!" she says wistfully. "But I can't tell him what I want or he'll get scared!"

I'm friends with the Not-Boyfriend, too, and sometimes I casually ask for updates on the girl. "I really want to get serious," he told me as we rode the bus to Central. "But I'm afraid she's not ready yet, and I'm pushing her to go too fast." I wanted to tell him her feelings, but since this girl had sworn me to secrecy, all I could do was smile.