Illustration: Tallulah Fontaine
Friendships seemed so easy for Lola, far easier than they ever had for me. From the first morning I pried her from my leg at the kindergarten door, there were girlfriends waiting, fluttering flocks of tulle. She was one of the lucky ones, invited to all the parties, even crossing the barriers between grades. Unable to winnow down the list for her first sleepover, we filled two bedrooms. When they were old enough, they?d knock at our door after dinner, asking if she could come out for one last play. Until they didn?t.
After Lola?s ninth birthday party, at which eight of her closest friends fought to sit next to her, I started to hear about kinks in the social structure. Recess games would start without her and disband the moment she asked to join in. A ?Voice? competition turned out to be a ploy to get her to sing and mock her. My trail-blazing girl began to disappear. Where she once ran ahead into the schoolyard, smack into a scrum of mates, she?d stick by me until the bell rang. After school she?d disappear into a corner of her sister?s bed and lose herself in a book; at bedtime, no longer able to contain her grief, she?d convulse with tears. Even her style changed: Who was this girlie girl in her new armour of grey" Then, the day before summer break, I picked her up from a rowdy after-school gathering in the park that seemed to have gone brilliantly. I thought (or rather hoped) a change was in the air. As Lola collected her things, I ...