How to Say I Love You Out Loud by Karole Cozzo

loyalty, I guess. “She wanted her parents to pick her up. By recess on
Monday . . . everything had changed.”
    A painful knife slices through me as I remember walking out onto the playground and finding all of my so-called friends whispering under the monkey bars. Caroline was in the center of the group.
I smiled as I scampered toward her, but stopped in my tracks at once as I assessed her behavior further. Caroline was giggling and whispering in their ears. She pointedly turned her back to me.
Then she wrapped her arms around two other girls’ shoulders and led the whole group away from me.
    “My best friend actually formed a club against me,” I admit. “How stupid and juvenile is that?” I shake my head. “But it wasn’t then. It didn’t feel
stupid. It felt awful. It was the worst thing a girl could do to another girl. They had
rules
, for crying out loud. No one was allowed to talk to me. No one was allowed to sit next to me
at lunch. No one was allowed to trade stickers with me anymore.”
    The tears are blurring my eyes again, even though I’m talking about something as ridiculous as sparkly Lisa Frank stickers, but I don’t care. I wrap my arms around my torso,
shivering. If it’s from anger, sadness, or the cold of being away from the fire, I can’t really tell.
    “It’s how girls hurt each other in third grade,” I explain. “I wasn’t the first victim, and I wasn’t the last. And Caroline, my supposed best friend . . . she
tried to act like it was about a million other things. That I’d beat her in the spelling bee that morning. That it was ‘annoying’ how I wore a ponytail every day. But I knew the
truth; I could just
feel it
inside. It was about Phillip. We’d reached a certain age when people were just aware of things, and she didn’t want to be associated with my family
anymore. Maybe she was just scared, or embarrassed of how she’d acted at my house, or didn’t understand that Phillip wasn’t contagious or anything, but for whatever reason . . .
all of a sudden being Phillip’s sister was an unforgivable offense.”
    Alex remains silent at my side, glaring toward the ground. I’m glad he’s keeping his mouth shut. I’m glad he doesn’t have the nerve to act like it wasn’t a big
deal.
    I laugh bitterly as I remember the rest of it. “And you expect adults to set a good example, right? Not so much. That same winter, my mom volunteered to be Cookie Mom for our Girl Scout
troop’s cookie sale. Except our troop leader, who just happened to be Caroline’s mom, came over to ask my mom to ‘reconsider.’ ”
    She’d been so patronizing and gentle with the request, acting like it was in Phillip’s best interest, how the near-constant ringing of the doorbell and parade of unfamiliar faces
would “disturb” him. Really, she just didn’t like having Phillip associated with her troop, and she didn’t feel like dealing with the fallout. It was easier to exclude
us.
    Stellar example she set for her daughter.
    “Those are just a couple of the stories,” I tell Alex, “but trust me, there are plenty. Before I went to middle school, Phillip got placed somewhere else, and when I met a new
bunch of kids, without his being on the scene, some of that faded.”
    I shudder, though, because I never forgot what it felt like. The humiliation and despair of being outcast. The gutting realization that someone I thought cared about me could abandon me over
something that had absolutely nothing to do with
me.
It has lingered; it has impacted so many of my relationships, or lack thereof.
    “Anyway. I started here last year and no one knew about Phillip. I was just Jordyn. I guess I just sort of liked that feeling. And it’s hard to trust that people would be different
from what I remember. I decided not to let anyone know that much about me.”
    The words get caught in my throat and I can’t meet his eye, as I reference the building blocks of the wall I put up between