Lonely By Peri Gordon, 10

Lila Sale had only a few friends and never made any new ones. Her trademark was a sigh, a sad, downcast sigh. She was the youngest in her family, with three cruel siblings who couldn’t care less about her. They called her “Lonely,” plus other mean names. “Get over here, Lonely!” “You’re a clumsy idiot, Lonely!” Lila would come to school dragging her feet, trudging slowly through the halls, finding those rare friends of hers, who, like her, really only moped. A lot of the other children, the most popular especially, were similar to Lila’s siblings in character, and she was truly afraid of those ones. The worst was when she ran into her actual siblings (who were popular themselves) and paid the price a million times over, embarrassed and melancholy and even lonelier, for her friends would have fled the scene already. “What’cha doin’, Lonely?” “Where’d your little friends go, Lonely?” Whenever Lila saw anyone who was happy, she would always murmur, “I wish I was like that.