Loyola Academy

Loyola Academy is the school-year landmark in Brett Bohlinger’s account of the last time she saw Carrie Newsome before their friendship fell silent for years. The recollection places Brett in her sophomore year there, when a newly elevated social standing collided with Carrie’s disclosure of her sexual orientation; the decisive scenes, however, unfold during Carrie’s birthday visit at Brett’s home, not on the school grounds.

Identity and Narrative Setting

Loyola Academy is identified as the school Brett attended as a sophomore. The available account does not describe its campus or establish that Brett and Carrie’s difficult conversation took place there. Instead, the school anchors the age and moment of Brett’s remembered transformation: she had made the cheerleading squad and been swept into the popular crowd during the year Carrie had been living in Madison.

That contrast shapes the memory. Brett recalls her braces coming off, makeup, and a carefully straightened Rachel-style haircut. Carrie, by contrast, seemed unchanged to Brett: plain, stocky, and unadorned. These details register Brett’s adolescent attention to appearance and status, and the distance she was beginning to place between herself and her childhood friend.

The Sophomore-Year Visit

For her birthday, Carrie’s parents bought her a bus ticket to visit Brett. The two sat on Brett’s bedroom floor listening to a Boyz II Men CD and looking through Brett’s yearbook. When Brett asked whether there were cute boys in Madison, Carrie said she had not paid much attention. Brett, embarrassed by the thought that Carrie had never had a boyfriend, tried to reassure her that she would meet someone someday.

Carrie then told Brett she was a lesbian. She spoke without shame or regret, explaining that she had told her parents months earlier and had known for most of her life. Brett initially hoped the disclosure was a joke. Carrie laughed off the possibility that she was making a pass at her, then reached out to reassure Brett that she was still the same friend. Brett heard the reassurance, but her fifteen-year-old understanding did not catch up: she began to see Carrie as foreign, masculine, and odd.

A Friendship Fractured

Brett and Carrie had planned to attend Erin Brown’s party that evening. Afraid that her new friends might learn Carrie was a lesbian and conclude that Brett was gay too, Brett did not take her. She feigned a headache, and the girls stayed home watching videos. Their usual closeness gave way to distance: instead of sharing a blanket and snacks side by side, Brett sat apart in her father’s old recliner. When her mother found Carrie asleep on the sofa, Brett quietly asked her not to wake Carrie. Her mother covered the sleeping guest with a blanket and left; Brett went to her bedroom and lay awake.

The next morning, while Brett showered, Carrie called the bus station and changed her plans. She left at noon, a day earlier than scheduled. Brett remembers feeling relief as the Greyhound bus headed north, a reaction she later acknowledges with shame. The following week Carrie wrote to apologize for having sprung her nature on Brett without warning and to say she hoped their friendship would not change. Brett hid the letter beneath a stack of Seventeen magazines. Weeks became months and then years; when she finally felt able to face Carrie’s sexual orientation, she lacked the courage to reopen the painful weekend and confront her own disloyalty.

The Memory’s Later Return

The Loyola Academy recollection is thus less a portrait of the school than a marker for a formative year: Brett’s entry into a more status-conscious social world coincided with her failure to stand by Carrie. The change in their friendship is conveyed through small, concrete reversals—the bedroom floor replaced by the recliner, a planned party replaced by a feigned headache, and a letter kept out of sight instead of answered.

Years later, Brett prepares carefully for a planned dinner with Carrie, hoping to make a good impression and thinking about the meeting on her way to work. Their arrangements include dinner at the Hyatt near McCormick Place. This later anticipation frames the old school-year memory as something Brett must finally face, but the available account does not establish what happens at the meeting. Loyola Academy remains the chronological anchor for the earlier rupture, when Brett’s new social belonging came at the cost of answering her closest friend with honesty and loyalty.