Is there some "nice" way to get my four year old to stop asking to play with a neighbor girl?

For some reason, my daughter adores the neighbor girl two houses down the street. Unfortunately, the feeling isn’t mutual. This girl is a few years older and she teases and makes fun of my daughter. She tells other kids in the neighborhood not to play with her.

I have no idea why, but she’s pretty mean to my daughter and always has been. She’s asked my daughter to play in the back yard with her and some other kids. Then the kids all go into the house and leave my daughter outside and say she’s not allowed to go in. I watch over the fence and I see my daughter playing by herself in their back yard while the other kids were eating Popsicles in the front yard.

The other kids are nice to my daughter when this girl isn’t around. But when she is around, my daughter is a pariah. Usually, they just ignore her, but sometimes they will join the older girl in teasing her.

My daughter, for whatever reason has no clue this girl is being mean to her. Maybe it’s her age, I don’t know. She always wants to play with this girl. She wanted to invite this girl to her birthday party. She calls her a best buddy. I just cringe when she asks to go play at her house. But I don’t have the heart to tell my daughter this kid doesn’t like her.

Today, my daughter wheedled and whined to go see the girl and I finally gave up and took her. The girl came to the door and said she’d be outside to play “in a minute.” She had this creepy smile and I knew she wouldn’t come outside. My daughter stood in the yard and refused to go home for the longest time. She finally came in, but kept checking at the window to see if the girl came outside. The girl finally came out with her mother about 2 hours later and said they were going to the movies. The car never left the driveway. Nobody went to the movies.

So, what the heck do I do in this situation? My daughter just loves this girl and it’s breaking my heart to see her get trampled on by her.