The In-Betweeners

I never understood high school popularity. I never understood how one could move up the metaphorical ladder of cliques and become the top of the metaphorical food chain. I never understood how those cliques came to be. What made a jock a jock? What made the emos emo? What made a nerd a nerd? Obviously there were visible defining factors between these cliques. The jocks were brawny, the emos wore black, the nerds’ backs were hunched from carrying so many textbooks in their backpacks. But why?

What made a jock decide to work out at the gym until his legs were rubber and he could not lift another weight for the life of him? What made the emo guy in the back of the classroom force his scrawny little legs into tight, black skinny jeans and wear black guy-liner? What made the nerds decide to spend all their time holed up in their rooms listening to classical music and studying extinct languages? I often thought that people were defined by their parents. A child brought up by nerds would undoubtedly be destined to become a nerd. A child raised by award-winning athletes would undoubtedly be destined to become the star of whatever sport they decided to enter. But then I met Shane.

Shane was the daughter of an ex-football player who almost made it to the NFL before suffering from a career-ending knee injury and a personal trainer. Shane was beautiful. Shane was funny. Shane was completely uninterested in anything athletic. Shane was an artist. Shane was insane.

So, if the child of an-almost-professional athlete and personal trainer was not interested in athletics whatsoever, what defined a child?

Was it something pre-ordained by some unseen force? I doubted that. I had never been a huge believer in God. I had the habit of cursing God whenever something went wrong. My calculator broke in the middle of a big math test? God was an asshole. My father yelled at me for no particular reason? God caused it. But then there were those defining moments where I distinctly remember thinking, Oh, shit. If there is a God, I’m sorry for whatever I’ve said, whatever I’ve done that went against you. I really do believe in you.

I wish I could tell you what clique I was part of in high school. I wish I could say I was the jock who scored the winning touchdown in the big game against the school rival and dated the cheerleaders. I wish I could say I had good grades in honors classes and that my friends adored me. But in reality, I was lost somewhere between the national-ranking nerds and the going-nowhere-fast potheads. In all actuality and in every sense of the word, I was alone. Sure, I had some friends, like Shane for example, but she didn’t know the real me. She only knew the wallflower me. She only knew the person I pretended to be during school. She only knew the person I had become because society told me that it was the person I should be.

I was a wallflower. But even calling myself a wallflower is a stretch. Because even the wallflowers get noticed. Even the wallflowers have people comment on them; how pretty they are or how strange they are, or how well they compliment the colors of the rug.

I was never noticed.