The In-Betweeners

Allison Haynes was the first of my friends that cared about popularity and achieved it. I could tell by the pictures that plastered her bedroom walls. Every picture of her and her friends had at least five people in it, and Allie was always at the center. Her hair was always perfectly in place, her outfits were always on point, and a smile was always plastered across her face. She looked beautiful. But not as beautiful as she looked in person. The smile in the pictures was fake and controlled, when she smiled around Shane it was huge, her white teeth shining and lighting up her whole face.

Allie’s dresser was lined with picture frames, but these were different than the ones taped to her walls. The first was of her and her little brother, David, who just turned twelve and was the reason Shane and Allie’s family had come together that day. Allie couldn’t have been older than twelve herself in the picture, but she was still beautiful. She had an air of confidence about her that most twelve-year-olds did not have and the only real difference I could see between her back then and now was that her teeth had not yet been straightened by braces. The next picture was of two small blonde toddlers with their arms wrapped around each other on a beach. I could only assume that it was Allie and Shane. The next picture made me smile. It looked like Allie was about thirteen, her teeth were crooked and covered by braces, but despite this she was smiling as wide as I had ever seen her smile (not that I had known her very long at this point but still, to this day it is one of the biggest, most sincere smiles that ever graced her face). Her arms were thrown around the neck of a dog, I have no idea what kind, and her big blue eyes were squinting because her smile took up so much room on her face.

It was so sincerely beautiful it made me smile too.

“Girls?” Allie’s mom called up from downstairs. “David’s about to blow out his candles!”

Allie and Shane had been sprawled out on Allie’s floor chatting and gossiping while I looked at the pictures. It had started to rain not long after we started hanging out on the back patio and both Allie and Shane found the adults’ conversations boring so that’s how Allie ended up bringing us up into her bedroom to hang out.

“Coming!” Allie called back.

We filed downstairs into the dining room where it seemed that all of Allie and Shane’s aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins-twice-removed, grandparents, people neither Allie nor Shane seemed to even know, every single one of them was packed into that room to watch David blow out his candles. David stood at the center of it all. He grinned widely as the whole room belted out an out of tune and out of sync version of “Happy Birthday” and excitedly blew out his candles. The cake was a double layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and little chocolate crunchies all around the edges that made Shane smile brighter than David. She was in sugar heaven.

Not long after David asked if he could open his presents so the whole group filed into the living room, packing ourselves like sardines, to watch. He opened toy after toy, most relating to sports in some way, while Shane and Allie made their rounds around the room to greet family members they had missed earlier. Allie was outgoing, cracking jokes and listening intently to what everyone had to say always with something witty and charming to add. Shane was more reserved, as she always was, and merely listened without adding anything to the conversation unless it was directed solely to her.

Allie and Shane looked similar to each other, both with the blonde hair, but they were also both fascinating to me. I couldn’t quite place my finger on what was so intriguing about Allie, though. Shane was interesting because she was such a mystery. I had known her for over a year and I still felt like there was so much to learn about her. I had known Allie for only a few hours and felt like I had known her my whole life.

It took nearly an hour of watching the two interact before I finally understood what made the two so disconcertingly similar and yet so frustratingly different. Allie was what Shane would have been if she had lived up to her potential. She was beautiful, popular, sweet, and clever. She could charm anyone she encountered with a flutter of her eyelashes and flashing her sweet smile at them. Shane from a distance was just as charming, but her usually disinterested attitude about the world snuffed out any natural charm she had.

“Hey you two,” Mr. Dorsey put his hands on mine and Shane’s shoulders to get our attention. “We’re gonna get going soon.”

“Okay,” Shane said.

She started her rounds of good-byes with her parents, but I stayed where I was. I hadn’t said hello to three quarters of the party so I figured they wouldn’t notice that I didn’t say goodbye. Allie noticed me standing by myself in the entranceway after a few moments and came to stand by my side.

“Are you leaving?” she asked.

I didn’t want to say it, but I had to.

“Yes.”

A small frown creased in-between her perfectly sculpted brows, and I felt the sudden urge to wipe it away. I hated that she looked even the slightest bit sad. But at the same time, my heart fluttered and soared. Was she going to miss me?

“Goodbye, James,” she said. “It was nice to meet you.”

She reached up to hug me goodbye, and as I bent slightly to meet her small frame in an embrace, she went up on her tiptoes to place a gentle kiss on my cheek. Before I could react, she was walking away, a shy smile playing at her lips when she glanced over her shoulder at me. I stood in that spot, stunned, until Shane found me again. I followed her and her parents out to the car in a daze.

I felt the ghost of her lips on my cheek for weeks.