The In-Betweeners

I don't know what it was about Shane. In all honestly, I did not understand that girl one bit. She could have been somebody great, somebody special; somebody that mattered to other people. But she wasn't. She wasn't because she didn't want to be. And I think that was the first thing I had to understand before I could understand the person. You have to learn the basics before you learn the advanced material, right?

When we used to talk, it would be extensive conversations. Sometimes it would be about something generic, such as the weather, but other times it would be about complex or controversail topics, such as politics or how different electronics worked. And although I can't necessarily tell you that she was interested in those sort of topics, because she really wasn't interested in anything, she would endure the conversations, knowing that I was fascinated by it all.

However, on the other hand, those moments when we didn't have a conversation would pass in literal silence. I'm not talking about the silence where nobody is speaking. I'm not talking about the silence when it's almost perfectly quiet but somebody sneezes. I'm not talking about the silence when people whisper so low it can't be heard.

I'm talking about silence.

The kind of silence that can chill you right to the bone. The kind of silence that drowns out any and all background noise. The kind that, once it's heard, others quickly succumb to it. Shane and I had perfected the art of silence.

And in those moments of silence, I often would just sit and think. Sometimes I would think about school, other times I would think about food, and there was the occasional moment when I would think about the future. I tried to stay away from the future though; the uncertainty of it all frightened me. Usually, I thought about Shane. I was the type of kid who liked to figure things out. When I was little, I would take apart the phone and try to put it back together again just to see how it worked. I would try to break open the television to try and see the little people inside. It frustrated me that I could not figure Shane out.

"Have you ever wondered what the jocks think about?" I would ask sometimes, when a football player walked past our lunch table.

"No." she would reply.

"Never?"

"Never."

I figured that maybe she just wasn't interested in sports. Maybe she was being like any other stereotypical teenager, maybe she was just rebelling against what her parents loved. Maybe she just didn't care about the jocks. I decided to try a different approach.

"You excited about the new English project? It sounds kind of cool" I asked.

"Not really." she shrugged.

"Not one bit?"

"Not one bit."

And so it went. I quickly realized that nothing would phase Shane. A big math test? Whatever. The football game is on next Friday and if the team wins they move onto the state finals? Cool. I soon made it my own personal mission to find that one thing that she cared about, because I was convinced that there had to be something. I realized sometime towards the end of freshman year that there simply wasn't.

It took me a while to accept that fact. Shane was different. Shane was Shane, and that’s all she would ever be, despite whatever potential she had to be greater. When it comes down to it, potential is potential, and you could have all the potential in the world and never amount to anything. The same way that somebody who never had any potential could become somebody great.

The world is a funny place sometimes, I suppose.