The In-Between

This story is © copyrighted to Adrienne Wolter in 2004 and onwards. It was written on Thursday, July 29th, 2004. Do not take this story. This is from the perspective of a high school student explaining and gossiping to a new student about another student.

The In-Between

There she is.
Eighteen. Her eyes are a cold sort of blue, like a stormy sky over a stormier sea. They watch people, half-lidded. Most people are creeped out. Some people say she never blinks. Her hair’s always that straight, it just doesn’t hold a curl. Or, more likely, she never sleeps on it. I mean, she has so many rings under her eyes that it looks like she never sleeps, you know? Right now it’s black and all, but sometimes it’s blonde, so light it’s almost white. It changes back and forth pretty often. No one’s ever really asked how it is that she does it, but she does. Not that they’d get an answer anyway, really. Most of us are better off not knowing.
She’s a curious thing. We call her Nameless, we don’t know what else to refer to her as. No one’s ever heard her speak. Some people say she can’t. Others say she feels that speech is above her. But we’ve seen her watching. Staring at us, never really blinking. Always blankly. She’s never shown any sort of expression. See that black notebook? She scribbles in it all the time. Kid tried to take it once. He broke a leg, doesn’t remember how it happened. It just... happened. We reckon she must have a dozen of them, identical, see? She writes in them too often to only have one. Or maybe she’s just pretending to write, but the pencil never touches the page.
People would just as soon not acknowledge her existence as gossip about her. She’s not really here, she’s just... there. Like an in-between. People assume things about her. It’s all we have to go by, the crap that people make up about her. It’s not like when we ask, she’ll answer. People make her decisions for her, as a sort of afterthought, something about to be forgotten. She will be someday. We don’t even know how she’s going through school, it’s not like she’s listening to anyone. But she never gets mad when someone forgets her. It’s just common courtesy not to.
She won’t mind, of course.
Some teacher used to try and get her to participate in class. Years ago probably, I think she’s been here about six or seven years. Must be hell not finishing high school in four years, but I guess she’s not really here for most of it. But anyway, that teacher, he would call on her all the time, send her to the office and such. She never said anything. Once he assigned her to give a presentation. The day before she was to give it, he disappeared. Missing in action, declared dead and stuff. It was all over the papers for weeks. In any case, all of the teachers are wary of her now. Don’t really blame them. They don’t really notice her in class, not that there’s much to notice.
She won’t mind, of course.
People have given up talking to her. She creeps them out too much, just kind of–well–looks at them. But it’s like she’s reading you. Really freaky. Like she knows just what you’re thinking about her. People have transferred to other high schools just because she scares them away.
And you know what’s even weirder? She used to be normal. Her second year here, she changed. She used to have a name, and she was a pretty good student and all, got A’s and B’s. Some people say it was a tragic love affair that made her go insane, others disagree. But everyone can see that she’s here now, and the strangest thing is that over the years everyone has forgotten her name, the teachers just call her Nameless like the rest of us.
She won’t mind, of course.
Hey, come on, I’ll show you where the cafeteria is....