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Average Allie: A Narrative That Will Inevitably Be Made Into a Four-Part Film Series for Tweens

Kevin Cooley

    Jessie’s eyes slid quickly over to the—no, no, her name can’t be Jessie. That’s a man’s name too, you know—much too ambiguous to garner any real sympathy from the major demographic: young female readers.
    Bella’s eyes—darted implies a sense of urgency, let’s go with that—but no, Bella won’t do either—been used.
    How about Allie? Allie is vulnerable enough for any thirteen to eighteen-year-old girl to relate to. And yet, at the same time, Allie isn’t repulsive and worn to the point where it’s completely unreasonable to imagine her as a point of sexual desire by the male lead. Alyssa or Kim would probably work too—but we’ll take Allie for now and pocket the other names for another slightly insecure placeholder of a teenaged girl who seems plain on the outside, yet who yearns deeply for ironically mundane adventures on the inside.
    Allie’s eyes darted amongst the ice skaters as they weaved patterns of circles around her and her best friend Anna—but Anna’s got the same first letter as Allie and has a slightly foreign sound to it and it’s probably more patriotic and generally more relatable to call her Stephanie.
    A familiar tune that Allie vaguely recognized as a popular one floated into her. She hardly noticed; she would need all of her focus to make sure that she found him, the guy of her dreams, the perfect gentleman whose scribbled image occupied every other page of her algebra notebook in monochrome glory.
    The only guy who could match up to this description was, of course, Nathan.
    Except that his name was Eric, which makes him sound so much more sensitive.
    “Is he here tonight Steph?” asked Allie. She stole a look behind her, still skating in a forward motion.
    “Who, Nathan?”
    “No, it’s Eric now.”
    “Oh, right,” said Steph with a curt nod of immediate recollection as she swerved around an incoming skater. “He’s the strong and reliable main male character who fulfills social norms by seeming to defy them and captures your heart by taking an inexplicable interest in you, right Allie?”
    “Yup, that would be him.”
    He had to be there. He must just be getting a snack or something like that. He must be over at the snack stand, sauntering across the floor with ease in spite of his clunky skates and laughing with his significantly less sparkly friends who fade in and out of existence at the edges of the camera’s field of vision. His black muscle shirt would probably be rippling with his bulging-tight biceps that—
    Allie’s legs buckled and her nose felt like it was cleaved in half as her body collided with the sideboard. All she could think of was that she hoped Eric didn’t see her carelessness. What a clumsy girl! How relatable! I’d bet that has happened to you before, huh?
    She felt Steph’s hands wrapping around her and pulling her back to safety. Except, no, she didn’t because that would imply she finds some sort of solace in Stephanie’s friendship and that would in turn require further development of Stephanie’s character.
    “Allie, you’re having a third-person omniscient thought tangent again,” said Steph impatiently.
    “Sorry Steph,” Allie said from the shelter of Steph’s arms.
    “Yeah, well, that’s what you get for being the point of view character,” she teased.
    Allie laughed and hopped back to her feet. The pair circled the rink a few times, Allie’s head occasionally slanting one way or another to find signs of him.
    When Allie came close to another full-on collision, this time with another wobbling skater, Steph placed her mittened hand on Allie’s shoulder and stopped her in the middle of the rink.
    “What,” Allie said.
    Steph took an enormous breath. “Do you want some genuine and heartfelt advice about this situation that I’m warranted to give to you because of my status as the experienced one that will lead you astray since you won’t be listening to your heart because you’ll be giving in to peer pressure?”
    Allie closed her eyes and sighed. “Well, that would be fitting of your character archetype. Go on.”
    But what isn’t fitting is the fact that Allie and Steph are ice skating, which could feasibly be a bonding experience for a group of young women and, to be honest, I really just don’t know what to have them talk about other than Eric. It’s probably safe to assume that the reader is going to “get” the relationship between Allie and Steph anyways since the reader probably has her own girl friends—they’ll get it I guess.
    No, ice skating won’t do.
    Seeing as Allie is a semi-standard teenaged-I-think girl with relationship issues, it would definitely be more appropriate if the pair were at a school dance, which they now are.
    “This is the deal, right?” said Stephanie casually as she twiddled one of the particularly bright sequins on her dress between her glittery thumb and forefinger. “Eric is an incredible guy. You’re going to need to be as plain and dull as possible if you want to get his attention on that dance floor.”
    “Do you think he’ll dance with me?” Allie mutters.
    “Don’t get all present tense on me now Allie,” Steph warned as she pressed her hands tightly to her hips. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude that’s going to make Eric think that you’re a real person. And the fact that you’re not that kind of person seems to be the reason he likes you...which doesn’t make too much sense, if you think about it, but whatever.”
    But Allie didn’t have time to register Steph’s futile warnings about the tense of her actualized dialogue because he was striding gracefully across the floor in a dust cloud of positive physical adjectives. Eric’s chiseled expression was accentuated by deep chocolate eyes that sunk carefully into the frame of his face to give off the impression that he was constantly contemplating his next action. The ink-stained hairs drifting lazily across his fa—no, no. His jet-black hair made him look so mysterious—better. Yes, jet-black, wow. The dark buttons of his equally dark dress shirt climbed his tight-formed abs and constricted to the notches in each one to lead gracefully into a few mercifully open buttons and a cream-white undershirt. And his face was chiseled. Chiseled as if the hand of a master Renaissance sculptor had personally chipped every fragment away from his godly cheeks into pristine flushed peach-pearl skin. Yes, chiseled. What a great word to describe the way in which his face was carved because it carries the implicit metaphor that somebody took the painstaking time to whittle his stone-hewn face in the same way that a sculptor would. Do you get it yet? Yes, you. Just wanted to make sure—it’s so important that I, the omniscient narrator, feel the need to step out of my elevated throne in Allie’s mind to personally inform you that his skin is, in fact, chiseled.
    Yeah, it’s chiseled.
    Oh yeah. And Allie and Stephanie both had brown hair.
    The god-man approached slowly. The moisture in Allie’s throat choked out into a dry scratchiness. His steps were careful and well-measured. Stephanie was moving her lips but words didn’t seem to be coming out of them. He was approaching her—little insignificant Allie! To imagine that an all-powerful, muscle-strapped human being of the superior gender such as Eric Robinson could ever give little last-nameless Allie his attention was mind boggling.
    “Hey,” said Eric in a voice as smooth as honeydew and rippling with mannish charisma.
    “H—hey,” said Allie.
    “Want to know something interesting?” said Eric, his eyebrows rising slightly.
    It should be noted that, at this point in the story, Stephanie had an urgent appointment to attend and ran off from the dance. Never again would she return to the narrative.
    “I—I think so,” said Allie, unsure of what Eric could possibly have to tell her.
    Time stood still as Eric ran his nimble fingers through the thick locks of hair curtaining his forehead. Allie watched his every motion, completely mesmerized.
    “Your family doesn’t understand you, do they?” asked Eric quietly.
    “No, they don’t” said Allie. “It makes me quite relatable, but not in a way that’s so specific I’m locking anyone out.”
    “We might have just talked for the first time, but I do understand you.”
    His eyes, thick-laced with obscure beauty, met hers. There was silence for one tense moment. Eric’s neck craned slowly to touch his soft-but-still-masculine lips to Allie’s parched, chapped and generally average ones; her insides leapt into an elevated cluster of central joy.
    As their lips came apart, Allie felt a burning question arise up with the passion inside of her.
    “Wait, Eric. I just don’t understand something. I have a question I need you to answer.”
    “Whatever it is, I can handle it for you,” said Eric with the slight crane of his neck dripping confident gusto.
    “Why me? What makes me the one you love?”
    But at that exact moment, Laura, one of Allie’s classmates, passed by and lit up with pleasant surprise as she saw Eric and Allie. Allie felt frustration and rage well up in the deepest pit of her stomach like a deadly poison—oh yeah, that’s great, you know exactly what that feels like. Laura was effortlessly graceful and intelligent; she was unquestionably talented at everything she attempted but let it inflate her ego. Allie had never forgotten the incident in which—
    Yeah, she was pretty cool for a non-Eric person.
    “Hey guys, what’s going on?” she said in passing with a quick flash of her bold smile.
    Eric did not hesitate to act. He walked over to the side of the gym, picked up a folded wooden chair laid out for the anti-social sitters and hurled it down to the floor with a powerful heave. The airborne chair shattered into splinters at Laura’s feet.
    “What the hell are you doing!” Laura shouted as she did an awkward double-take to avoid the projectile splinters.
    “Away with you,” said Eric with absolute conviction seeping from his lustrous voice. “I have no absolutely no interest in you, or any other woman for that matter except for one that I am hopelessly devoted to—the girl who stands before me. Are you foolish enough to think that I, as a hormone-driven teenaged male, could possibly have mixed emotions about my romantic life? I clearly have no inclination toward anyone except for Allie and am irresolute in my conviction toward her.”
    “Um, why?” asked Laura simply.
    Allie began to blush at the bold actions of her masculine hero; she knew he would never abandon her for the rest of their lives together deep in the pit of her heart. She wouldn’t have much to contribute in terms of conversation at their nightly candlelit dinners, true, but she could spend the silent moments simply examining the immaculate structure of his jawbone.
    “Stop spreading your lies Laura. We can never be together.”
    “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t even know you that well! I was just walking by and saying—”
    “What kind of conflict, Laura, would we ever have to keep things entertaining, hmm?
    “Oh my god, I really hate this story,” muttered Laura, pressing a hand to her forehead.
    Eric shouted something in response as she turned on her heel to leave but Allie didn’t quite care what it was because of what she saw approaching from across the dance floor. She was on a collision course with this hulking suave mass—his leather jacket sticking tight to his defined body yet still somehow allowing his arms to swing freely and carelessly as he grounded each gallant stride. And with each one of those long, offhand, advances—well, okay, you know what. This is the “other” guy—that’s the general point I’m trying to make. We all know what this is. He’s kind of a bad dude and all that stuff.
     “Hey Allie,” said the approaching figure. His thick and slippery hair gave him a dark visage that indicated his name was Seth.
     “Um—uh—hey there Seth,” was all Allie could muster in the presence of this anti-heroic manprize.
     “Wait, who is this Allie?” Eric muttered mutinously...alliteration.
    But it was about that point in the plot progression for Allie to momentarily abandon her infatuation with Eric, who was only moderately norm-defying, in favor of a more reckless choice.
    Seth smiled his cocky smile at Allie, swiveled on his heel, and turned his back toward her.
    “Why aren’t you looking at me Seth,” asked Allie.
    “Because,” laughed Seth, “I can completely afford to disrespect you and you’ll still come back wanting more. That’s just the way it is. It’s kind of my thing—in case you didn’t notice.”
    “You can’t just disrespect me like that,” said Allie, trying to conceal the inexplicable admiration radiating from her voice.
    “Women secretly love to be disrespected—it turns them on and stuff.”
    “That’s not the way a real gentleman would treat a woman who deserves respect,” chimed in Eric. He was doing a good job building contrast between the two of them.
    Seth whipped around to face Allie, his smug grin lines etched across his winter-tan and virile face.
    “You want to get out of here, don’t you hun?” he said, his sly voice now swirled with drops of merciful honey and sweet molasses.
    Allie nodded her head mechanically, anticipating the offer he was leading up to.
    “I can take you places Allie; places you’ve never been to and can only imagine in those twilit hours where the darkling sky gives birth to gleams of morning light. I’ll whisk you away from these suburban doldrums faster than the ink on this page can and woo you into sweet oblivion. Come on, Al’. You couldn’t even resist me if you were trying.”
    “I’m not that easy, you know,” Allie said as she shuffled her legs awkwardly and forced herself to back away from Seth.
    “Ha, are you kidding me? I could hook up with your best friend Steph on your birthday and you wouldn’t even be able to stop yourself from getting with all this.”
    “Who’s Steph?” said Allie.
    “Oh, sorry, I forgot,” said Seth.
    Allie took a deep—fuck, don’t care.
    Eric let out a triumphant laugh and crossed his arms—male arms can’t be mentioned without a muscle related compound modifier—his muscle-laden arms across his broad chest.
    “So typical of an “other guy” like you,” Eric taunted with a tiny chuckle. “You don’t even need to exist Seth. The only reason you do is to create conflict and drag out the story.”
    Seth whipped back his obsidian hair. “You think I’m only good for creating conflict, huh? Well I’m about to do a damn good job of it.”
    Eric rolled up the sleeves of his tight black shirt. “Alright, you wanna personify the internal conflict inside of Allie in an external conflict between the two of us? I’m ready to dance.”
    “There’s only one way to settle this,” Seth growled as he tore his leather jacket from his boulder-hard bod.
    “Shirtless fistfight?”
    “Oh yeah.”
    The two fighters came together as one and Allie stepped back to seek safety from the torrent of flailing limbs.
    She began to cry: “oh. oh. stop”.
    And then she asked herself why.
    These two powerful men were ready to rip each other open over her. It wasn’t like she could lose. It wasn’t like she had anything to lose.
    She climbed to the top of the bleachers to watch the flailing limbs and the inevitable blood, to witness her masterpiece. Her feet hit the top step and even with the combatants beneath her brawling fiercely, she knew all the eyes were on her: the conductor, the powerful one.
    And then Allie came to life.
    This is the surge of charged cocaine veins mixed with a dash of laced hot chocolate on a frigid winter Sunday where an enduring hope lies frozen amongst the thigh-high snow.
    She’d never thought so clearly in her life.
    One fighter’s hand was clawing the inside of the other’s mouth in a fishhook as deep red blood puddled on the floor; she had so much life, so much power. She deserved the power now that she was alive and she knew it. She deserved it like ice cream and paychecks and a quick death.
    The bleeding man reversed the hold and sunk his right fist into the other’s eye socket. The attacker’s entire body fell on top of the falling man and the two were tangled in their throes.
    Allie stood on the bleachers and continued to conduct the dance from on high.
    This is the surge of power killing must bring; the wonderfully dominating feeling of slaughtering and butchering your evasive prey to dissect its red, fatty meats and to consume its slow-cooked flesh.
     Someone called for an ambulance. There were cries of pain now. Cries dedicated to her.
    She was someone now. They were the ones with no names.
    The broken threads were now taped so the shoelace could fit in the hole and she knew she could keep it this way if she tried.
    She cheered them on in ill-sounding cackles.
    The only dancer who hadn’t ceased to exist due to lack of relevancy to the narrative yet at this point was Laura, and she rolled her eyes at the empress atop the bleachers.
    “In that case, I’m gonna head out,” she said, taking care not to trip over the sharp edge of the nearest page. “I’m going to go find Stephanie.”
    I handed Allie the reigns, I didn’t have much of a choice—she knew I was there, saw me hiding behind the one-way window, for some reason.
    “I’ll take it from here,” she whispered to me.

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