That smile.

Oh, I know that smile.

That's the one you used between you and them. Them; the people you had herded outside of your walls and brightened that polished face for. Your eyes would crease in the corners, would get that glazed sarcasm about them. You'd smile, but not smile. Your lips would curve up just enough to signal happiness, or mirth, or understanding, or wonder.

I had always watched. I hadn't been them. You had ushered me inside, from a time long ago when your heart had been lighter and you had laughed easier. We were us, and they were them. I was on the inside, I was watching with you, beside you. You would let me in, but not them. Never them.

But now you cast out that smile, the one I could spot a mile away. You grow to know someone like that after years. Their nature becomes part of your own, and understanding them becomes reflex, routine. I could see through your mask. I could see past your glittery eyes smudged gold and your pink lips, past your red dress and heels. I could see the girl inside who wore sneakers and a black band shirt, hair chopped off and ragged. I couldn't tell which you were more now; the mask or the girl.

You didn't direct that smile at them, but at me. You whipped out that artificial chuckle, the compulsory enjoyment at seeing me. You welcomed me, embraced me, and even when your arms were around me, I never felt that you were further away than in that moment.

You had ushered me to the outside. Me. Or maybe I had maneuvered my way between then and now. I had felt it back then, and I especially felt it now. The wedge had sliced a gap between us like a knife. The gash had torn wider and wider, bloody and sore, until it hurt too much to bear. You severed it. Or I did. Perhaps us both.

You had blamed me. I had grown jealous of you. I stopped letting you in. You stopped letting me. I lost your trust. You lost my confidence. But that didn't numb the ache in my chest, the place where you had previously occupied. It didn't stop me from trying to reconcile something I didn't entirely understand.

It didn't stop you from drawing out that smile and shooting me down with it.

It still hurts now as you slam me with it. Your words seem earnest, sound genuine, but in the roots they're fake. They're another device to string it out, to shove me away, and in your eyes the truth is plain. You don't see me in your life anymore. A history isn't as important as the promise of a future. All those memories, all those moments of sobbing and laughing and grinning - gone.

You pull back from me, and Alice, the one who is still here, leaps out and exclaims. She smiles at you, but her smile is a grin, she's beaming rays of sunshine and she cares. She's honestly glad to see you, and you flash that smile at her and she eats it up because she doesn't know. She can't see you and know you like I do. Like I did.

And the realization hammers down on me. Alice had been part of them for a long time. That smile was normal for you to flash her, but something much fresher and sharper for me. It had bared itself more and more as I had lost my footing with you, and when I fell or let go, whichever happened, it had become apparent.

I was put on the outside.

I had become one of them.