THIS ODD & PECULIAR ASSORTMENT

Spring • 1 • 2 Peculiarities

Josie sighed and closed her book.

She wasn't sure where all the noise was coming from, but it had to be nearby. The clamour had distracted the girl from her reading, and she looked around, wondering if investigating the issue was worth her time and attention. Gifted with a curious nature, an open mind, and a welcoming heart, she had a tendency to explore the world around her and liked to spend time in good company or meet new people. However, Josie had already learnt that not all children shared her inclusive perspectives, and were thus inclined to welcome her into their activities. Because she was also endowed with a rather unusual reflectiveness for her age, she had pondered reasons for the hesitance she was often met with.

From overheard comments and snippets of conversation, it seemed evident that Josie's unique personality didn't quite align with the norms of her peers, both boys and girls alike. She loathed pink and rosy colours and disliked playing with dolls because it bored her. Most of those crept her out, and she couldn't bring herself to trust the stare of their dead eyes. She also just didn't care about pretty clothes and preferred practicality and comfort over good looks, which left her with sparse conversation topics to talk about with most girls. The girls' other pursuits were also not interesting for Josie, as they mostly tended to exchange stickers from their album collections or show each other things on their phones. Sometimes they played some strange game with a loop of string; one girl making an intricate pattern by wrapping it around her fingers that would be passed to another. The girl taking over had to either keep the pattern intact while obtaining the loop, or create a new pattern in the process. Josie didn't get the appeal of the string game, but she assumed it was more about the gossip that came with it anyway. Girls seemed to really enjoy telling each other things.

The one school yard game that had piqued her interest was Double Dutch. She would have loved to learn it, because the almost dance-like jumping patterns looked amazing, and the game's fast-paced nature appealed to her longing for activity. To her disappointment, the girls in her grade didn't want to teach her, and although the older girls were kinder to Josie, they weren't playing enough for her to get proper practise. They were more interested in spending their time with boys and talking about them afterward. In whispers and while giggling behind their hands, for whatever reason. Older girls seemed to really enjoy talking about boys. While Josie didn't mind their interests in general, this left her unable to delve into the game. It was impossible to play Double Dutch on your own. Josie had tried.

Due to all this, she was used to observing rather than trying to participate. To pass time, she had developed the habit of carrying a few select books with her, just in case she got bored and needed something to do. Reading a good book was always time well spent, in her opinion.

Sometimes, when she had forgotten to pack a new one or when circumstances wouldn't allow her to read, she would play a game on her phone instead. This was an absolute last resort, though, because the small screen didn't provide enough details for Josie's tastes, and she preferred gaming on her desktop PC. One had to use all possible sources to satiate the hunger for fantasy or science fiction, but, regarding her phone, she was always mindful to keep enough charge for cases of emergency. That was why she had the phone, after all - and either way, she couldn't always just sit still, of course, even with her backup plans.

Josie loved the outdoors and cherished exercise, especially if she could just run or jump around the way she wanted, spending all her energy until her limbs grew heavy and her breaths short. But even though she could outrun most of the boys her age and enjoyed playing catch, for example, occasions she was invited to play a round were rare. The few times she had taken initiative and asked if she could join in, the boys had either ignored her or looked at her as if she were a particularly interesting bug. Boys were an enigma to her - and by the looks of it, so was she to them.

Beyond the tastes and behaviours typical of girls her age, which Josie already didn't share, she had noticed several quirks about herself. For instance, she had a strong aversion to odd numbers and preferred to do things in even counts whenever possible. If she had to set an amount for something, she also felt almost forced to pick an even count. A slightly surprising addition to this was that she could find comfort in numbers that increased or decreased by five, such as in the sequence of five, ten, fifteen, and twenty. Josie had learnt that this was called an arithmetic progression, and the rhythmic continuity of these sequences conveyed an eccentric sense of order to her. Another aversion she had noticed was that she couldn't stand disruptions in patterns, like the drawstrings of her hoodie being uneven in length, mismatched lightswitches, or when items in clusters faced in different directions. If she could, she would always take the time to fix these inconsistencies or mistakes, and over time, this hadn't gone unnoticed by others. An amusing contradiction to all this was that she wasn't even fixated on being orderly in general, and her room could get quite messy at times. She tried her best to be tidy and to put all her things away in their designated places, but try was all she could do, and success was not always a given.

Josie was self-aware enough to recognize her own peculiarities and how they deviated from what society thought of as 'normal', and because of this, she didn't resent the boys for their perplexity about her. At least they weren't openly hostile towards her, but she had given up on trying to join games by her own initiative either way, not wanting to be a bother to anyone. If she were to be honest, this also allowed her to avoid the sting of rejection. As much as she revelled in being perceived as strong, independent, and maybe even a bit wild, she nonetheless longed for company. She didn't chase her hopes of a close friendship any more and would have settled for somebody to sometimes laugh with.

The commotion she could hear now gave a different impression, though; there was more shouting rather than laughter, and no sounds of enjoyment. An uneasy feeling had crept up Josie's spine. Tentative about leaving the bus stop, as it was almost time for the arrival of her bus, she stuffed the book into her black backpack and looked around. Still, her guts told her to investigate further, and she stood up. Josie decided on the direction and started jogging towards the noise, her ungainly moon boots making her hesitant to run.

The school yard was fenced in by a cracked brick wall, and as she rounded the corner, she saw a group of boys in the little park adjourning the school grounds. Heaps of snow still dotted the lawns, but there were also little clusters of colour from spring flowers. After glancing to both sides, Josie marched across the street and headed towards the boys. They were gathered in the middle of the area, hollering at each other around a bench that sat in front of a tall and wide old tree. Reluctant to face off against this group, Josie faltered in her step, but then she took heart. Her instincts were telling her to march on, and she obeyed.

Two of the boys, both a bit older and definitely taller than herself, crouched on the floor, their faces almost touching the ground.

What were they doing?

One of the crouching youths was holding a long branch, poking it into the space beneath the bench, while the third and last boy was jumping up and down on top of it, shouting to spur the others on. She recognized him as Danny Faulkner from her own grade. What was so important down there that they didn't even notice her approach? The boys' backpacks lay forgotten on the ground behind them, spread around the bench. A few empty candy and food wrappers gently flapped in the spring breeze. She looked at the items, thrown on the lawn without a care, and wondered for a moment why the group was so sloppy with their belongings. She didn't know the two older ones, but she had noticed Danny in class often enough to be well aware of his tendency towards inattentiveness - not just about his possessions, but also about the lessons. He was always more interested in playing little pranks or distracting his neighbours than focussing on the subject. Josie tried to determine what they were looking for under there, but the boys' bodies were blocking most of her sight. She could barely make out anything in the shadows. There seemed to be an earth hole, created by two big root branches of the tree, with the bench providing a kind of canopy for its entrance, and something small and white appeared to have sought shelter there. Now that Josie was closer to the scene, she could hear hissing and a kind of screechy growling between the shouts of the boys. It had to be an animal. Judging by the noises, was a cat trapped under there? Josie squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and shouted as loud as she could.

"Hey!"