So there's this list Kittyclaw and I have called "48 Things to Write This Summer". We haven't started and it's almost July, so I guess I'm starting. I don't know if I want to make them separate stories or not but I'm for sure getting all 48 written this summer (not in five summers oops) even if I have to let John pin my legs to the couch again with his sleeping body. So here we go! This first one is going to be Odd-centric, and possibly a little bit of a character study.
#1 School
Odd never hated school. He disliked homework and pop quizzes just like any other student in the world, but he never hated school. He just hated not fitting in.
And he could fit in, if he really wanted to-but then he would have hated himself, because he hated buzz cuts and white v-neck t-shirts or whatever it was he was supposed to wear. He liked himself, and he liked purple, and he liked velcro shoes, and hair dye, and the way Girls Who Might Matter looked at him a little bit longer than the other guys. But he still wished he fit in. His parents named him Odd, and that's usually how he felt.
Until Kadic.
He started Kadic when he was 11 and his only friend in the world was a puppy named Kiwi that he literally smuggled into the building in his pocket because he was so tiny. But Kadic, that's where he met Ulrich. (And Ulrich's sister Charlie, who was already rocking some unnatural looking highlights. He always like Charlie best.) And Ulrich didn't look at him, really. He didn't stare. He just introduced himself and went back to unpacking and trying to keep Charlie from embarrassing him as much as possible. That was entirely new. And mostly it threw Odd off, but he decided that maybe he could make Ulrich his friend. And that was easy.
And yeah, when Ulrich started hanging out with Yumi, he felt a little protective and selfish of his Only Friend In The World, but Yumi treated him with that same even manner that Ulrich had. And then somehow he had two friends and he never even realized it happened. But just like that it went from Ulrich announcing that he was meeting the girl and Odd meekly suggesting that he'd kind of like to go maybe and hoping Ulrich would let him, to hearing the boy's plans and immediately throwing on his shoes and grabbing Kiwi's leash. Having friends suddenly felt kind of normal.
Jeremie was the only one that looked at him sideways, but it wasn't the genius's fault. Things just needed to make sense in that boy's world and Odd was, well, he was Odd. So they started out rough, Jeremie liked his nerve and was envious of his extrovert personality so suddenly Odd had three friends. (And then four, and Aelita's "oddness" put his to shame, so he wasn't even the strangest one in the group anymore. He had "human" on her.)
But Aelita rounded them out. Even when William came back from Lyoko and made nice and he and Ulrich stopped pummeling each other, it was still Aelita who gave the group that completed feeling. Maybe that's because fighting for her is what made them a family. That could have been it. But these people that he accidentally became friends with and didn't even notice-they gave him something even more important.
He fit in. All by himself, purple hair and velcro shoes. He had people to sit with at lunch, and a partner for group projects. Friends that would invite him out, and watch movies in his dorm and bring his favorite candy because they saw it when they picked up snacks.
So Odd liked school. Liked himself. And he loved his friends.