Little Ava Adams was the opposite of normal.

At least, that's what they kept telling her.

Because Little Ava Adams liked things other little girls didn't like, and didn't like things other little girls did like, because Little Ava Adams was strange, because Little Ava Adams was weird...

Ava Adams didn't have imaginary friends, she had imaginary enemies. She would have epic battles in the backyard, defeating her most vicious foes.

Ava Adams didn't like sun-shiny days, but she loved the rain, and dark storm clouds, and thunder, the louder the better.

She didn't like pretty things, like flowers and and pretty dresses, but she did like bugs, slimy, squishy, oozing bugs, which she would search for them, and collect them. And this was how she spent her days.

Until one morning, when she woke up, and her mother told her that today was her first day of school.

Of course, she was delighted, and she begged to wear her favorite clothes (which were, of course, mud-stained and grass-stained, and not very pretty), but her mother insisted she be clean with clean clothes.

So the day wasn't off to that great of a start.

And when she got to school, things didn't get much better. She was told to smile instead of pouting, she was told to stand straight instead of slouching, and worst of all, at lunch, the boy Timmy told her that her lunch (which she'd prepared all by herself) was gross-looking, and that nobody in the whole wide world would ever, ever eat ketchup on their peanut-butter-and-ham sandwiches.

When they got to pick picture books to read, Ava didn't like the books the other kids picked.

At recess, the other kids didn't like to play with her.

Even Ava's imaginary enemies didn't seem to want to argue with her that day, and Ava sat alone, and sad, and it was one of those, sunshiny days that she didn't like very much.

Little Ava Adams never, ever, ever, ever cried. But near the end of her first day of school, Little Ava Adams... was thinking about crying. She felt very strange, and very alone, and wondered why other kids didn't like the things she liked, and why she didn't like the things they liked, when Timmy, who made fun of her lunch that day, ran over to her.

"You're weird," he said.

"That's true," said Ava, and frowned.

"I'm sorry for making fun of your lunch today," Timmy said.

And Ava didn't know what to say to that, so she just stood there, and frowned, and slouched like she knew she wasn't supposed to do, and Timmy frowned, and then, flashing a smile, Timmy pulled from behind his back, a picture book. "I thought you might like this, because you're weird," he said. He handed it to her, grinned once more, and ran off.

Ava looked at the book.

She smiled, big and happy.

It was full of creepy-crawlies. Slimies and oozers, and yuckies and grossness. It was full of pictures of squirmies and squishies and ookies and ughs. It was a book all about one of her favorite things in the whole wide world, bugs.

Maybe school wouldn't be so bad after all, and it definitely wasn't so bad to be weird.

That night, Ava fell asleep to the sound of rain, and dreamed wonderful dreams full of slimies, squishies, and squirmies.