Outliers :: A Short Story

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Johann walked through the silent streets of Savall, doing the math—forty-seven children up at the old school house. Seventy-three parents. And fifty-eight old folks.

If he had been there, he'd be the odd man out. Orphans always were. No happy mother and father shadowing him. Still, he was supposed to be at the school, since he was technically a student. For a little while longer.

Graduation day. Such a big deal for everyone. Such a happy day.

He walked along the edge of the wide sidewalk, feet scuffing across a light cover of fresh snow. An unexpected amount of snow for early June. And the day was trending cooler. Cold, even.

Would everyone think that was perfect too?

Johann paused, arriving at a traffic light. His breath puffed in little clouds as he looked up. Red. He waited, frowning at the speckles of rust and flaking paint on the long, vertical stalk of the fixture that wasn't quite straight. He grimaced. The light turned green, and he crossed the street as the hand lit up to allow him safe passage across the empty thoroughfare.

He stepped over a long, narrow crack in the pavement. More evidence of the town's decay. With each footfall, chains clinked heavily in his backpack, rustling against a heavy padlock and a box of matches.

Such a beautiful place to live, they said. Such wonderful people. Everyone was so happy here.

A sign on a restaurant door to his left nearly screamed at him, and he couldn't ignore it like he had been able to ignore all the other lies around him so far today. The screams were constant, nagging, nibbling little things.

At Graduation Dance. It was stuck to the door with a bit of clear tape. At an angle. Far from perfect. A town of liars. Nobody cared, despite what they said.

He hissed to himself, peeling the tape off the glass with a smooth, clean fingernail, rolling it back carefully. Then he re-attached it so it was straight. Straight. Straight...

Now it was straight. He stepped back to look at it, then nodded and moved on. Towards the school. Two hundred and eighty two steps away.

The townsfolk had gathered in the big wooden building up at the top of the hill. Accompanied by cheers and laughter, a faint ripple of music—maybe a violin—fluttered down the rolling hillside to the quiet town.

He had done his time there, one torturous day after another. Surrounded by disarray. So much decay. Old books. Folded pages. Squeaky hinges on every door. The school was falling apart, and all they could do was smile and say how great the teachers were.

One endless school day after another. No matter how often he tried to occupy himself with his math textbook, doing the problems over and over again, then backwards, then writing his own in the back pages, the clock on the wall hardly moved.

They were the median. He was the outlier. The edge of the bell curve. They could tell him about how happy they were and how much they loved each other and how great this little town of Savall was, but he knew better.

They were the problem.

Yet they still tried to fool themselves. He heard those lies now in their mingled laughter as he approached the old building at the top of the hill. His feet crunched across frozen grass, then frosted gravel as he stopped and stared up at the school.

Right now, it was packed full of human flesh, stuffed to bursting like some fat kid's lunchbox.

Johann moved off to the treeline at the side of the school and sat down on a fallen tree. Dead things everywhere, and nobody bothered to clean them up.

He sighed, staring up at the bright windows of the school as he set down his backpack with a heavy clinking of metal. Vague shadows danced within to some unrecognizable folk tune. Johann's eyes panned across the cracked clapboard siding, the brick chimney with the mortar falling out, the old school bell in the belfry that hadn't rung once in his lifetime. All askew, nothing quite right.

A girl stared at him out of one of the high windows.

White hair and a pale face halfway above the windowsill, fingers pulling herself up to peer out. Then she disappeared down below the edge of the window as if her strength had given out.

Johann stared at the empty eye socket of the window for a long moment. What was that about? He had never been noticed before, except when people commented on his skill with math. Or his compulsion to make things straight and right. As if there some was something bad about—

The front door of the school opened, and the girl came out. She looked around, saw him, then closed the door behind her. She wore a long, thin dress, and her large blue eyes did not move from his as she approached.

His heart ran like a deer in the woods, fast and fleeting. Johann feared the sound of his voice then, but spoke as simply as he could. "Yes?"

She watched him for a long moment. Then she looked down at his bag as if she already knew what was inside and his dark intent, and she judged him for it.

"I am Katrin. What are you doing out here in the cold?" Her voice was soft and timid, like she wasn't used to talking out loud.

"Sitting."

She glanced at the snow-covered log, then at him, but he turned away. "Yes, you are. Why aren't you inside? I recognize you as one of the kids a class ahead of me. You should be inside with us." Her face was framed in short white hair, as if she herself had been left out in the morning snowfall.

"Why would I want to be with them?" Heat rose in his cheeks. "They're all liars. They lie to themselves, and they don't see the truth of how terrible life is. The rot, the decay, death. Everything is falling apart. Nothing is straight and true!" He surprised himself with his own vehemence, but Katrin didn't flinch, so he went on. "They say how wonderful everyone is, and how happy they are, and how much they love life and living. They lie to themselves!"

Her pale face wore a hint of a smile, as if she knew a truth that he did not. But she said nothing, waiting for him to spend himself.

Johann shook his head. He looked up into her eyes then. They were the perfect shade of robin's egg blue, and he didn't want to blink. When had he ever believed something was perfect before? "I'm an outlier. I don't belong there. I don't belong here."

"Neither do I." She shrugged. "I'm different. I act different. To me, they are different. But I can learn from them. They fill in the pieces of me that are missing." Katrin turned back to the building, panning her head slowly, as if the merry people inside were visible to her through the thick walls.

"No, Johann. They are not liars." She smiled, and he warmed as if the sun had brought summer to him. "They know not everything is perfect. But they choose to see the good things, and to celebrate those things that are good. Family. Friends. Life. Love. They improve what they are able, but they know nothing can ever be perfect." She squatted in front of him and placed her hand atop his, his atop the backpack full of his vengeance. "I am like you, Johann. I see things differently. I am alone, but not alone. Perhaps some day we can talk more of this, you and I. For now, I say this. Find happiness where you can, or you will never be happy."

She looked at him a moment longer before standing up. Katrin glanced at his backpack once before nodding and heading back to the school.

Johann watched her leave. He struggled with her words. Being satisfied with imperfect, inaccurate, incorrect. Overlooking the bent and the crooked parts of life. What sort of way to live was that? How could someone live that way? Could he live that way?

The promise of others called to him. The mild, unfamiliar warmth of her hand on his called to him.

He took a deep breath, running his hands through his lanky hair, looking inside his bag. Chain. Lock. Matches. All he needed to solve his problem.

The small bottle of lighter fluid fell into his fingers then, and he paused. It'd be so easy. He looked up at the school, where the front door was already shutting behind Katrin, a sliver of happiness opening, then slowly closing. Laughter and music lingered in the air like perfume.

He looked further into his bag, trying to distract himself. In the side pocket. A wood flute. Damn. He had learned the flute when he was young and had mostly forgotten it now. He sounded terrible practicing alone. But still...

Johann grabbed it. He leapt from his log and ran to the school, leaving his bag behind.