Kristin: There was a girl named Pike.

Pike was different from the other kids in some ways.

She had huge yellow teeth which jutted out from her face,

particularly when she was angry and curled her lips back.

Her favorite food was oatmeal, gummy and sticky and glue-like.

Actually, it was her only food.

Pike's mother would try to feed her Pop-Tarts and fish sticks,

but Pike would calmly remove the offensive food and fix

herself a bowl of oatmeal which she would strap onto her

head with Scotch tape, and then walk around the house

while she ate, masticating wildly.

Pike's manner of dress was odd.

She refused to wear any shoes,

but some ratty old platforms

she'd found in the garbage.

You couldn't tell they were ratty and old, though

as she had covered them with tinfoil

David: For these reasons alone,

Pike was ostracized at school.

The other children picked on her,

called her "Mary" and other names,

pulled her hair and stuff.

It was difficult for them to accept her into the

peer group, given her idiosyncrasies.

Pike was different.

Often, her mother would have little fits,

when she could take Pike's strangeness no more,

ranting about "what had she done wrong,"

and "how she could have raised her weird daughter differently,"

and "why did her weird daughter do this to her."

These fits had no effect on the girl however,

Pike would merely place one hand aside each eye and stare directly ahead,

sometimes lending a swift kick in her mother's shin.

Kristin: Even the family dog, Mike,

seemed determinedly against her.

He was always nipping her feet

and chasing her into rooms where she didn't want to be.

But the last straw was the morning she woke to a pair of

aerobi