(A/N: I recently got a friend into AA and she's playing DD right now so all my "Fulbright" pain came back. and THEN I remembered "oh hey I never wrote him a fic and also he never got a backstory"

so anyway here we are)

"He's so weird…"

"I saw him hit a dog once because somebody dared him to."

"Liar! It wasn't a dog, it was a cat."

"Says who? Who in their right mind would attack a CAT? You'd get hurt!"

"I don't think he cares. I heard he broke his arm once and didn't even cry."

"Is that true?!"

"He's such a freak."

In the middle of a crowded lunch table, a boy with light brown hair sat quietly listening to the students around him. They were talking about him, he could hear them, and they knew he could hear them. All these facts were known by everybody at the table. Yet the boy wasn't upset. Or offended, or hurt, or excluded, or really anything.

Not really anything… like a ghost.

Hm.

"Hey, who're you talking about?"

"Shuddup, Casey! Go sit with Monica!"

"Hi, Casey. We're talking about him."

One child pointed curtly to the center of the table.

"Huh? Him? He's in my theatre class."

"Him? In theatre?! But he— he can't—"

"But he can't what?"

The chorus of tiny voices silenced in fear as a much louder, adult voice spoke up from behind. A woman in a traditional dress and intimidating air swept past the students, looking disapprovingly at the gossipers. She clucked her tongue and tapped a ruler against her palm in an almost threatening manner.

"You all ought to know better. Great minds discuss ideas, but small minds…"

"Discuss people," a few kids murmured back. The woman gave them all a long, harsh glare, and then turned a gentler gaze to the subject of the discussion.

"Don't let them upset you." Her voice was soft and sympathetic.

The boy blinked, easily, slowly, unbothered. "Was that a humor, Ma'am?" he asked politely.

A look of conflicted distress quickly flashed across the teacher's face, then passed. "No… no, never mind what I said. You just eat your food."

The boy nodded obediently and went back to his lunch. Sushi rolls were arranged neatly, with little plastic rows of seagrass separating them from a container of white rice. A reusable bottle of water with a yellow smiley face stood off to the side.

None of this bothered the child.

I wonder why those faces are always yellow.

Once they were reasonably certain that the teacher was out of earshot, a few of the kids started to whisper again. The new kid— Casey— glanced nervously over to the brown-haired boy as if he were going to react, but the others knew better. One of the reasons this particular child was the topic of so much conversation was precisely because it didn't matter if he happened to overhear any unkind words.

"You said he was in theatre, right, Casey?"

"Huh? Uh… yeah."

"Does he act?!"

"N-not so much… he does this darn good robot impression."

"Hah!"

"But he does put the makeup on some of the girls."

A pigtailed girl stuck her tongue out. "Ew! A boy does the makeup?"

Casey nodded, starting to pick up the intensity and thrill of secret discussion. "Y-Yeah! And he's really good at it, too. Like, freaky good. I wonder if someone taught him?"

A few kids looked over at the boy, as if contemplating whether to ask him or not. He stared politely back.

Nobody asked.

After he'd finished eating his food, the boy placed his containers back in the box and raised his hand to be dismissed. Some of the other kids looked startled by the motion, as if they'd forgotten he was there.

Also like a ghost.

Hm.

"Anyone who's finished can go play," the teacher said, noting a few of the hands raised. She waved them off with a worried sigh as a group tugged on Casey to follow them to the playground.

Being not too far away and having excellent hearing, the boy could still hear every word they whispered. It was all more of the same, more or less. Strange child with strange behavior, strange, strange, strange. That was all they ever talked about, regarding him.

It didn't bother him that he was strange. It intrigued him more than anything else.

What makes me the strange one?

They're the ones who run from spiders and make loud noises.

They're the ones who laugh when the teacher rhymes words together.

They're the ones who move their bodies when instruments make noise.

Clearly they are the ones who act illogical. Yet I'm the one considered strange. I wonder why that is? Is "strange" defined by the laws of physics and logic, as I've always assumed? Or is it more of a social convention; a hazy label used for people who do not fall within the typical mental spectrum?

Suddenly, a loud THUD interrupted the boy's thoughts. He registered an object having hit his head. He blinked and looked down, then picked up the basketball that had struck him and looked back up towards its source. Two girls who'd been playing froze in fear and stared at who they'd accidentally hit.

The boy blinked. "Here." He tossed the ball back. The taller of the girls caught it, her mouth agape. Then she started smiling at the other girl, and both broke out into giggles as they ran in the opposite direction of the playground.

Strange.

The "strange" child spent the rest of his lunchtime sitting near the classroom door and contemplating his various labels. Strange, creepy, freakish, rude, scary, quiet, robotic— all of them seemed to bother the teacher when she heard them, but they didn't bother the other kids. And there were quite a lot more kids, so it seemed reasonable to assume that their feelings towards the labels were more "correct," so to speak.

Feelings— and there was the heart of the matter, the start of it all. The very concept of emotions was what made it all so intriguing: not good, per se, and not bad, but something to analyze nonetheless. (Analyze and hopefully replicate— although so far his classes hadn't helped an awful lot. He was determined to keep practicing, with the notion that the practice might bring with it some understanding or helpful knowledge someday.)

Human emotions were the "normal" thing, apparently. I wonder why? One would think the state I live in would be the default, and the others an abnormality. Something that drove people towards a goal, that gave them purpose to live for. But I don't need emotions to give me a goal. I just do whatever other people tell me to. That works out fine. They were the cornerstone of humanity, the only thing separating self-conscious humans from mere animals. Animals do a better job of things, though, except in the intelligence factor. And I'm plenty intelligent, everyone says so. Does that make me a human or an animal?

Or maybe some combination of both?

The bell rang. Students pushed and shoved their way to the front of the line by the door. The teacher scolded them and quieted them. Everyone walked inside with their empty lunch-pail in hand. A few kids murmured their final whispers before class began once again.

"He's like a— like a— a ghost, but not a ghost."

"Isn't there a word for that?"

"Yeah, a phantom! My mom taught me that."

The kids gratified their proud friend with looks of awe and nods of agreement. The ever-silent boy put away his lunch-pail and took his seat with a blank expression.

A phantom?

Hm.

(Reviews ease my suffering for accidentally letting a character into my heart [and fav list] approximately 30 minutes before he was revealed to be the Ultimate Problematic Fav)