The Differents | ✓

T W E N T Y - S E V E N

I laughed a little nervously. As much as I wanted to let go of my past and the things that I had been taught to despise about myself, it was hard to accept everything and come to peace with it. "Alright, I'll tell you. But please don't judge me or, I don't know, be weird about it."

"Why would I do that? I have Differences, too, remember."

I made a sound that sounded like a nervous exclamation and a laugh. "Right. Sometimes it just feels like I'm the only one experiencing it, I guess. Since everyone is so different from each other, I don't know who I can turn to who will really understand me."

"Well, if you feel comfortable with me, I am pretty much dying to know what your Differences are. And I won't judge you at all for them. It wasn't your choice how you were made and it isn't up to others to determine who you are because of that."

I gave him a smile. "Thanks."

He sat back as far as he could, resting against the back wall of the cave as best as he could without getting poked by crystals. "Whenever you're ready."

I closed my eyes for a moment and sloshed my hands about in the water. After opening them again, I told him everything I could remember that singled me out from the Core's stereotypes. How from the beginning, I had always felt messed up, knowing I could see the world in a way others couldn't. How every day I would look in the mirror and my stomach would churn at the uneven tone of my skin on my back, even though I knew no one would see it in the clothing at the Core. How I would often catch myself thinking bad things; about the Core, about the Masks, sometimes about my fellow classmates. The official word for them is intrusive thoughts, but sometimes I wondered if they were telling me something. And finally, after some hesitance, I told him about one of my Differences that I felt the most insecure about.

It was a few years ago that I had to fully come to terms with a Difference I had denied for years. When I was around 9 or 10 years old, I had started to feel that something was off. I didn't think much of it at the time and continued to go about my life, but as I got older, I found myself paying more attention to the other girls in my class that I felt I should. There was this girl in particular, her number something like 8112, and even though she had only talked to me once, I had felt quite drawn to her. We shared a few classes and she would often catch me staring at her during the lessons. I still remember what she looked like, although she probably changed as she grew older throughout the years. Long, dusty orange hair that fell to her waist in loose curls, freckles scattered over her nose and cheeks, and clear blue eyes. I remember the first and only time we talked to each other, I realized we had something in common. Like me, she saw the world in a Different way, although hers was a lot less passive.

I had been walking to one of my classes when I heard sobbing coming from the bathroom, and so I stopped to see who it was. It turned out to be the orange-haired girl, sitting curled up in the corner, crying and waving her hands at things I couldn't see. I went to help her and after convincing her I was a person and not some evil thing out to get her, managed to get her to sit on the edge of the bathroom's sinks. She told me her Difference was that she could see the souls of people who had once been alive. She would see them drifting down the halls, passing right through people with ease. They knew that she could see them but never once spoke a word to her. She told me that one of them had been following her around, pestering her and moving her things to different spots. When she did something it disagreed with, it would throw something or mess things up. When I had found her crying in the bathroom, it had smashed an art project she had been working on for a long time, and wouldn't leave her alone.

After what seemed like hours, I had managed to get her to stop crying, and convinced her to at least try talking to the soul because maybe it just wanted something, like a toy it had lost in its childhood. She had sniffed, wiped her tears away, and thanked me before getting up and leaving. I watched as she left the bathroom, feeling very proud of myself and completely forgetting what I was doing before finding her.