He's always been special, Wayne knows that. At a very young age he came to understand that most people—no, all other people—were incapable of things that were as natural to him as breathing. They're practically blind, they're slow, they're frail, they're trapped on the ground.
"It's because you're special," his mother has always told him, and his teacher tells him too, and all his classmates and everyone everywhere. Everybody knows he's special. He knows he's special.
It's never occurred to him to wonder why. He just is. He's special because he's special. To Wayne, this makes perfect logical sense.
This blithe knowing ends at the age of seven, when he encounters another boy who's also special—sort of.
His abilities are—freakish. Yes, he's blue. That's weird, but kind of cool, because he's like a cartoon character or something, and almost not quite real because of it. And he's bald, but kids with cancer are bald too. Someone asks the blue kid if he has cancer with the heartless curiosity of children, making him flush purple and cling to his fish and answer first with a shy "No," which is all that's needed or wanted. But finding himself in a conversation and seeming afraid it will run off without him if he doesn't keep talking, he does, about –omas and cellular chemistry and beta particles for nearly five whole minutes, barely stopping to breathe, and they all stare and stare and stare, because no one, not even the teacher, understands what he's said, or how he could possibly have known how to say it.
It's freakish, but it's not a freak occurrence. Every day, often more than once a day, he'll say something. He answers questions meant to be rhetorical, corrects the teacher, and on one memorable occasion actually quotes back her ten-minute lecture on the solar system from three months ago, verbatim, as a supporting argument to some point that he's trying to make and that no one is even listening to, because they're all too busy staring and wondering how he can even do that.
How did he get that way? Why him, and nobody else?
They're all curious but Wayne is the leader so he asks him one day.
Blue just stares back at him, utterly confused and obviously a little amazed to be addressed. "How did I do what?"
"Remember all that stuff. Did you record it?"
"No. I just remembered. Didn't you?"
"No," Wayne scoffs. "Nobody can do that. It's freaky."
"It is?" Blue shuffles his feet together, fingers tapping nervously on his fish's bowl, but he seems to be relaxing slightly. "…I guess my people just remember stuff better than humans. Or your people."
"My people?" The conversation has gotten weird. Weirder. "What are you talking about?" he asks, crossing his arms and hopping up off the ground. Higher ground is safer ground.
"Well, you can shoot lasers and knock down walls and stuff. And fly," Blue points out, highlighting this by pointing at Wayne's feet , three inches off the ground. "Humans can't do that. I suspect your home world was probably a more hostile environment to life, so your species adapted." He's warming to the subject, straightening and gesturing animatedly as he goes on. "I suspect your planet must have had a much stronger gravitational field, and possibly a much thicker, more corrosive atmo..."
The smaller boy trails off uncertainly when Wayne starts laughing at him. "You're nuts!" Wayne giggles, and he could almost swear that the fish is scowling at him, except that's just silly. "Are you saying you think we're both aliens? There's no such thing. You're just kind of freaky. And I," he puffs up his chest, "am special."
Blue doesn't argue. He just stares at Wayne, with this look on his face like the other boy has gotten him right in the stomach with a dodgeball. "You mean…." he finally says, hushed, "…you don't even remember that? How could you forget that?"
"Forget what?" It comes out skeptically, but some part of him is twingeing oddly, because after all Blue is super smart and does have a freaky memory, even if he's also a weirdo who may have something to gain by jerking Wayne around for a laugh.
"Your…your home. Your parents," answers the other boy, in a chagrined whisper.
"I see my parents at home every day."
"No, your real parents," Blue says, almost accusingly. He's getting upset, his huge forehead crinkling in dismay.
"This is a really dumb joke," Wayne says, rolling his eyes and bobbing a couple inches higher in the air. "Do you really think you can get me to believe I'm adopted? What are you, five?"
"It's not a joke, Wayne," Blue says, his already-piping voice climbing higher on every syllable. "They're dead. All our people. They're all dead. We're the last ones left. That's why they sent us here." Now he's angry. "Why don't you remember that?"
Wayne shoves him, then, because he doesn't want to listen to it anymore, it's lies and it's silly. He's strong and Blue is weak and the light shove sends the other practically flying, landing nearly twenty feet away curled protectively around his little glass fishbowl, but instead of crying the freak just stares at him, huge green eyes horrified and disapproving.
All lies, all lies, he's just special, Wayne tells himself.
Later that evening he tells his mother about the stupid things the freaky jailbird at school told him, and she shows him the little golden pod she's saved in the back room of the basement all these years, carefully wrapped in tissue and hidden away. She says lots of things and Wayne doesn't listen to any of them.
Blue was telling the truth. He's not just freaky, he's special in the same way that Wayne is special. Alien. Superhuman. Not human. That's not his mother, trying to hug him right now. All this time she knew exactly why he was special, and she just never told him.
And Wayne, unlike Blue, forgot.
He isn't sure if he should cry or not. Instead he punches a hole in his bedroom wall.