"When the people around you are all one way, and you're not... You can't help but feel like there's something wrong with you."

Little boy Jules knew he was different.

Little boy Jules knew there was something wrong with him.

He knew that when he read aloud in class, the others pointed and laughed at him, mocking his slow, halted speech and his awkward pronunciation. He knew that his math sums were untidy, sprawling out all over the page. He liked it – he thought his wiggling numbers had personality. But no one else seemed to like his numbers as much as he did.

He knew that when his parents came to pick him up one day, his teacher told them she needed to talk to them. And he knew that when he waited outside the door and his parents came out, his mother's face was full of sorrow and his father's face was full of cold, blazing anger.

Later that night he heard them arguing, arguing about him. He crept down to the top of the stairs and peeked over the banister. They thought he was sleeping, but he heard every word.

"How dare she pass judgments on our boy!" his father raged. "What does she know? She says we should have him evaluated for a learning disability!" Jules wasn't sure what "learning disability" meant, but the way his father said it sounded scary. He clutched Kukalaka tighter to his chest.

"Richard." His mother said, in that quiet way of hers. "It couldn't hurt to have him tested. You've seen his homework – he's certainly not an ordinary child. What's the harm in testing?" She laid a comforting hand on her husband's shoulder, but he shrugged it off.

"So he's a slow learner! I was too, at that age. I will not have my son be labeled – it will ruin all chance he has of a normal life!" There were more harsh whispers, but Jules heard none of it, for he had fallen fast asleep on the landing to the stairs, his arm wrapped protectively against Kukalaka.

A few days later, he was pulled out of class by a pretty lady wearing jangly bracelets. He held up his head and tried to look important as he walked the halls with her. His classmates looked at him in envy, wondering why he got to skip class and they had to stay and learn their sums. She brought him to a small room with a screen, where he had to tap different shapes. It was fun, like a game, until he got to the sums and the reading. The jangly bracelets lady, sensing his frustration, kindly told him he could stop while she made marks on her paper.

It wasn't until a few months later that Jules' parents told him that they were going on a vacation to meet a nice man who was going to help him. So little boy Jules, so trusting, followed his parents out the door and onto the ship, never once questioning the decision they had made for him.

Little did he know that little boy Jules would never exist again.