Jamie, just like any other day, was living by an extremely habitual routine. As soon as he got back home from school, he pulled The Diary of a Wimpy Kid from the back of his closet and threw himself into his bed. With a grin on his face that could hardly be seen anywhere at school, he opened his book and finally took his hearing aids off. He returned to the quiet world he felt comfortable in. In a moment, Jamie’s mother came into his room with the everyday smile she had whenever she saw Jamie—her eyes in a 45-degree arc and her mouth wide open to the point where her gums could be seen. To others, she was just a typical janitor, but to Jamie, she was the one and only adult Jamie could rely on. Before Jamie could fling his arms around her, his mom embraced him first. 

“How was your day?” asked Mom with very fluent sign language. 

“Good, how about you?” Jamie signed back with the biggest smile on his face. 

“Good. Come down for dinner later.” 

The moment Jamie’s mom turned her back to him to go back downstairs, Jamie knew her face would change into what he described as her “janitor” face. The once 45-degree eyes would come down to barely 10 degrees, the corners of her lips would be pulled downwards, and the smile she had would be completely gone. Jamie always anticipated this scenario. 

He casually went back to lying on his bed and had just continued reading The Diary of a Wimpy Kid when suddenly his decrepit lamp that never showed signs of functioning started to flash. Bright, yellow light flashed for a short two seconds, then disappeared, and then started repeating the same cycle. In pure bafflement, Jamie stared at the lamp for a good ten minutes, grasping onto it as if he was possessed. As soon as he turned back to his book, he heard a voice—a quiet but reverberating voice. 

“Come to me,” the strange voice called. 

“Mom?” he answered. As he was waiting for a response, he realized he could hear his own voice vividly. He was dumbfounded. He looked to his right. His hearing aids were on the shelf. Doubting it was a hallucination, he touched his ears. His hearing aids were not there. 

Can I hear now? Are my ears all right? Am I finally normal? All sorts of questions occupied his mind. Then, as if it was perfectly timed out, the unknown voice started to echo again. 

“Come to me.” Jamie heard the same phrase, but this time slightly louder. He stood up, opened his door, and exited his room. He went downstairs and glanced at the clock. It was 9PM. Jamie was never on the first floor after dinner time because all he did at home was read comic books on his bed. His footsteps gradually led him to the front door. As his hand slowly made its way to the doorknob, he hesitated. One part of his brain reminded him of the “compliant son” he always was, but the other part encouraged him to venture out. Just then, he heard “Come to me” yet again, but this time even louder. Jamie let himself open the front door and stepped into his backyard. 

He closed his eyes, trying to put his attention solely on the unknown voice. He took deep breaths every step he took. He walked in very small steps, trying to sense if the dirt trail underneath him was still there. Thoughts like ‘Am I allowed to do this?’ and ‘Am I stupid?’ kept lingering in his head, but he tried his best not to return home—he wanted to escape his dreadful, monotonous reality. The further he got from his house, the louder the voice cried. When the dirt trail seemed to stop, he could hear two children having fist fights far away. He instantly knew it was the Crawfords because even without hearing aids he knew the children always created chaos in the neighborhood. Jamie could usually only hear things vaguely—he couldn’t even distinguish different types of sounds—so this scenario was astonishing for him. He sensed the change of color from red to green in the traffic light in front of him, even with his eyes closed. As he walked through the crosswalk, he knew he was heading to a place he had never been before. It was extremely dark and silent; not a single sound could be heard now except the inhaling and exhaling of the voice. He walked straight, without any turns, until the voice seemed to be right next to his ear. He opened his eyes. He found himself in a neglected, abandoned playground. There were three swings, but each swing seat was covered with thick layers of dust. The slide was encircled with spider webs. The spinner seemed to be broken. 

  He looked around, but to his surprise there was no sense of life and the voice he knew should be right next to him was no longer there. He sat on a swing seat, feeling dejected, regretting his decision to come to this playground without his hearing aids without knowing the way back. However, as he was staring at his feet, he saw an approaching shadow. He looked up. 

“Ah!” Jamie shouted as he did a little jump on the swing seat. 

“Hi, there!” the stranger exclaimed. He was staring quite creepily into Jamie’s eyes. His arms and legs were crossed in an exceedingly judgmental fashion. In an instant, Jamie knew: whoever that stranger was, he was the voice that had led him here. 

The first thing Jamie noticed was the blueish-white light that was beaming from the stranger’s body. It looked quite identical to the ones he had seen in horror comics where the illustrator would draw the light to help readers identify who the ghost was. Putting that thought aside, Jamie scrutinized the stranger’s appearance. The stranger looked just like an average old white man—a common sight for Jamie who lived in an “old white man” neighborhood. The stranger was also dressed like an average old man—a blue collared shirt, khaki pants, and a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses. The part about the stranger that bothered Jamie the most was his breath. It had an odor, a very strong, unpleasant odor, that Jamie could smell even after the stranger finished speaking. It seemed to Jamie he must not have brushed his teeth for several days. Apart from that, however, he was far from looking mysterious or suspicious. 

“Uh… hello, sir,” Jamie replied with long pauses between each word, his hands grasping onto the swing chains just in case something happened to him. This was an innate habit he had—to grab onto anything near him in times of anxiety and fear. 

“Hey, I won’t hurt ya!” the stranger cried. He put his hand on his stomach and started to laugh with a very high-pitched voice, which greatly juxtaposed the low, cold voice he had addressed Jamie with. 

“Oh, who are—” 

“I already know ya know,” the stranger interrupted in a teasing tone. “Yes, I am the voice that brought ya here.”

Jamie was terrified. Everyone around him—his peers, teachers, and sometimes even his mother—were clueless as to what Jamie was thinking or what he was going through because he always wore his blank, emotionless face in public. But this time, it was as if the stranger could read his mind. 

“Oh, why did you call me he—” 

“You can call me Mr. Apparition. Nice to meet ya!” Mr. Apparition interrupted, yet again. It was not even the answer to Jamie’s question. Mr. Apparition talked to him as if they had known each other for quite a while, raising his voice at the end of every sentence. 

“Mr. Apparition,” Jamie said, with a very confident but trembling voice, “why did you bring me he—”

“What’s ya name, boy?” Mr. Apparition interrupted for the third time. 

“I’m Jamie, Mr. Apparition,” Jamie responded, slightly annoyed.

“Hey, Jamie!” Mr. Apparition shouted as he lifted Jamie up from the swing seat and put him on top of his shoulders, holding onto his cold hands. Mr. Apparition twirled in circles in a very merry cadence. Jamie felt an instant warmth penetrating his body, and even though he loathed physical touch, he found himself somewhat enjoying the scenario. It felt good to look down on the world for once because it was mostly Jamie being looked down on by the world. 

“Uh…Mr. Apparition, do you mind bringing me down? I am feeling a little dizzy up here!” Jamie shouted, just in case Mr. Apparition had a hard time hearing others like him. Mr. Apparition let him down and Jamie sat back on the swing seat. Jamie placed his hand on his mouth, covering his smile, trying not to turn that smile into laughter. Mr. Apparition sat on the swing seat next to Jamie, watching every movement Jamie made. His eyes were those dreamy, nostalgic types of eyes Jamie usually felt uncomfortable with, but with Mr. Apparition, he somehow liked it. 

“So, boy, whatcha up to these days? Anythin’ surprisin’? Anythin’ fun?” Mr. Apparition joyfully asked. Jamie’s smile faded away in just that moment and with shrugged shoulders, pouty lips, and a very dispirited tone, he answered, “No, nothing much.” 

“What is wrong?” 

“I never really have surprising or fun memories now that I look back.” Before he could even open his mouth, he found his eyes watering. He put his head down in his hands and turned his back against Mr. Apparition. 

“What makes ya say that, boy?” 

“You see, I am always looked down on.” Streams of tears started rolling down Jamie’s cheeks. “It is because I have hearing issues, and the people around me don’t like me because of that.” 

Mr. Apparition slowly placed his hand on Jamie’s head and started caressing him. Jamie looked up at Mr. Apparition. He had a smile on, a big one actually, but the merry mood he always seemed to have could not be felt at all. 

“Jamie, do ya think ya hearing issues make ya any different?” Mr. Apparition asked. With his voice sunk by his tears, Jamie quietly nodded. Mr. Apparition stood up from his swing seat and sat on the ground in front of Jamie. He gently placed his hand around Jamie’s wrist and pulled it down so he could get a good view of his eyes. As expected, they were swollen and red. 

“No, ya so wrong. It does not make ya any different,” Mr. Apparition replied, holding onto Jamie’s hands. Mr. Apparition still had a smile on his face, but his tone of voice was more somber; it was different from when they had first met.

The moment he said that, Jamie burst into even more tears. It was his first time finally not being categorized as the different one. Even his mother, who had seen him multiple times crying at home because of school, only ever said, “You will pull through it quickly,” which for Jamie sounded like: “Just endure it. Accept your reality.” Jamie knew, more than anyone else, that he was different, and he had accepted his reality of being different. But with Mr. Apparition pulling him outside of that thought, even just for a moment, Jamie felt a new emotion he had never felt before: relief.

‘At least there is someone I can maybe trust,’ Jamie thought to himself as he managed not to flinch from his longest eye contact ever. 

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, I used to be like ya.”

“How so?” 

“I was one of ya guys—the depressed, lonely type o’ guy.” This offended Jamie to some degree, but he liked how he was straightforward with his answer, treating him as a normal kid, not trying to be polite or extra generous like the others, which he found extremely insincere. 

“I was born with a white eye. Ya prob’ noticed, haven't ya?” It had been about fifteen minutes since they had met, however, he had not realized that Mr. Apparition’s right eye was slightly different from his other one. His hazel-brown eye was covered underneath a white layer. He realized he always had his chin tilted to the left when talking to him, side-eyeing him with his left eye. 

“No, in fact, I have not,” Jamie responded with a grin on his face. Mr. Apparition looked at him with utter shock. 

“Ay, stop lyin’. The first thing people see in me is ma eye, kid.” Mr. Apparition chuckled. 

“Well, I guess I’m not one of the ‘people’ you are referring to.” 

Mr. Apparition giggled. Jamie knew what it felt like to have eyes being fixated on you. It was part of his daily routine, actually: he would be the last one to arrive at school because his mom would always wake up late coming home from work at 4 in the morning, and everyone in the class would stare at him, not because of how handsome he looked but because of his hearing aids. As he sauntered through the small gap between chairs, his classmates would give each other the look, which Jamie was too accustomed to by then, as if they saw something gruesome. Jamie always wondered and brainwashed himself with the question, ‘Do my hearing aids look compelling to them?’ in, of course, a sarcastic way. He obviously knew his hearing aids looked extremely odd for normal people. But somehow, Jamie never really viewed someone as different until they opened up about how they were different—like with Mr. Apparition. 

“Hmm…ya have gone through a lot, right?” asked Mr. Apparition as he placed his chin on his palm, slanting his eyebrows. Jamie stared at him relentlessly. He touched his ears. His hearing aids were not there, and he was sure they hadn’t been on since their introduction. 

“Not…really,” Jamie lied, hesitating in between each word. He ended up re-enacting the same scenario he had undergone a thousand times: not trying to look vulnerable. Jamie felt like he had to be tough. He knew he was looked down on more than anyone, and he knew his hearing aids made him an absolute outcast in society. There were times when emotions that he wanted to conceal burst out of nowhere unconsciously, but he suppressed them just to see his mom’s smile when she entered his room. 

“Okay, Jamie. Well, it is okay not to be okay. Just letting you know jus’ in case.” Mr. Apparition said. As he stood up from the swing seat and lifted his arms up to stretch them, Jamie grasped onto his leg. 

“No, don’t go.” Jamie murmured, with desperate eyes. 

“I’m not leaving, Jamie.” Mr. Apparition chuckled, “I’m here for ya.”

Jamie’s heart started to pound, not from fear, but from utter surprise. New words he had never thought of having started to pop up in his head, such as friend. At school, he was taught that a friend was someone he could rely on. The only friend he had in life was his mom, but that friendship was ingenuine. However, this odd friendship with Mr. Apparition felt more sincere. 

“Thank you.” Jamie responded. Another new emotion emerged: gratitude. Never had he been grateful, ever. All he saw in life was agony and hatred—why would he have felt gratitude? Yes, he was thankful to have his mom on his side, but he often wondered if she really was. Jamie never felt very close to her because he knew all she had in mind was money, and even though Jamie loved every single one of her smiles, he knew it was fake. He knew it was an act of sympathy. 

“Hey, do you need help with this?” was the most cliche and irksome phrase he heard in all directions wherever he went. At school, the so-called “popular” girl who was assigned to sit in the very front row would always come up to him, sitting in the very back row, during English class and ask him, “Do you want to change seats?” Jamie didn’t need to because he could somewhat hear what the teacher was saying from the back, but yes, he tried to understand her intention. Even the teachers would ask him, “Should I send you the notes for the lecture?” and once again, he didn’t need them because he already did it himself. But society did not seem to trust him.

In kindergarten, a brief puppet play was shown to him and his classmates. The theme was “The Right Way to Act.” A puppet with a disfigured countenance—eyes in different locations, pouty lips, and no ears—appeared on the left, while two normal-looking, pretty puppets—with ears—appeared on the right. Jamie was just five years old, and he knew, more than any of his classmates, that he was the disfigured one. He knew the play would make the pretty ones look like the “kind” ones, portraying it as an “acts of service” scenario. But Jamie was sure the play would miss out on one thing—how the disfigured one felt during that seemingly nice scene. He ran to the bathroom, and as soon as he locked the door, he weeped. Being the one who had to be helped, the subtle difference in how he was treated came to him as ingenuine over-generosity. He hated, or maybe despised, that feeling. Being so accustomed to the feigned relationships that he had forged made him consider his mom the same as everyone else. 

‘Did I just say thank you and actually mean it?’ Jamie thought to himself. 

“Okay, I’ll go first. Let me tell ya this. I had hard times growing up too, well, as you might have noticed, because of ma eye.” Mr. Apparition said this jokingly, to Jamie's surprise. “I was born 75 years ago in a small town in Yonnersville, Virginia. I was unluckily born with this white eye, and ma family couldn’t afford anythin’, not even the cheapest toy. So ya think I was even able to go to a nearby hospital? Nah, not at all.” Jamie reflected back to his childhood and compared it with Mr. Apparition’s. It was the same, except for the fact that it was his hearing problems that could not be fixed. 

“Back in the ol’ days, people weren’t tha’ nice. Even those who I thought were nice, like Ol’ William. He was ma cuz and his ma was nice to me, but not him. Everytime I visited his house when we were like ten or somethin’, he would open ma eyes with his never-washed, filthy fingers and spit on them afterwards.” Mr. Apparition put one foot around the other and let them draw out an ellipse. 

“Well, I thought it was all because we were young, ya know, because that’s what boys do. But when we entered middle school, things started taking the downturn. I was punched, I was kicked at, and people I didn’t even know came to my class jus’ to see a white eye. Yeah.” He gathered his feet together once again and drew a circle inside the ellipse. Jamie gazed at what he was drawing. It was an eye, yet deprived of lines or scribbles inside the circle—just vacant. 

“My childhood was pretty agonizing, but I suppose it got worse as I entered adulthood. College life was mediocre, with all I could recall just being blurry lectures and the odd stares every classmate gave me, which I could overtly see through my enormously bad eyesight whenever I gave a presentation.” Jamie nodded with his eyes closed. The astonishingly corresponding school scenarios he had experienced himself flashed through his head like a camera roll. The fear, discomfort, and mortification that Mr. Apparition felt in public were similar to what Jamie had felt growing up. Then, there was a thud in Jamie’s heart. Another new emotion was exposed to Jamie: relatability. Jamie never related with anyone, either physically or emotionally, because he wasn’t able to. He was the only one in his neighborhood and school who looked different, and looking different impacted Jamie with excruciating emotions nobody around him would have felt, ever—definitely not as teenagers. 

“Then I was foreva’ done with college. Now I had to earn money. So I went to interviews at many, many workplaces. But I could sense each employer’s facial expression change when he saw me. Not a single one of them asked me ‘Why do you want to work here?’ They rather insisted I should go back home because I look ill. They said that right to my face!” Mr. Apparition sighed. 

In that moment, another new emotion followed: sympathy. Jamie felt sorry for the heart-wrenching discrimination Mr. Apparition had faced just because he looked different. No matter the circumstances, Jamie was always the one to be sympathized with by normal people (when he didn’t even need them) because he had been born with hearing disorders. But this was very odd for him: a person who hadn’t yet found where he belonged feeling like he had to help another… ‘Oh, help. I feel weird.’ 

“After two years of trying painfully hard to find a job, I succeeded! But I soon realized my college years were not worth it. I wondered why I had worked my head off just to be a window sweeper. I had to leave my fear of heights on the ground before my body was forcefully propped up to clean the windows for those I aspired to become—businessmen in suits.” The feeling of relatability once again visited Jamie’s heart. Even though Jamie never asked his mom what her childhood life was like or where his dad fled to, he knew her situation was similar to Mr. Apparition’s: being told she was incompetent for white-collar professions, not having the money to do anything for Jamie, and most importantly, having to envy those who had the opportunities for a better future. 

“The pay was okay, though, I guess. Not as bad as when I was paid $10 a day when I worked at the Yonners! The only good part was seeing Lilee everyday.” Mr. Apparition chuckled. 

“Who is Lilee? Your first love?” Jamie leaned in towards him, enthusiastically. 

“Haha, yeah. Whenever she was on duty for waitering, I would make funny faces to her and you know what? She once laughed so hard she spilled the french onion soup on the customer.” Jamie smiled. He loved how Mr. Apparition was back to smiling again. 

“She was the first person to show me a new world. A new world lacking loneliness, isolation, and self-deprecation. She never cared about ma white eye, I don’t think. Cause’ we got married, and we had little Johnny and Eli. That’s when I knew, fo’ the first time, that there are people like Lilee in this screwed-up, evil world.” 

“I…envy…you,” Jamie whispered gently. “I wish I had a Lilee in my life.” His voice quavered, his face was blushing. He placed his hands on top of his eyes, trying his best to stop the seemingly endless unwilling streams of tears. 

“Hey, put your hands down. Look at me,” Mr. Apparition insisted. Jamie gazed at him, looking lost, in need of help. “You have me. I understand ya. I know what it feels like to look different.” Mr. Apparition leaned closer. “And ya can cry if ya want to. The one thing I regret the most from my early days was not crying when I wanted to. Keeping ya tears to yaself just stacks up a burden.” Jamie was always told that tears were a sign of vulnerability, especially for a male. He was even tougher on himself because he was disabled. Jamie squeezed his chest in agony and gratitude. 

“You know what, Jamie?” Mr. Apparition asked tenderly.

“What?” 

“You are not different, not different at all. You are just gifted in another sense—you have something others don’t have.” Mr. Apparition smiled. The smile reminded Jamie of his mom’s, the one she showed Jamie when she burst into the door with her arms flinging around him in rapture. But it felt very genuine—a touching, heartfelt sensation Jamie had never experienced with anyone before. 

“You know what, Mr. Apparition?” Jamie asked. 

“What?”

“You are not different either. We are both normal, but we just look better.” This time, Jamie smiled at Mr. Apparition. It was a smile he had never dared to give anyone–partly because he had nobody around him who made him smile, and partly because he didn’t think anyone deserved a smile. But for the first time, Jamie knew instantly Mr. Apparition needed one. 

Mr. Apparition leaned towards him, and with flickering eyes (even his white one), he asked, “Do you know why I brought you here?” 

“No, I do not,” Jamie responded.

“Ya seemed to be the little version of me when I was alive. I could sense that up in tha sky where I spend time right now. You were, and still are, and will be, the one who catches ma eye anywhere, anytime.” Then, in the blink of an eye, Mr. Apparition vanished with no trails left behind. 

“Mr. Apparition? Mr. Apparition!” Jamie bellowed. He could only hear silence beaming in response. He put his emotions of longing and sorrow aside because in the back of his head he knew for a fact Mr. Apparition was watching him, and he wanted to thank him for all he had done for him. 

He sat on the tanbark and replayed every single part of the conversation with Mr. Apparition in his mind, including the new emotions he had taught him. “You are not different” kept arresting his attention, and everytime the phrase kicked him, he smiled. 

‘Mr. Apparition, I will live for myself, and for you,’ Jamie said to himself as he clenched his fists with determination to the sky, ‘thank you.’