"Everyone's strange and different t'everyone else," he says, thinking mostly of himself and the two other boys they call friends, "'s not-- necessarily a bad thing."

At least when you like the person. It's going to take him time for him to expand that thought to people he doesn't like.

(If he ever gets there, really.)

The statement can't help but earn a thoughtful nose wrinkle.

"You guys are my first friends," he tells him, "Dunno what I would've done, without you lot. Seems-- silly, to me, for people not to think you need some."