Challenge #02333-F143: This is How a Heart Breaks Back

Human teenagers had terrible lives in their intergalaxy school. When humans joined to Galaxy Alliance they're started to sending their children to schools on other planets. Well... Teenagers have been harassing and bullying without any kind of defence because "humans will always be barbarians and if they do something to someone is abuse and they should be held in cages like animals". One time some Havenworlder starts to offend [name]. He choose wrong person. This was last time that anyone tried to piss of human teenagers. -- Anon Guest

Integration is always a rough time. Just ask Ruby Bridges[1]. Of course, in the intervening centuries, assorted people have become more... subtle... about ostracising the different.

Imagine coming into a group of peers, every day, and having them feign being afraid of you. Imagine being unable to tell that they are feigning those fears. Imagine being singled out of shared classes because your mere presence causes upset. The teachers do not want to teach you. The administration wants to get rid of you, to shunt you away and declare integration a failure. They want to blame you, because you are the newest factor and the change is in correlation to your presence.

Imagine trying to handle all this at four years of age. Imagine continuing to handle it from there to the age of fourteen, when hormones and growth patterns both begin to do things to the body, to the brain, to the mind and heart and soul. Imagine all those stresses for an otherwise kind and gentle soul who has nevertheless held out hope against the face of it all that they could still make friends, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

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