Because when Ted had first gotten to know Joar and the artist when they were twelve years old, he had hardly dared speak at all, always so frightened of pronouncing words wrong. He was an immigrant kid who could barely remember the country he was from, just young enough when he left to not speak his old language fluently, but just old enough for his accent to always be noticeable in his new one. He had gotten used to the fact that whenever he heard the mocking laughter of other children, it was usually directed at him. But Joar and the artist had laughed in a different way, without any of the
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