“Don’t be an idiot,” Ed said. He sounded surprisingly bitter. He was usually a cheerful person—or at least a fat and smiling person. Alan realized for the first time that the two weren’t equivalent.
George jutted his chin toward the sofa and his brothers. “They don’t know what they want to do. They think that, ‘cause it’ll be hard to live here, we should hide out in the cave forever.”
“Alan, talk to him,” Fred said. “He’s nuts.”
“Look,” George said. “You’re gone. You’re all gone. The king under the mountain now is Davey. If we stay there, we’ll end up his slaves or his victims. Let him keep it. There’s a whole world out here we can live in.
“I don’t see any reason to let my handicap keep me down.”
“It’s not a handicap,” Edward said patiently. “It’s just how we are. We’re different. We’re not like the rest of them.”
“Neither is Alan,” George said. “And here he is, in the big city, living with them. Working. Meeting people. Out of the mountain.”
“Alan’s more like them than he is like us,” Frederick said. “We’re not like them. We can’t pass for them.”
Alan’s jaw hung slack. Handicapped? Passing? Like them? Not like them? He’d never thought of his brothers this way. They were just his brothers. Just his family. They could communicate with the outside world. They were people. Different, but the same.
“You’re just as good as they are,” he said.