Born Different (11 page)

“The girl’s
loos had a massive queue! Isn’t that always the way? One day
they’ll figure out women need more toilets. Or...maybe we’ll beat
them to it and evolve to have cocks too!”

Gabe replied,
“Yeah”, in a voice he didn’t recognise, in a voice that sounded to
him like the voice of a pre-pubescent girl. He smiled and tried to
give her a wink like he had practised so many times before in his
fantasies but he pulled it off all wrong and Grace just raised her
eyebrows and forced a grin as if to say, ‘What an idiot!’ and
before Gabe knew it, the door had slammed and Grace had gone.

Probably the
one and only chance he had left of ever being alone in a room with
Grace and he had acted like a twat.

“Fail, epic
fail.”

But then Gabe
slowly realised that if Grace was here then there was a good chance
that the person who they had just ripped off was here too. Grace
and Alistair walking to school this morning, he had seen them.
Johnny would have also seen them from the park. Johnny had known
that Alistair would have been here this morning. Johnny had planned
it all of course. Alistair would have been sitting the exam this
morning while they robbed them and no doubt while Gabe was sat here
in this exam this afternoon, Alistair and the others would discover
the robbery and be out to find whoever did it.

Dread filled
Gabe from the inside out. He really did have to get away from
Frank, Dave and Johnny. Detach himself. Gabe no longer felt
protected by their presence in his life. If anything, they were now
pushing him towards his worst nightmare.

And it wasn’t
as if Gabe had other options, not yet.

He would finish
his paintings, create a masterpiece sculpture for The Exhibition by
Friday next week, go and check out the address that had come with
the picture of his dad. Go and buy his mum something nice. Maybe
send her on one of those retreats she always went on about? Search
the internet for places to sell his paintings and try and get a job
in one of the galleries in town in the hope that they would
occasionally let him hang his own works up. He’d work hard, make
himself indispensable. Lock himself in his studio in his spare
time, keep his head down and hopefully the hard work would pay
off.

Gabe didn’t
want to turn out like his friends, follow them into a life of
crime. He might have been in the gutter but that did not stop him
looking at the stars.

Gabe put the
hood back up on his jacket and took another look in the mirror. He
felt so different to everybody else that looking different, in a
way, suited him just fine. And this thought sent a tingling up,
from the base of his spine that shot down his veins and washed over
his skin and cooled down his whole body. And, for a split second,
Gabe knew what it felt like to feel comfortable in his own
skin.

The hall doors
opened and students start filtering in to find their chair and desk
where they were alphabetically placed. Some of them noticed
something different about Gabe and gave him a second glance but as
soon as they were all sat down and whispering they were told to be
silent. The clock on the wall ticked and the teacher who had been
given the thankless task of exam invigilator, who looked like he
would rather be anywhere else but here, held up his hand as the
papers were handed out. And even though now it was forbidden for
anyone to talk and everyone was trying to be tight lipped, stomachs
growled and audible sighs and last minute coughing fits
reverberated and echoed around the huge hall. The tension in the
room was palpable, thick like a viscose static. The air felt
condensed with too little oxygen and everything seemed to be going
in slow motion.

When everyone
was set and after a few false starts, the invigilator started the
stop watch with his thumb as his other hand went down, along with
the head of every person in the room. Everyone started reading and
re-reading furiously, writing as if their lives depended on it,
like they had been told it did.

Gabe kept his
head up and watched everyone for a moment, watching them all bent
over, he thought that he didn’t want to be like them. He didn’t
want to follow beliefs blindly. He wasn’t going to like things,
have to have things, do thing, just because everybody else did.
Gabe wanted to have his own tastes, his own senses, figure out his
own likes and dislikes. Find out his own truth and not take on
others truths as his own. He didn’t see why people placed value on
the worthless and rarely recognised the invaluable. Gabe wanted to
find his own way, his own style, his own mind. He didn’t understand
why everyone else had to be told or sold ideas that were all made
up in some corporate or government office somewhere. It seemed that
perhaps, the very thought of having your own mind, was a radical
idea.

Gabe thought of
Alistair making his way back to the lock up. He thought of his
friends out there somewhere laughing wickedly over all their dirty
cash. He felt his nerves; in his groin, in his thighs, even in his
wings. The adrenalin in his blood stream was compelling him to run,
to fly, to not follow all the others like he was socially
conditioned to do. Gabe caught the eye of the teacher who gave him
a look and he knew what he had to do, so he too bowed his head and
got on with the questions on the bits of paper in front of him.
Hoping against hope, that his passion and love for the subject
outweighed his lack of attention in class and zero revision.

The aura of the
room was so unnatural that Gabe noticed that his thoughts were dull
and slow and lacking in any colour or animation. That was what
sitting in a prison like hall, in straight uniform lines like
brainwashed flesh covered androids, did to your imagination and
passion.

Gabe stared at
the papers in front of him and he read, NAME:

“Who are you?”
Gabe asked himself.

After two hours
of constant writing and fact recall, and a long time spent going
off on a tangent from the original question to write an essay on
something he knew about instead, Gabe had done as much as he could.
Evoking the passion he had felt for the subject before the school
had turned them into thankless tasks, had been exhausting. He put
his head on the desk and closed his eyes. He was shattered.
Mentally, physically and emotionally drained. He tried thinking of
something to look forward to but all Gabe could think of was how
short the paper trail was from ripping Alistair off this morning.
How short was the line that led to him? If Alistair was going to be
a proper enemy then Gabe could kiss goodbye to any safe and
peaceful feelings for a while and more tragically, to Grace.

Gabe couldn’t
feel any more wretched if he tried. It was almost as if he let go
now he would disintegrate.

Gabe tried to
concentrate on his breathing, to take deeper breaths, and in his
mind’s eye he tried to picture himself new, anew, all in black. He
imagined himself as he wanted to be, carefree and happy. He
imagined that he was successful, that all his paintings sold for
big money and that if people judged him it was favourably. He let
himself think about meeting his dad, another artist. Maybe he was
successful already or even just waiting for his son to come and
find him? Perhaps he was rich and full of love to make up for the
lack of it over the past eighteen years? Gabe imagined that in his
pocket were tickets to a faraway land where everything would be
better.

Then, out of
nowhere, a flash of inspiration came. As soon as he had stopped
thinking about it and turned his mind to something else, something
completely different; no sooner had he let go of the mental torment
of trying to figure it all out, the idea for his last piece, the
sculpture, so simple and brilliant, just came to him with ease.

Gabe got up and
out the house early. He just wanted to get on with the sculpture
now. Luxuriate in spending a few days alone in his studio, free
from the constraints on his wings and everything else.

Gina, with some
help, had converted the large garage that was set back from the
house, into an art studio for Gabe when he had turned twelve. The
studio was not only somewhere for Gabe to go so that he could be
out of the house and out of sight, but also as secret sacred place
where Gabe could go to and be in absolute privacy, so that he could
unravel the tourniquet around his torso and move freely without the
fear of being disturbed. As much as it was a place for him and his
growing collection of art, equipment and other paraphernalia.

Their back
garden was overgrown and secluded. The honeysuckle and ivy and
other evergreen shrubs had grown wild, high and wide so that no one
could have seen in, even if they had wanted to.

The studio was
meant to be a private safe haven for Gabe. The door had bolt locks
and the windows had been blacked out so that Gabe could see out but
nobody could see in. There were massive skylight windows to let in
natural light and to let Gabe look at the sky, which he spent
plenty of hours doing.

The studio had
electric, running water and was full of Gabe’s art, canvases,
paints, white spirit, and paint brushes. Gabe had a kettle, sofa,
blankets and even a small fridge in there, so that he need never
leave. Gabe had spent a lot of time in here over the last six years
and it showed. He might even have moved in here permanently if it
wasn’t for the fact Grace walked past his bedroom window every
day.

Here in the
studio, Gabe could stretch himself out. He could exercise, jump,
dance, paint and have his wings unfurled and proud, yet still
hidden from the rest of the world.

And even though
this was Gabe’s sacred place where no one was allowed to come, even
his friends, they did come. Not together as a group but
individually, they all had come at one time or other; when they had
needed to desperately talk to Gabe about something, to confide in
him or just to have him listen to them about something that they
had on their minds. When they had each been going through their own
personal hell, they had come to Gabe’s studio and knocked on the
door and waited patiently, or not, as Gabe had finished what he was
doing.

What they
assumed was some important part of his painting, little knowing
that behind the breeze blocks that made up the structure of the
garage/studio, Gabe, the Gabe that they thought that they knew,
stood there with his wings splendid; furiously trying to pin them
down again.

It was one
thing bandaging his wings in his room with time on his hands and
another task completely, with someone banging on the door like they
were going to knock it down. Especially when Gabe could see them
standing there through the glass. He never quite believed that they
could not see him when they looked in or tried peering closer
though their blacked-out side of glass.

Gabe always
half expected them to say, “Hey Gabe, what were you doing in there
with wings on when I looked in the window?” But they never did. No
one knew. Even his friends that came here with their pressing
problems and dark secrets of their own, knew nothing of Gabe’s big
secret. A secret, Gabe thought, far bigger than any that they could
and did tell him.

Standing
barefoot on the cold morning dewy grass and damp soil before
entering the studio, Gabe could hear children walking to school on
the street out the front. The whole world was out there now getting
on with it just a few feet away. The laughing and screaming kids
were on their way to the primary school that Gabe had gone to. The
older kids he could hear were going to the same secondary school
that Gabe went to. The kids in the primary school would filter up
into the secondary school as all the kids in the secondary school
had done. The same process, again and again, every year as the
years passed. Just like Gabe had done and just like most of the
people in Gabe’s school had done. All to sit these exams like his
year were doing. Then all eventually spat out into the city and the
rest of the world to get on with their lives, shaped in a way that
might help them to be employable or acceptable members of a
supposedly civilised society. Everyone in his school year would be
released soon into the wilderness of more mind control and not for
the first time, Gabe thought, that although everything changed, at
the same time it looked as if nothing really ever did. Only Grace
hadn’t walked past his house that morning and most probably, never
would ever again.

Gabe felt
exhausted still and debated on whether he should just to go back to
his room and stay in bed for the day. Perhaps he was coming down
with something. He was dressed in his all new black clothes and had
even put on the black eyeliner, he wondered if he should give the
studio and sculpture a miss and go and find his friends and start
the party they had planned for later this afternoon a bit earlier?
Johnny had given Gabe the money for it, which basically meant that
he wanted Gabe to go and buy the booze for them all.

But no, not
right now. Right now, Gabe had to go inside the studio, take off
his jacket, release his wings and get started on the sculpture.
Stay hidden inside, at least until his mum’s last client had left
for the day and he had the run of the house again. The last thing
he wanted to do was meet his friends at any stage today, or any
other day for that matter.

As Gabe reached
into his pocket for the keys, he noticed that someone had tried to
knock the padlock and bolt off. Someone had been here. Gabe
immediately guessed at who it might be. Someone looking for their
money perhaps? The lock hadn’t been totally broken, perhaps they
had been disturbed? Perhaps they were inside waiting for him right
now? Maybe they had been in and destroyed his paintings, destroyed
his future? It would serve him right.