Born Different (5 page)

Grace was the
light to his dark, the genius to his fool, the cool to his
awkwardness. She was the beauty to his beast. He knew that he
should try and forget her and not torture himself. Wanting
something that you can never have is exciting for a while but there
comes a point when it is just draining and it becomes wiser to
focus instead on the things that make you feel better, that are
perhaps slightly more achievable.

But Gabe
preferred to torture himself. Grace was like a habit or an
addiction that he just couldn’t let go of. He had tried to turn his
attentions away from her but all that had achieved was cementing
his realisation that nothing compared to her.

Grace, Grace,
Grace.

Her name had
become like mantra to him.

Now that there
were only the last few exams left to take, that was the only reason
for going to school, unless you wanted to prepare for The
Exhibition like Gabe was supposed to be doing. But Grace didn’t
take Art. She didn’t take any of the subjects Gabe did. Grace was
all sciences. Grace was the science to his art. Grace was all about
facts and Gabe had to rely on fantasies.

Perfect
Grace.

Imperfect
Gabe.

This morning,
probably one of the very last when he would still be able to, Gabe
watched Grace walk elegantly past and into the distance and was
surprised to see a man join her under her umbrella. Grace usually
always walked alone to school in the morning.

The man
confidently put his arm around Grace and Gabe saw that the man in
question was Alistair. Gabe felt a kick to the stomach and a punch
to his heart that knocked him back from the window. Alistair, one
of Grace’s clique. Another wealthy, beautiful and gifted life
member. How could he ever compete? Grace must be dating him or at
least Alistair was trying it on with her if he hadn’t already. What
was he thinking? They were probably going out with each other,
doing everything. Fucking. Gabe couldn’t help himself instantly
picturing the image of Grace and Alistair naked together in a
passionate embrace and he tried to block the image from his eyes
with his palms of his hands and, for a split second, Gabe wished
that he was Alistair.

Then he could
do all of the things that he wanted to do with ease. As it was, he
would have a hard time doing anything decent. His path would be one
of suffering and struggle, as that was the hand that he had been
dealt. Gabe had neither the balls nor the self-confidence to even
talk to Grace, let alone just go up to her and put his arm around
her. She was in a different league and he had to accept that. But
it still pissed him off! It should be his arm, it should be him.
Gabe caught his disfigured appearance in the mirror. It should
be...if it wasn’t for the wings.

“Gabe! I’ve got
a client coming first thing darling.”

“Ok mum. I’ll
be down in ten.”

Gina, Gabe’s
mum, was a therapist of sorts. She was into all the new age and old
age therapies, the homeopathic and holistic. Massage, meditation,
crystals, chakras. When her business had started picking up, they
had converted the small office at the front of the house into a
therapy room for her and they had converted the garage in the
garden into a private art studio for Gabe.

Gina’s clients
didn’t like to think there was a teenager hanging around just as
much as Gabe hated bumping in to the various people that came to
see his mum. People liked to keep their healing all a bit anonymous
and shrouded in a cloak of something. Pride, guilt, denial or
whatever. But still, in the past, when they had caught sight of
Gabe, their panic soon turned to pity. They had said things like,
‘But for the Grace of God’, suddenly feeling much more grateful for
their own lives and lack of deformity; which was a bit much when
they were obviously in need of healing themselves. To make life
simpler for all concerned, Gabe kept out the way. He hid in his
studio, or went out and walked the streets even when he didn’t want
to, so as to stay out of the house and avoid the strangers.

Everyone is a
stranger, thought Gabe as he looked out of his window again, Grace
had disappeared and Gabe looked at all the other people that were
out there today. He recognised a few of them, the same faces that
he saw everyday even though he had never spoken to them and had no
idea who they were. They too, like clockwork, were going about
their lives wrapped around a rigid timetable. There were men, women
and children and they were all scuttling around like beetles. Gabe
thought of all the people that were alive now. There were hundreds
of thousands of them that lived in this city, millions and millions
more of them beyond what his eyes could see. In other cities, in
other countries, all across the world.

Gabe thought of
all the billions of different people that were out there now,
living their lives. Getting up, going to bed, having sex, fighting,
shitting, being born and dying. In all the different cultures, in
all the different countries, in all the different time zones. Were
they all as sour faced and robotic as the people here in what they
had been told was a civilised society?

Gabe wondered
if there was anyone else out there just looking out of their window
like he was. Was anyone else looking out for someone else, for
something more? Someone, something, or someplace more...like them?
Was anyone else seeing, searching and not just looking? Was there
really no one else out there with wings?

Gabe thought of
Grace and how she made him feel. How just a brief glimpse of her
caused his heart to jump in his chest, made his breath catch in his
solar plexus and how even just expecting to catch sight of her
caused the sensation of a hundred butterflies to dance in his
abdomen as they headed, fluttering, down towards his groin.

Grace’s
presence and aura had shifted something in him and awakened parts
of his physicality that had not stirred before. Gabe didn’t know
what it was about her other than something in her chemistry and his
chemistry made his biology go haywire. Grace, without even knowing
it or trying, made Gabe feel like he touched at those magical and
elusive feelings that made everything, somehow alright. That is why
he took the torture, for the pleasure it still gave him.

He
had
to do something
now
to get her attention.

But he had
never even said hello. Even when he had seen her again and again,
every day, he still had never made a single move. Why? Shyness,
fear, embarrassment? And what was there to lose, Gabe asked himself
continuously, by simply saying hello! Compared to what there was
potentially to gain, which was what Gabe fantasised about in his
wildest dreams. Gabe would work himself up and convince himself in
a dozen ways and say to himself ‘tomorrow’.

Tomorrow, I
will get the courage to speak to Grace, to ask her how she is. To
just say hello! To reach out somehow to her and make some sort of
contact. But he never did. He was always stopped by something. Some
inner voice that told him that it would be too weird, that she
would think that he was a creep and too ugly and desperate, or pass
some other unfavourable judgement. So Gabe had always, despite all
of his plans and promises, done nothing. He had convinced himself
that it was better to dream than to try and live that dream.

Gabe thought in
his darkest moments that this was exactly what he was, just a
collection of dreams that he would never fulfil. All these dreams
he had, that kept him going, were just that, dreams! Gabe felt an
ever present anxiety, like a cloak of nervousness, that he would
never achieve any of his dreams. It would be so easy not to. To
just say ‘tomorrow’ and get into the next routine and watch the
time tick by, fast forward, decade by decade. Wake up at sixty,
never having achieved anything. Never having felt the elements on
his back, on his wings. Never having learnt to fly. Never having
sold a painting. Never having made the effort to find out anything
about his own father. Never moving out of home even, staying here
forever. Isolated, dreaming and trapped. Alone. This was his
current path and what was currently looking like his fate in
life.

But it had come
to the point that the thought of nothing changing from how it was
now, the thought of never seeing Grace again, the thought of never
being able to paint, the prospect of living all bandaged up like
this forever, like an invalid, it was getting too painful, which in
turn was forcing Gabe tight in to a corner and the only way out was
to see if he could possibly do anything about trying to change his
own destiny.

But Gabe didn’t
know where to start. Gabe couldn’t even speak the words to Grace
that were on the tip of his tongue. And all of it, the pain of it
all, was all making him ill. He was convinced of it. Like a
sickness in his soul and heart, the massive difference between his
dreams and his reality.

Gabe suspected
that life really was just a game and if you lost, you missed out on
all the prizes. And if that was the case, that life was a game, a
complicated, complex, confusing game with secret rules, then Gabe
doubted if he was even taking part. Was life just another team
sport that he had failed to get picked for?

All Gabe knew
was that the tomorrows were running out. The last tomorrow was
looming. Gabe knew it and he suddenly felt it in every atom of his
entire being. Time was running out.

Gabe’s phone
buzzed again, shaking him out of his trance. This time, he picked
it up and checked the text messages that had been coming through
all morning. All of them were from his friends; Dave, Frank and
Johnny. All of the messages saying the same sort of thing, wanting
him to come out and meet them as soon as he could as Johnny had a
plan. Gabe knew exactly what sort of plans Johnny made. They
involved getting rich quick by any means possible, which were by
design, blurring the lines of legality.

Johnny’s text
said to wear dark clothes but as Gabe was already dressed in what
he always wore, a combination of multi coloured, paint splattered,
heavy and bulky check shirts and an old patterned jumper. And the
fact that he had no dark clothes anyway, this would have to do.

As Gabe went to
leave his bedroom he instinctively checked himself in the mirror
for the very last time before he would be in the arena of the
general public and he saw that he was all bent over and stooping.
The hump looked worse when he stooped but it was hard not to with
the wings buckled up behind him and weighing heavily, folded up
tight shut on his back. He tried to stand tall and straight. It was
an improvement, but too painful to maintain for long.

Gabe looked at
the way that he was dressed and for the first time he realised that
it didn’t help his cause. The way he looked, the way he dressed,
the way he presented himself. He looked like a clown down on his
luck. A distorted, well washed, rainbow with holes in it. He looked
a state, he looked more like a homeless children’s party
entertainer than an artist. Talk about looking the freak. He
certainly was dressed the part. Gabe didn’t mind being an outcast
but he did think he minded looking like one. Gabe accepted he was
different, he wanted to be different, but he just didn’t want to
come across as just a weird scruffy bastard anymore.

He had never
really figured out how to dress to suit his form, not that he had
really given it that much thought. It wasn’t exactly easy to find
clothes that fitted a hump and outcasts aren’t known to follow
fashions. But it dawned on Gabe that perhaps now, with The
Exhibition coming up, with time running out to get Grace’s
attention and the prospect of being in the ‘real world’, he needed
to change all that too. What he needed a complete over haul and
quick, before it was too late. He needed to change. And he needed
to change everything about his whole life.

Another text
came in from Johnny.

DRIVER NEEDED.
BE HERE 9AM. 1K GUARENTEED.

It seemed like
too much money. The higher the price the bigger the risk. But short
of a lottery win or finding a bag of notes on the side of the
street, this offer, at this precise moment in time, as far as Gabe
could see it, was his only option.

Downstairs,
Gina was waiting for him like she always did. A chance to connect
before their days began. “Last one today Gabe, darling. Are you
going to do some revising or…”

“I’m going to
go out this morning mum, clear my head. If I don’t know it by now I
never will.” He certainly was not going to revise now. If he hadn’t
learnt it by now, then he wasn’t going to learn it all in half a
day. He wasn’t going to tell her about what he was really up to
either.

“Right you are,
do you want to borrow this new meditation CD I’ve just come across.
It’s just wonderful, relaxing, affirming...”

“No you’re
alright mum.” His mum was always trying to get him to take up some
of her therapies but Gabe was having none of it. Not without a
fight anyhow. It might have been great for her and all that but it
had been bad enough being a kid that constantly smelt of Nag
Champra incense without getting all involved in it too.

But of course
he did get involved, it would have been impossible not to. He even
burnt incense for himself now. But now was not the time to go and
sit and listen to a guided meditation. Gabe had always felt a bit
of a fool when he had agreed finally to take, or let Gina practise,
some of the therapies that she was into on him. Even if he felt
better afterwards, he felt like an idiot for kidding on to what he
couldn’t believe in intellectually.

Gina had chased
him out the house with burning charcoal sticks on the day of his
first exam and it would have been funny, if only he hadn’t been so
consumed by embarrassment. But she believed it all, it was only
Gabe knowing what normal people would make of it all that made his
rash start to heat up.