Born Different (15 page)

Gabe lied to
his friends all the time, not just about the hump. And they lied to
him too, he knew that. The way they went on about drinking and
drugging and how many girls they had slept with and what they had
done to them, Gabe knew it was all bollocks. Not one of them was
honest about their inner feelings and shames and insecurity about
anything, especially about sex. They all had issues with themselves
and sex, they had to. It is a human condition and no one is immune
to the human conditions, not even them.

They teased
Gabe too about him not wanting to get pissed with them, and Gabe
never even told them what had happened to him the night he had got
drunk. He couldn’t. Would he have done if they were real friends?
They thought that Gabe was a prude, the really odd one, the one
that didn’t really even drink even though he had some of the
greatest excuses to.

But Gabe had
got drunk. One night, when he’d had a few drinks with them at some
party, he had gone home to his studio and started painting. He had
enjoyed the feeling of painting slightly buzzing and high from the
alcohol and he had remembered that he had a bottle of vodka, a
birthday present he had never opened, hanging around the studio
somewhere. He found it in the corner of his mess and as the drink
from the party had started to wear off and as Gabe had wanted to
chase and hold on to the feelings of feeling so good and confident
and comfortable, with no pain in his wings which was a small
miracle, he had opened the bottle of vodka and had just started
swigging straight from it.
Is this not how the great artists
live? Drinking, drunk and free?
He had turned his music up
louder and painted with greater gusto and emotion. He had felt so
confident that he had opened up the doors to his studio, unbolted
them and the windows and left them wide open.
Come and see
me
as
I am
, he had thought.

As Gabe had
drunk more and more, he had felt no shame at all, in fact, he felt
like he could take on the world. For a while, everything made
perfect sense; he would find his dad, he would be friends with
Grace again, he would travel the world, he would be free to live
with his wings out, he would learn to fly, he would never feel
shame ever again. Gabe had continued drinking, chasing the dreams,
chasing the feeling of the universe throwing its arms around him in
the most wonderfully comforting embrace. He had felt sexy, alive
and capable. Capable of absolutely anything.

The next
morning, when he awoke, he was naked. Exposed to the world. He had
been sick in his sleep, on himself and the floor around him. His
paintings were defaced and broken, bottles had been smashed. There
were scrawlings on the walls, scrawlings of pain, hatred, fear and
of images that could have come straight out of hell itself.
Checking his phone he had been so massively worried as he couldn’t
remember getting undressed or finishing the bottle of vodka. Or any
of it! He didn’t for a minute even recognise where he was, let
alone what he had done, who had seen him or who he might have
called.

Then it
descended on him like a flock of violent starving seagulls;
depression, anxiety, panic and a shame, so intense he thought he
was going to die. His body ached worse than it ever had and those
feelings had stayed with him all day. He had felt as if everyone
knew him, everything about him, saw straight through him and that
they detested him for it. It was the worst feeling in the world.
Why the hell do people get drunk if that’s what it does to you?
Perhaps that didn’t happen to other people. Gabe loved the feeling
of a couple of drinks, the soothing and pain killing effect it had
on him, but he realised there was a point in drinking where he
couldn’t stop and then a point where he would be still functioning
but in black out. Doing things that he would never be able to
recall, things that he would rather die than do sober. It wasn’t
worth it. Gabe knew that he could not drink to get drunk, he had to
respect it. The consequences of not, were just too awful to think
about.

The boys
suddenly went quiet, someone was approaching. It was dark now and
the figure was blurred by the twilight of the evening. The person
walked towards them with conviction, definitely headed their way
and they all stopped what they were doing, the adrenalin making the
hairs on the back of their necks stand up. By the time Gabe
realised who it was, it was too late to do anything. Grace had
entered the park and she was walking straight towards them. Gabe
assumed, what he thought the others were assuming too. That
Alistair must have sent her!

The boys just
carried on doing what they were doing. After all, she was only a
girl. Frank carried on swinging on the swings looking like it was
the end of the world and Dave and Johnny were sitting on opposite
ends of the see-saw simulating sex. But Gabe just stood there
waiting, watching Grace take one step after another, closer and
closer to him. Gabe stood tall so as not to appear too humped and
he looked at her straight in the eye. Despite his nerves he tried
to remain calm and reminded himself never to get involved in any of
Johnny’s little plans ever again.

Gabe had to
remember to breathe; his vision had tunnelled with Grace at the
end, the light at the end of the tunnel. He counted to ten in his
head.

“1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.”

And there she
was, not two feet away from him.

“Do you want to
walk with me?” Grace asked.

Gabe couldn’t
believe what he had just heard and thought that somehow the earth
must have shifted and that he had now entered into another
dimension. Or that he was now really asleep at home and this was
all just a dream and he was sure to wake up soon enough.

“Do you want to
walk with me?” she said again and Gabe realised that he was just
standing there smiling and doing nothing but enjoying the moment in
the dream.

Then the lads
started cheering. “Go on Gabe, go on my son. Get in there!” Gabe
was mortified at what they were saying. He realised that he had the
bottle of vodka in his hand so he stuck it in his jacket pocket
quick and pulled his hood up.

“Yeah. OK.”
Gabe nodded to the park exit and walked with Grace away from the
swings and out of the park and up to the path that lead out towards
the main road.

“Sorry,” he
said.

“Sorry for
what?”

“Oh you know…”
and Gabe thought,
for everything. For Alistair, for the robbery,
for my wings, for everything I’m sorry
. But instead he said,
“For that bunch of reprobates over there.”

As Gabe looked
back over at his friends, from where he was standing now with her,
with Grace, everything looked different. Everything felt different.
Gabe could believe that he didn’t even know them anymore, that they
were no more than strangers. They could be any old gang of kids,
from different years, from different parks.

Gabe turned his
back to them and looked at Grace again. Up this close, Grace was
more beautiful than he had imagined, if that was possible. Her
bleach blonde hair had a curl in it today, that sexy, just got out
of bed, look. Her skin looked so soft, her lips so pink and glossy
and her eyes had loads of black eye make-up on, more than Gabe had
on, and Grace’s eyelashes were so long, thick and dark, they were
like spiders and she had all this fine iridescent glitter all over
her. Gabe caught himself, he was staring.

“Sorry,” he
said again.

“Will you stop
saying you are sorry Gabe!”

“You know my
name?”

“Yeah of course
I know your name, we have been neighbours and in the same schools
for like twelve years or something.” She gave him a friendly nudge
that felt like an electric shock and Gabe involuntarily pulled back
from the touch that he craved.

“Yeah sorry,
er, I just thought, no nothing sorry.”
More like Alistair sent
you.

“There was
something I wanted to talk to you about but whenever I see you, you
always look the other way.”

And Gabe wanted
to say sorry, he wanted to say it so much, but he didn’t.

Instead of
walking in the direction of either of their homes, Gabe and Grace
walked towards the river. It was getting dark and Gabe didn’t know
what to say so he just kept quiet. He’d let her speak so that he
could figure out Grace’s part in the whole of this drama.

“Do you
remember that time you had a birthday party and I came?” Grace
broke the silence.

Of course Gabe
did, his tenth birthday party. But he wouldn’t have thought that
Grace would. It was the last thing he was expecting to hear her say
so he let her continue.

“We played hide
and seek and we went in your mum’s room?” Grace paused but still
Gabe kept quiet. He remembered and the feelings he’d had that day
came flooding back. Pure excitement and exhilaration. It was the
year he got his bike, the year he was allowed to start going to the
shops on his own.

“Your mum had
all these crystals that threw off rainbows in all different
directions from the sun coming in through the window and she had
said ‘don’t go in to my room’, because she wanted to keep it neat
but we went in anyway because I asked you if we could and even
though you knew that we shouldn’t, you let me in. You wanted to
show me the rainbows and the crystals so you let me in and it was
amazing. All those crystals spinning, hanging from the ceiling
casting colours in all direction. All those semi-precious stones
and you knew the names for all of them and told me them and how
they were supposed to heal you. And the peacock feathers and all
those huge different coloured exotic silk scarves your mum had
everywhere. Do you remember that?”

“Yes I do.” His
mum had known he’d gone in but she had just smiled knowingly. They
hadn’t made a mess and she knew that Gabe liked Grace, even
then.

“I’ve just been
thinking of that time a lot recently Gabe.”

Gabe didn’t
know what to say or where this conversation was leading. What was
it that she wanted to know? Grace was talking about something that
happened such a long time ago now, like in another life time, a
situation that occurred over a maximum of about half an hour and
had happened over eight years ago. A long eight years. Gabe was
beginning to feel self-conscious, was he a fool for this all in
black thing?

“Is your mum a
counsellor? Gina isn’t it?”

Oh so that was
it. It was about his mum, not him, Gabe reasoned as they walk down
the cobbled lanes of the city’s side streets.

“Sort of...Yes,
but not one of those that just listens I don’t think. She does
healing and things, just caring really. Positive affirmations,
relaxation techniques....that sort of thing.”

“Like a white
witch sort of thing?” Grace wanted to know and Gabe didn’t like the
way this conversation was heading. Was it all a wind up after all?
Her lot. Grace’s lot. The Beautiful. Specifically Alistair, her
‘boyfriend’, knew what they had done and they had retaliated and
now it was his mum’s turn to get a bit of what Johnny’s dad had had
done to him? But why his mum? Gabe wasn’t part of the gang, not
really.

“I better be
getting back.” Gabe turned around and started to head home, to
check on his mum. He’d been an idiot and no money in the world was
worth it.

Grace looked at
Gabe and realised that something that she had said was very wrong.
Gabe was upset and she had upset him.

“Oh no Gabe. I
don’t mean that in a bad way. I...I...I’ve got a friend who wants
to know…”

“Are you going
to tell all your friends? Is that what this is all this about?”
Gabe could have cried, instead, he bit his lip as hard as he could
as crying in front of Grace was just about the worse thing he could
possibly do. But after having had a few drinks on top of the stress
and upset of the last couple of days he’d had, it was a battle.

“I’m sorry
Gabe, I am so sorry. It is not like that at all!” It was Grace
apologising now. “I’m not going to tell anyone, I’m not asking this
for anyone else. I was going to say that I was, I was going to tell
you that I was asking for a friend but that will just sound bad now
and it was a lie anyway and I don’t want to lie to you. I’m sorry
Gabe I don’t know what to say now.” Grace’s face showed a pain in
it despite its beauty and she was holding him, holding his arm to
keep him from walking away.

Grace was
holding him. Her whole hand grabbed his arm tight so that he would
have to use effort to release himself from her grasp. He looked to
her hand, so small with its bitten nails and chipped red nail
varnish. Gabe was confused.

“Can we start
this again Gabe? Please! Let’s talk about something else, anything
else. What do you want to talk about? You start.” She let go of
him, but he didn’t move.

Gabe didn’t
know where to start, it was too odd, they had hardly talked a
single word to each other since that birthday party. They had liked
each other then...and now? And now, look at her, she was beautiful
and cool and he wasn’t, she knew that he was a freak to be avoided.
They had grown up and apart as they had realised things that
children are innocent to. They had learnt to judge. They had learnt
that you must fall into a clique quick at school if you didn’t want
to be alone. They had learnt that who you talk to and who you were
associated with was a big deal and the difference between a
peaceful life and a life of bullying. The difference between a life
of popularity and a life of being a misfit and people aim at being
popular
not
at becoming an outcast. Everyone desperately
wanted to be popular at school. Popular was the dream, outcast was
the nightmare!

Gabe and Grace?
The two figures dressed all in black that were now facing each
other, were polar opposites. They were too far apart on the world
order of things to ever be friends again now. Too much water had
passed under the bridge and those bridges had also been burnt.
Burnt to charred black splinters. Grace was Gabe’s fantasy, not his
reality.