Born Different (7 page)

The truth of it
was, that to open some doors to the future he dreamed of, he would
have to slam some others shut. Which was not half as easy as it
sounded. At the moment, it felt a kind of impossible. How do you go
about walking away from the people who had been your only friends,
to save your own skin? How do you refuse an easy way to make money
when you are broke?

They had been
best friends for years, through everything near enough that life
could and did throw at them. All the traumas they had suffered,
they had supported each other through. Gabe knew his friends life
stories; he thought he knew them inside out. They had shared
histories. Shared their childhoods and been the brothers that they
never had and, somewhat tragically, at times even the fathers. Gabe
thought that he knew absolutely everything about all of them. The
truth, however ugly, and the beauty, however slight.

Dave’s father
was in prison doing a pretty long stretch for something that Dave
never really revealed, although he told varying tales with
different details that changed every time the subject was brought
up, which was not very often. His mum was obese. Not just a little
bit fat or a lot fat; she was as fat as you can imagine anyone
getting and still being able to walk about. Dave was a big man but
even he disappeared in her shadow.

Every time
Dave’s mum put one foot in front of the other she farted. It was
like any simple movement or action caused all the trapped wind to
leak out. Loud and long. Unmistakable. And you couldn’t laugh,
which made it worse. You had to pretend like it wasn’t really
happening, which was impossible, especially when she was always
apologising and drawing attention to the fact that she was letting
one off. Gabe laughed to himself because the situation made you
feel like you had to comfort her and say things like, “Oh no,
you’re alright! Don’t worry about it, I fart all the time. You
should hear my mum fart. The dog…” So even though Dave’s house was
the only one where they would all be guaranteed a meal and be
welcome, they avoided hanging out there too.

Dave and his
mum lived in one of those cream washed terraced houses that you see
everywhere; a council house on a council estate. Only their one was
on the roughest estate in the city that they called ‘The Ghetto’.
‘The Ghetto’ was only on the other side of the park but which side
of the park you lived on made all the difference. It was like two
different worlds separated by no more than three acres of land. One
side, clean and neat with pretty flowers planted in all available
spaces and houses that had tumble driers, and the other side, bland
and tired and messy with cars being worked on all the time, at
various stages of disrepair and with the clothes all out on washing
lines. Big old grey, baggy pants and ancient flesh coloured bras
hung out to dry outside the front of ‘The Ghetto’ houses like
bunting as if to say, “We have no shame here!” And it couldn’t be
for the fact that they couldn’t afford tumble driers as they all
had Sky TV and mobile phones. Perhaps they did have tumble driers,
they just liked to hang up their underwear in public like flags. As
a warning or badge of pride.

Dave was built
like a brick shit house and wore a big solid gold chain around his
neck that he took off if ever there was trouble brewing. He had
been known to swing it around his head like a mad man and had on
occasion caused some considerable damage with it. He once told the
police he took it off so as not to get strangled by it and then as
his form of self-defence when he found it in his hand. The police
had let him go. Dave thought he was genius for coming up with
this.

Dave also
always had a witness. “All you need is witnesses,” Dave would say
with a wink and Dave always had a queue of people that would be his
witness.

For years Dave
had been cutting people’s hair, shaving fancy shapes into their
heads. He created complicated Celtic patterns or peoples names,
swirls and stripes; whatever design anyone wanted. Once, a lad had
come to Dave to have his hair shaved all cool to be like his mates
but what this lad did not know was that he had unwittingly
disrespected Dave previously. As revenge, Dave had shaved into the
poor lad’s head, the image of a human figure squatting, taking a
shit. A great big dollop of steaming shit. Apart from being very
funny or humiliating, depending on if it was your head or not, it
was artistically and technically a brilliant job.

Shaving heads
was quick and easy money for Dave, cash in hand. Dave was brilliant
at it, far better than anyone else that did the same sort of thing
in any one of the barber shops on the high street. Dave should have
been rolling in money but he was flash with his cash and he had a
bit of a costly cocaine habit. Dave had branched out into piercing
people too. It was quicker money, less equipment, less mess. It was
a business decision aiming at profit maximisation. Dave was not as
stupid as he looked. He had convinced Gabe to have a couple of
earrings put in his left ear one dull day when it was threatening
to rain and they had nothing better to do. Gabe found it hard to
say no to Dave but he had wanted something different done anyway
and Dave would never have forgiven him if he had gone and got it
done professionally at a piercing place. There had been a lot of
pain and blood. Dave was self-taught at everything he did and
learnt the only way he knew how, the hard way.

Then there was
Frank. Frank’s mum had died of cancer and his dad had lost the plot
and run off. That was in the third year of secondary school.
Frank’s dad had disappeared abandoning Frank, leaving him to cope
on his own which he had managed to do without anyone in authority
realising. Frank did
not
want to go into care.

Being carted
off in the middle if the night either into foster care or into a
care home were Frank’s worst fears. One of his reoccurring
nightmares was of the police, kicking his front door down as the
evil social services people ran in with blankets to cover him. They
would then pick him up and run him down the stairs and outside and
bundle him into the blacked out windowed van that was waiting for
him. Sometimes the nightmare ended with Frank in a padded cell,
other times the van was driven down a dead end road and set on fire
while he was still inside. Frank would watch their manic laughing
faces as he was engulfed by flames.

Frank wanted to
stay where he was, in his house with all his stuff and memories of
his mum. He had wanted to keep going to the same school and be with
his mates. His dad sent him cash in an envelope every month but
there was never a note, nothing.

Everything that
Frank did was about survival. Frank was surviving and all of
Frank’s other ways, his bizarre self-obsessions, that was the way
Frank coped. Gabe thought that Frank’s general obsessions about
food and healthy eating and Eastern fighting techniques, were the
way Frank kept his mind off it all. The mixed martial art scene was
a tight knit little community too and Frank was down there more
often than not, so as not to get lonely. But there was always
something missing.

Frank kept fit
and healthy and clean so as to raise no suspicions that he was
being neglected. Frank wouldn’t have it that he was neglected. But,
if you actually have no parents, no guardian, no one looking after
you, looking out for you, caring for you, that has to be a severe
form of neglect for a young person. But somehow Frank had managed
to pull it off. Thinking about it, what you actually had to do
daily for yourself, actually cleaning your own clothes and your own
self, actually getting up and going to school. Not being late,
being on time, feeding yourself, figuring out how to pay bills and
rent. Doing everything on your own from the age of fourteen, lying
after yet another parents evening or event where no one turned up.
Signing everything yourself. Raising no suspicions ever. That was
nothing short of genius. Most kids take their parents for granted
and wouldn’t brush their teeth if they thought they could get
around it or cheat it. They would leave plates and plates of food
under their beds until they turned green with mould, like Gabe did,
and not get out of bed until they were nagged and pushed. Frank had
to do all these things because there was no one there telling him
that he had to.

Gabe thought
that Frank was such a nice kid really, soft and gentle on the
inside. Not that anyone in their right mind would initially judge
him that way at first sight. Frank looked like a little underweight
pit bull, all short and sinewy, twitchy and jumpy. Frank was a
nervous wreck, for all the exercise that he did; all that special
breathing and cardio and he still was like a cat on a hot tin
roof.

Frank said he
was glad that his dad had buggered off as it meant that he didn’t
have to, “Look after his sorry arse too and get the back of his
hand for his trouble.” But he missed his mum, he hadn’t even had
the chance to grieve for her, let alone have the freedom to be an
angst riddled teenager. The other characters that have to be in
that play for Frank to take his part had gone, so Frank had to
adopt another role. He was winging it, perhaps not the best way,
but the only way he knew how. At the moment it felt like forever
but it wouldn’t be forever, would it? He was eighteen now, a man.
Frank had thought that it would all change the day he turned
eighteen but nothing had happened. Social services couldn’t kidnap
him now and take him away but the anxiety stayed put, it had become
a part of him, like he would always be waiting to get caught
out.

Frank, like
Gabe, had also never had a proper girlfriend but that was purely
down to the fact that Frank didn’t like girls. Well, not in that
way. Frank was probably Gabe’s best friend out of the lot of
them.

And then there
was Johnny. Johnny was the leader really, even though none of them
would ever say as much. Johnny was a charmer. Tall, dark, handsome
and smooth with it. Johnny was too handsome, the sort of handsome
that made people stop and stare or get all coy.

Johnny couldn’t
read or write, he said that the words just looked all jumbled up to
him. He had never told the school this and they hadn’t noticed,
they just thought Johnny must be cocky and lazy, which he was too.
But Johnny could do maths in his head. Like any sum you gave him he
could do. Johnny was a numbers whizz kid.

Johnny was also
manipulative, sneaky and probably a pathological liar. But what
people didn’t seem to understand was that there was something about
Johnny’s brain that was different, it was like something that you
were supposed to have was missing because for the part of his brain
that was so perceptive and accurate, there was a part that made up
stories and saw things other people didn’t. And sometimes his
personality changed so much it was like there were two Johnnys.
Gabe was no expert but he wouldn’t have been surprised to find out
that Johnny had been diagnosed with something, some identifiable
mental illness. Gabe thought he was getting worse but perhaps that
was just the dope that Johnny was smoking.

And, if he was
going to be honest with himself and call a spade a spade, then
Johnny was really just a thief. Hopefully, Gabe thought, just for
now, just to get by. Not forever. Just till he had enough to go
legit. And if Johnny was good at stealing, he was even better at
selling. Johnny could sell you something you didn’t even know you
wanted, before you even had a chance to think about it.

Johnny’s mum
had hooked up with a multi-millionaire when Johnny was still really
little. The ‘multi-millionaire’ had made his money in something to
do with refurbishing big institutions with all the newest in
innovation, technology and computers. Johnny’s mum had immediately
dumped his dad and their old life, which included Johnny.

Johnny was
supposed to live with his mum but he had invariably been left at
his dad’s, who had had to move into a poky little flat after the
divorce. Johnny’s mum had never come to pick him up when she was
supposed to, she’d be hours late or cancel at the last minute or
just not turn up at all. And little Johnny would have been waiting
by the front door, all ready with his overnight bag packed, excited
about seeing his mummy, just to be told that she’d called and she
was actually in Paris for the week shopping down the Champs Elysee
or something like that. Stuck for another week in Dubai, in the
Swiss Alps; somewhere nicer than here. Somewhere having more fun,
having a better time.

Johnny’s mum
was always out or away, staying in fancy hotels, holidaying on the
beach in California or other exotic locations, first class all the
way. This millionaire had come along and taken Johnny’s mum away
and she had gone without so much as a backwards glance at him. She
bought Johnny expensive stuff, or rather gave him stuff that her
new husband had got through his business; all state of the art
Apple laptops and iPhones. Johnny got a lot of his gear that was
for sale from this very source.

Johnny had
realised early on that these things he was given had a good resale
price and as they had no sentimental attachment to him, as he
wasn’t going to need half a dozen of the same thing, it all made
sense. Because that’s what she did, she would give him the same
thing after another trip, another ‘shut up’ present. Not a ‘guilt
present’ as she felt no guilt, but it would be the same thing he
already had. It was like she had just gone to the store cupboard
full of the same item and just picked him out another one. It meant
nothing when chosen and given like that. A present given in this
way doesn’t delight even the most grateful of receivers.

The realisation
that this so-called gift was something he might be able to get a
couple of hundred quid for, eased the pain a little. And Johnny
loved his mum, he would not hear a bad word said against her and he
missed her really badly but she was gone. Like a death without a
death, a loss without a proper reason to grieve and in some ways
worse because she had chosen a man and money and a lifestyle over
him. And it wasn’t something that you could label, she hadn’t
chosen drugs, she hadn’t beaten him, she had not died or
permanently run off. And, to the outside world, how can you
possibly be neglected if you got such expensive gifts?