Born Different Page 11

  “Just give him back the box Johnny,” Frank begged, traumatised by recent events.

  “Ah he’s got nothing on me, forget about it. I’ll keep pleading innocence. About time my dad had a kick up the arse. Who fancies getting pissed and going and pulling a few birds in town?”

  “Count me in bro, still got plenty of cash and could do with getting my leg over.” Dave leered and Gabe couldn’t help but look at Dave with more than a little disgust in his eyes, especially after what he had told them earlier as well.

  It amazed Gabe that Johnny and Dave were just able to get on with their lives, to just drink and fuck it all away.

  And they didn’t get him, why Gabe didn’t go to the clubs and sleep around. They knew he was paranoid about his hump but even ugly kids had sex. Dave, Frank and Johnny didn’t know why Gabe just didn’t go for one of the girls at a party. When some girls got drunk, some of them would happily ‘do’ anyone, they had told him. If Gabe put himself in their line of fire he would be on his way to getting laid. Or if he went down to the station of an evening, there were always prostitutes down there and they would help him out, that was their job. They thought Gabe was a good looking boy and the hump wasn’t that bad, they didn’t know why he made such a fuss about it. But these ideas appalled Gabe.

  Of course they didn’t realise that Gabe actually had wings, it would have been one thing undressing in front of a stranger and potential lust conquest if they were expecting some kind of deformity, but another altogether to expose the fact that he had wings. Besides, they forgot, he had done things with girls. Not much. It always got round school. Gabe knew that any girl, however drunk or just because they fancied Gabe, would potentially have their own school life ruined for having kissed the monster. Pushing Gabe ever further out from the flock. But the others weren’t affected that much by it, of course they weren’t as it wasn’t actually happening to them. The mockery and upset that had followed after brief past liaisons had only scarred Gabe.

  Gabe wanted and realised that the only way he could do it was for it to somehow be more real, more honest. Gabe wanted to experience true love, making love, passion, getting to know someone intimately and being friends. Gabe wanted to embrace the whole thing as a bit more precious than ‘a shag’ or, as Dave so ineloquently put it, ‘getting his leg over’. Compared to what Gabe dreamt it could be like with Grace, his other experiences had fallen way short of his expectations and so now Gabe didn’t even bother trying to do it any other way. Gabe was never going to have dozens of notches on his bedpost. It had to be enough to dream that one day, someone would be close and special enough, because the truth was simply that he had no other choice.

  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!

  Chapter 13

  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 u
p 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.

  “Why would you want to talk
to me? We aren’t friends. You have lots of friends Grace, why don’t you talk to them? There are loads of other people you can talk to.”

  “Well we used to be friends Gabe, didn’t we? And I don’t know but I just think back to the past a lot now and I think I’d like to be friends with you again. Those days were good you know Gabe. The best days of my life and I just want a little bit of that back. I think. I don’t know Gabe.”

  Gabe still didn’t really understand what she was going on about but he was torn. Of course he wanted to be friends with her. That is what he had wanted, dreamt and bloody yearned for, for so long, since like...forever. It just seemed a little bit too good, too bizarre, to be true.

  Gabe would just let her talk and see where it went. He didn’t have much to lose and he would keep his guard up. Perhaps it was the all black thing, the clothes, the hair, the eye liner? Maybe she was telling the truth? They kept walking. Neither of them said anything more and it started to get colder and darker and it started to rain.

  The only shelter was under the bridge so they ran there to wait for the down pour to abate. As soon as they were safe under the metal structure, the heavens opened and the rain came down in tonnes, it was almost biblical. They retreated deeper into the dark heart of the metal bridge, as far as they could go, until they were where the metal started to grow out from the solid ground and they sat down huddled together in a high corner to try and avoid getting wet from the back splashes of the encroaching puddles and rising river.

  Gabe got the vodka bottle out of his pocket and offered Grace a swig and they sat hunched with their knees under their chins and their heads almost touching the underside of bridge as the water from the skies crashed all around them. Everything made louder still by the heavy down pour beating down on the bridge. It was like being surrounded by an out of control orchestra of a million kettle drums, it was deafening. With the thunder and lightning now directly over head, it was frightening and exciting.