Born Different Read online

  “Leave it for tonight. She might tell us in the morning darling. You can’t force these things. She will tell us when she wants to and if she wants to. She is in a safe place now. Does she have a boyfriend?”

  Gabe hadn’t even thought of that yet. Grace knew a lot of boys and all the boys knew Grace. She probably did have a boyfriend, of course she must have had a few boyfriends but Gabe didn’t really know who in that gang of hers she was seeing or whatever. Maybe she had a serious boyfriend? More than likely. God how depressing. But she’d have to dump him now, after what he’d done to her tonight.

  Gabe could feel that the vodka had gone to his head. He felt as if his body was separate to him and his wings felt numb. Life had got a little surreal. Who would have thought that the beautiful Grace would be in his house, in his lounge, staying the night, after spending the evening with him and his mum, eating dinner off trays on their knees on their little sofa?

  He thought of something that he had heard once. If you want to see everything, you can either travel the world or stay in one place and watch. Gabe felt that he hadn’t done anything but stay in the same place, this was his home but things were getting interesting. He had always dreamt of running away but for the first time he saw a crack in this theory that seemed to be revealing the possibility of having what you wanted where you were now. Right here, right now. But at the same time Grace was in a bad way so that sort of cancelled out everything else.

  Gabe assumed that Grace would be gone in the morning, sobered up, humiliated and off. Closing the door softly behind her like she would too of the memory of that evening together.

  But he was wrong. By the time he came downstairs, at the time when Grace would, in the past, have usually been walking past his house to school, Grace was with Gina. In his kitchen, smiling over a cup of coffee. They both looked so soft and happy thought Gabe. He felt a little awkward, well more awkward than the normal awkwardness he felt.

  Gina had her own ideas on things but was not one to expose these thoughts, especially not to Gabe, who she thought was so obviously in love, infatuated and taken with Grace. She wondered how he was coping with this new development. He had to learn these things, she had to let go and let him learn for himself the way of love. That rocky terrain that although was full of heartache and pain, was also so imprinted to be so appealing that it never failed to lure people to take its path.

  Gabe thought he might walk Grace back to her house so she could spend some time recuperating or resting or pampering or whatever it was that she did but Grace said she didn’t want to see anyone. She didn’t want to go home, she wanted to keep her head down.

  The bruising actually looked worse today.

  Gabe knew that he needed to finish the sculpture; he needed to get all his art work to school as well at some stage but given the choice, he would pick Grace every time. But if he was with Grace, they couldn’t just hang out in the city where they would see people they both knew. Gabe didn’t think Grace would find it very interesting spending the day in his studio and it would have felt too weird anyway.

  He thought of what Grace might like to do and he could feel his personality morphing to suit her and he checked himself.

  No, I am not going to completely change to suit her. I have got to be me. If she doesn’t like it then at least she will find out now. And what have I got to lose? Gabe thought. When you do not have much to lose, you can do almost anything. The black clothes thing had been for him firstly, then for her, he wasn’t going to pretend to be someone else to trick her into liking him because then she wouldn’t really like him. She would be liking Gabe pretending to be someone who he wasn’t. If she did really like him, she would want more and Gabe wasn’t ready for that either. Better she finds out she doesn’t like me and goes off, than pretending to be someone she might like and get myself into a situation. As Gabe was turning this all around in his head, he realised that Grace was laughing at him.

  “What you laughing at?”

  “Your face, Gabe!”

  “Hmm thanks.”

  “No, I mean it’s cute. The way that it changes when you are thinking and you are having this little conversation in your head and your face is getting all involved.” Grace had got the giggles.

  “Hmm. Yes well, I’ll watch that in the future then.” As if Gabe wasn’t feeling paranoid enough already.

  “Hey no it’s nice, it’s lovely.” She tried not to smile and gave him one of her nudges to make it up to him.

  No one had said it to him before, that he had these habits. No one noticed because they weren’t new to them or they simply just did not notice. Grace must be noticing and she seemed happy enough.

  He thought of what his friends might say if they knew. It’s time to grow up so fuck ‘em, thought Gabe. Fuck the lot of them! He played out their wrong doings in his head and he could feel his face twisting up in frowns and grimaces. Man I’ve got to stop thinking like it. If I keep thinking of all the shit and negativity my face is going to end up all twisted and bitter. I’ve got to think good things, I’ve got to see good things then life just might be good. They say you get the face you deserve so Gabe reckoned if he kept thinking crap and bollocks, his face would show that in its lines. He didn’t want that. He saw people in the street that looked wrecked with bitter and twisted, downturned grimaces, from years and years of their resentful thoughts shaping their faces. Perhaps their thoughts even shaped their lives, leading them down everlasting paths of misery. Gabe wanted a face that read of peace and happiness and serenity. And he wanted that path too! If it was his thoughts that shaped his face, that shaped his actual whole life, he better sort it out quick.

  “Let’s go up into the countryside and on to the coast. Get away from it all for a bit. I’ll borrow mum’s car and we can have a drive around. Maybe take a picnic or something? Go for a walk if the weather’s nice up there. Take a flask of tea. How does that sound?” Gabe thought that Grace might laugh and say, ‘no way let's go to the pub and get pissed’, or something similar instead, but Grace said, ‘Yes!’

  “Gabe, that sounds like the loveliest thing ever. Perfect.” And Grace’s face lit up and looked so pretty despite of its damaged appearance.

  Chapter 16

  Being in the car gave Gabe and Grace a sort of shell of protection from the outside world and from their own self-consciousness. As they looked ahead, along the road towards the horizon, they couldn’t stop talking. They talked about everything and anything. They told brief, edited versions of their life stories. They spoke and discussed their different hopes and fears. They laughed and cried laughing over funny stories. They got on really well and even when they were quiet, it was just peaceful, not awkward or embarrassing. They both just looked out of the window and enjoyed the view and occasionally pointed out a particularly nice looking cloud or landscape view and they drove into the moors until there were no other cars on the road and it was just dirt track after dirt track.

  Gabe didn’t really know where he was going, he just kept going and turned off roads when it felt right to turn, not worrying too much about getting lost. What did it matter if he was with Grace? Finally, they landed in a place that was just like out of a postcard.

  Not far from where the land met the sea, they had found themselves at one of those places that looked like it didn’t really exist, not in real-life, only in fantasy, in imagination, in children’s picture books. The light here today looked polarised; all the colours were more intense and the scenery couldn’t have been more dramatic. There was a stream and a waterfall that glittered and shone like a million diamonds in the sun. Gabe found a place to park, off road so that they would be completely hidden if by chance another car or tractor found its way down here. There was the odd sheep hiding out in the nooks of the rocks and the purple heather stretched as far as the eye could see. The sky seemed vast here. The sun was out almost alone up there but happy, happy in its solitude. It was so warm but with the sea breeze everything felt good and easy. Gabe though
t about how things were falling in to place and how that made life so much easier, a pleasure even. Life was usually a damn struggle and a bloody battle, he was always coming up against situations and people that he felt were difficult and wrong. Maybe, if things came easily, then surely that must mean that you were on the right path? Surely this universe and everything in it hadn’t been created so that life was always about suffering and strife and obstacles? Life should be full of beauty too. Today life was full of so much beauty and it came effortlessly. It came from every direction without so-much as a thought about it. Maybe it was always there, it just took a shift in your thinking and emotions to see it? Perhaps if you touched beauty then it spread like a passionate fire, lighting everything in its path. Perhaps there would always be friction but if you walked the path with love it smoothed the way.

  Gabe took armfuls of blankets and pillows and then the hamper from the boot of the car, he set all their things down half shaded under a tree and they sat and they ate from the basket that Gina had made up for them and drank tea. Everything just felt calm as they were just sitting and listening to the sounds of nature. Listening to the sounds of the light breeze and other sounds they did not instantly recognise, even though they were the sounds that were always there in the background beneath the noises of everyday living. Sounds that could even be coming from the movements of the whispy occasional white clouds up ahead or by the gentle swaying of the grasses and leaves.

  The tune of the stream on its long travels over pebbles and rocks. The sound of heat waves rising and radiating, almost visible when you stared for long enough. All the natural sounds that came from the earth. The primordial sounds that were not invented but had always and forever been.

  Full and tired, they both lay flat with their backs touching right down on the earth, on the warm ground and, surrounded by the soft blankets and cushions with tiny mirrors sewn in, they looked up to the sky and beyond. They felt their bodies connect with the soil and with the crust of their planet and they realised how good it felt just to do that. And they wondered why didn’t they spend more time just doing that? Connecting back with the earth and realising the connection, the life being experienced. Gabe and Grace talked about their ideas on the meaning of life. Of how far space went. Of how small they could think. Of conspiracy theories and scientific thoughts and they thought of other questions that they didn’t know the answers to. They talked of evolution and if even that truth was true, about all the missing information and missing links. They spoke of philosophies they had heard of and read about on the internet and discussed them excitedly. They debated if science would indeed have all the answers one day and if everything could be explained with an equation eventually. And how much it might matter, if anything mattered at all, if anyone did eventually figure it all out.

  Gabe looked over at Grace as she spoke. She was more beautiful by the day. She was still bruised and there was a scab now on the cut on her lip but she looked better, happier. The more Gabe knew her, and got to know her, the more she spoke; the more beautiful she got. Even bruised and battered, Grace glowed. That was the only way he could describe it. Whether it was the sun that day or the position of the land, or something else all together, Grace looked like an angel or a saint in a stained glass window of a church. She had a glow all around her. A golden aura. Even amongst the beauty and perfection of nature, Grace had an ‘other worldly’ iridescence about her.

  Hours passed as they talked and day dreamed and laughed. Gabe took another blanket out of the car and a bottle of wine and they sat there on the side of the moor by the stream and they watched the sun go down. As if seeing that everyday phenomena for the very first time they noted, in detail, how the colours changed so subtly but greatly. As the sky turned from blue to purple to orange to red and pink and then, when the sun had finally disappeared over the horizon, to where people in another land were watching it go down, the sky turned to the darkest black. When the sun was no longer there, with its bright, life giving fire, shining in the sky, they could then see the stars. Stars that were always there but that they were blinded to during the day and even to most nights of their lives due to being indoors, in their own box. Even if they were to look up to the sky from the city, most of the stars and sky was blocked from view by the high rises and the ever present light pollution of the city’s nightscape.

  Up here, where there was no city life and no light pollution, Gabe and Grace could really see in the clear night the millions and millions of stars that seemed to fill every spare space up above. The longer they stared, the more stars seemed to be revealed. It was as if they were both falling deeper into the universe; where it was possible to believe what they had heard, that there were more stars in the sky than there were grains of sand on earth. That if the all the grains of sand from all the beaches and all the vast deserts on earth were added up together they were still outnumbered by all the stars in the sky. The same earth’s sky that the ancients had seen. Distant relatives and forefathers and mothers who would have all also stared up at the night sky in wonder. Before the invention of TV and radios and video games and the internet. Before they knew what any of it meant and even if people now did know the science behind some of it, it was hard not to believe that really it was something so greatly misunderstood and powerful and wonderful. That witnessing the night sky was so life affirming, humbling and at the same time awe inspiring, that there must be so much more to everything than what they knew or could ever know in this, their life time. That there also had to be that other thing, that thing that people had tried to name, that thing that could be God, or Love, or Mother Nature. The Essence of the Universe. That thing that made them human, that gave them the power of consciousness, the ability to question, to reflect, to imagine, to create. To feel feelings so complex, so strong and so deeply, like the feeling of the absolute awe of it all. This was the biggest miracle perhaps, to be able to witness all the other billions of miracles and ask, why?

  Gabe thought of the holidays he had with his mum when he was younger, when they would camp somewhere beautiful and deserted and he could leave his shirt off all summer, and roll around in the dirt and run free. He could use his wings and fly around the hills and up the streams. He could watch the birds and join them as they soared high above the earth, high above any problems or worries. Gabe felt now like he did then. He felt the need to take his shirt off. Undo his bandages, where his wings were, after a day of being stifled in the heat, dripping with sweat. Free them from being imprisoned by layers of material and of shame. The natural and free world was tempting him to join it.

  Gabe thought about facing his greatest fear, exposing something that was way beyond intimate. But Grace had fallen asleep. The wine and the soporific effect of the dark starry night after the sun went down, after its gift of such a hot day, had lulled her to her dreams. Exhausted from all of the deep and passionate conversations they had had today and the ultimate feeling of peace here. This place was like the breast of Mother Nature herself, so calming and safe and natural. Gabe guessed the effects of yesterday’s drama were still tiring her too. She was still refusing point blank to talk to him about it and Gabe didn’t want to push it. Whatever it was, he just wanted her to get better and for it to never happen again. He wished he could lie down next to her and put his arms around her. Hold her, whisper into her hair and tell her that everything was going to be alright. Tell her that he loved her.

  Gabe went to the car and got out the tent that his mum had put in the boot, ‘just in case’. Gabe’s mind wanted to think and obsess over whether his mother was romantic and needed love herself but he battled not to think of that, to concentrate on here and now instead. He was feeling so good and high on life, he didn’t want to feel guilt.

  Guilt is like a weed, it might start small but as soon as you let it in, it takes over and kills everything else. All the beauty and all the peace, the guilt would eat it all up and devour it without hesitation. Guilt like weeds, block out the light.

 
There would come a time, and soon, when he wouldn’t be a burden to his mum anymore. She would be free do to what she wanted and see who she wanted. She could have her life back, be a woman rather than just a mother. He would make her proud of him. That is the thought Gabe kept in his mind, to keep all the other thoughts away for now.

  I’ll make my mum proud! I promise! Gabe made the oath to himself and almost believed it.

  Gabe paced around the hillock trying to find somewhere perfect to pitch the tent. He assembled it quickly in a sheltered spot that was on mostly flat ground and positioned the door looking out towards the waterfall and the fields beyond. He filled the tent with all the extra blankets and then he lay on the grass next to Grace. So near that he could hear her breathing. As he lay his on his back on the ground and looked out towards what his eyes could not see, Gabe talked to the universe, he meditated with his eyes open. He cut all thoughts out of his head and tried to remain in the quiet point where his ego was not involved in the mental conversation, just leaving the voice of his soul, the universal soul, his spirit. Gabe wanted guidance, he wanted to follow the right path, and he wanted to see signs and coincidences to let him know he was doing the right thing. He loved Grace, he loved her so much it was actually physically painful and if she didn’t feel the same, how would he ever cope? Even the thought of her rejecting him made him want his body to shatter into a million pieces.

  He tried to concentrate on his breathing, in time with hers, and he tried to turn all his thoughts into butterflies that flew off as soon as they entered his consciousness. He tried to see beyond the stars, he tried to feel his chakras open up and spin. Gabe wanted to feel a higher vibration of life, he wanted something to make sense. Gabe asked for his spirit guide to talk to him, he breathed out all the tensions he was feeling and he waited and waited to get an answer. But the visions, angels, guides and the spirits seemed to have abandoned him and if they had not abandoned him, Gabe thought that perhaps he didn’t have any. That in essence he was always alone. At the time he most needed to know what to do, he saw and heard nothing. All he could see was Grace and the stars and all he could hear was the breathing of the earth and nature and the breath of the woman that he loved.