Born Different Page 23

  Gabe felt now like he had said what he had wanted to say. He felt the release of the anger by expressing his truth. He was calm now, surprisingly calm. There was only one thing left to say and Gabe was surprised with himself for feeling compassion for this man.

  “Do you not, in moments of peace or in your dreams, want true love? Do you want that? Do you actually want the things that money cannot buy? How much do you have if you take away all the money? Who would still be stood there holding your hand and loving you then? You know nothing of things that make you feel it’s good to be alive somewhere so deep down inside of you that you feel blessed.” Gabe was finished now. He looked Grace’s father in the eye and saw him for what he was, a confused power hungry little man.

  Grace and Nathaniel looked at their father, adult children with tear stained faces.

  Grace’s father bowed his head, as if in shame. As if he knew the truth. It was, in a way, a relief. He had been living a lie, he had started something that had given him power, esteem, respect and it had got out of control. He saw the faces of his wife and children and he remembered what it had been like, in the old days. Before the success, before the money; another lifetime ago when it was just them, the four of them against the rest of the world.

  The innocence in his children’s eyes had now been replaced with a deep agonising pain and for the first time, he recognised a small glimmer of the responsibility that was his. He had come close to seeing it before but he had thought that he would have had an immediate breakdown if he had admitted it to himself. That if he even so much as gave a thought to where he might be at fault that the flood gates would open. Grace’s father felt like he had lost control and that had always been his greatest fear. But when it came down to it, it was a relief. A huge relief.

  Gabe, who had always bitten his tongue and kept his ideas and opinions to himself, saw that sometimes you had to say something; to defend yourself, to defend your family, your loved ones. He had done it and Grace’s father had not killed him. He was not thrown out of the hospital. He had not been struck by lightning. If anything, Gabe felt that much better about himself. In respecting himself, his mum and his girlfriend, his true inner self-respect had grown.

  Something changed in that room that night, something clicked, something was revealed that had been hidden before. Looking back, it was a night of crossroads and paths were chosen and made. It was a day and night of awakening.

  Chapter 28

  Gina told everyone that came to the house that Gabe, ‘The Man with Wings’, was out of town after the furore of the day before.

  “What are you going to do Gabe? It doesn’t look like people are going to give up interest in a hurry.”

  “I’m still thinking about it. Grace texted me to say she is feeling better, she wants to get out of the hospital.”

  “Today? Is that alright? Well you know what I think about hospitals Gabe but the medical profession do a have their place.”

  “We need to get away mum.”

  Word had spread about The Exhibition and Gabe and the small matter of him having wings. It was the talk of the city. Everyone who bumped into anyone else let them know what they knew about ‘The Man with Wings’. Neighbours that didn’t even like or know each other even mentioned it. Someone was knocking on their front door every couple of minutes and their phones didn’t stop ringing.

  Gina could see that Gabe was itching to get to Grace but they were trapped in the house by everyone who had decided to turn up on the off chance of getting a glimpse of the wings.

  “Hang on a minute love, I’ve got a plan.” Gina went to the front door and shouted over at the growing gathering. They momentarily stopped, like statues, with the door they had been waiting to open all morning, finally actually opening.

  “Just had message from Gabriel, he’s back at the school and they’re doing a re-filming of The Exhibition, for Sky TV or something. He’s there now!”

  The crowd rapidly dispersed.

  “Thanks mum, you really are the best. You know, today feels like a good day for flying.” Gabe kissed his mum on the cheek and held her tight before disappearing out of the back door.

  Gina’s phone went off again but this time she didn’t ignore it. It was a text, from Gabe’s father, she had seen him at The Exhibition. Gina replied and told him what she thought she knew, she thought that it was the right thing to do. He had abandoned her but she understood better than anyone how that may have seemed like the only option. She forgave him. She was so proud of Gabe, she couldn’t hate the man who she had adored so much anymore and besides, Gina needed a lift and she hoped that Cassiel still had that motorbike.

  Chapter 29

  As they drove up into the moors and headed towards the coast, Gabe realised that they were being followed. First by a scooter or two, then by a few cars and then by people carriers, vans and 4x4’s carrying half a dozen people. Not one car over took them, they all stayed back, behind their car. They were definitely being followed, en mass.

  Gabe had told his friends and his mum of their intentions. Grace had told her mum and dad and Nathaniel; the rest had heard through rumour, gossip and here say.

  Word had got around. It had spread around the kids that they had been at school with and everyone that they knew. Around the pubs, clubs, shops and streets of houses of the city and beyond. And in a flash, it was as if everyone knew and everyone wanted to go and see. So people came from all over packed in to cars, camper vans, on mopeds and on motorbikes. Some people packed tents and gas stoves and sleeping bags. Some hitched and some waited for the rare buses. It was as if almost everyone in the city was now heading out towards the sea, on what was the most glorious sunny day.

  Gabe and Grace had reached their special place and they stood at the top of the cliff, holding hands. They looked out towards the distance, to the horizon to where the sea met the sky. They looked all around themselves at the beauty and wonders of Mother Nature. The sea below was rough and angry, the wind snapped around them, yet they felt so calm. Like standing in the eye of the storm.

  They looked at each other from time to time and they smiled through their tears. Tears of joy and of pain released. But mostly, they let the elements and their thoughts hit their bodies and minds relentlessly until they could no longer feel or think of anything anymore.

  It was just the two of them together in this world, alive and living, in love and free to be themselves. The past was gone and the future was going to have to be brighter, but all they had was this moment, the present. Stood here together there was nowhere else that they would rather be. For the world and life, in all its miracle and wonderment, for all the human kindness and compassion, they seemed to have come up against so many difficulties, so many harsh people, so much judgement and unfairness and struggle, that it had seemed like there was no way out.

  They must have been standing there for about an hour but it felt like a life time and Grace was getting tired now. She couldn’t cry anymore, she still felt weak and she just wanted to get on with it now, just do it. End what they had started, so that they could start all over again, afresh.

  Grace let herself drink up the last feelings and thoughts of everything that had happened for the last time and she gave Gabe’s hand a squeeze. She was ready.

  Gabe looked at Grace. He knew it was time too.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Grace spoke through the wind.

  “I am as sure as I have ever been sure about anything in my whole life. Without you I am nothing. Without you I am nothing at all.”

  Gabe and Grace turned around and they looked behind, to where there seemed to be hundreds of people standing, watching and waiting and still gathering. Everyone that had felt compelled to come had come and they were still coming from far and wide, to see with their own eyes ‘The Man with Wings’.

  Gabe and Grace’s family members and friends had made it to the front of the crowd and were ordering the others back as they encroached on the couple standing now on the very
edge of the steep cliff.

  Frank, Dave and Johnny sensing that Gabe was looking at them turned and held up their left arms and made fists in the air, showing their tattoos etched on to their wrists. The eye above lll inscribed on them forever so that they would never forget. The tattoo that would always be there to remind them, remind them of what they needed reminding about, the only things that really mattered. This simple act filled Gabe up with even more strength and conviction.

  Gina was there too and she had faith, she had faith in Gabe. She had often wondered how it would all end for Gabe. How he would ever cope or simply survive in this world? The pains he might suffer and what if the worse were to happen? She had imagined in a million different ways losing him but Gina had never imagined this. She knew now that there was nothing more that she could do. She had to let him go. It was time.

  Gabe and Grace now turned from the growing crowd of people they knew and plenty more that they did not and they looked out from the cliff’s edge, where they were standing, back out towards the far distant horizon. Out to the vast sea, to the future, to the unknown.

  They had been pushed to the edge and now there was no other choice. Gabe saw himself as Grace saw him, she had given him back himself. The self he had always wanted and dreamed of being, just himself. He believed now that life was full of possibilities. Infinite possibilities. That you couldn’t hide away forever, not without wilting and getting undernourished emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.

  With the sun burning down on him, Gabe felt like he understood. He had to go towards the light. He had made it there, to the end of the tunnel.

  “Gabe!” Gabe turned to look at Grace and he stroked her hand one last time and she opened her eyes wide and she mouthed the words to Gabe that she had always wanted to but had not uttered out loud to anyone since she was a child because she had lost all faith in them. The words that Gabe feared he would never hear Grace say because they would never be true.

  “I love you.”

  “I LOVE YOU!” Grace shouted so loudly that even the crowd heard.

  “I love you Gabe. I loved you that first night, you know that. I didn’t have to tell you.”

  Gabe and Grace kept holding hands until the very last second and Gabe wanted to just shut his eyes tight and not look but he didn’t, he knew that he has to face his fears wide eyed. He had to right some wrongs, here and now. He had to show them all.

  He led Grace back from the edge and he let go of her hand and kissed her face. But as he turned his back on them all, Gabe felt his throat begin to constrict as his lungs stalled. Even at the end, fear had come to stop him.

  Looking out to the vast space of sky, Gabe faced his fears and took two fast strides towards the very edge of the cliff and he jumped.

  Gabe jumped high up into the air, towards the sun and into the light, he spread his arms and his wings out wide and he tensed every muscle in his body and then, Gabe descended, out of sight of all the onlookers, sharply down towards the water.

  Everyone who was watching from the safety of the rock solid ground, gasped in shock and horror at what they had just witnessed. Every one of them had their entire lives flash before their eyes as it hit them what this man has just done; the obvious consequences. For a split second, they all felt consumed by guilt as their weaknesses were revealed to them. Their own cruelty. What had they done chasing a young man up here? A young man who was so in love with this girl, and she him. They had seen him with his wings and they had said bad things but really, they realised, the wings had been really, really beautiful. If anything, they had been jealous and worse. They saw their own ugliness and then, their very own beauty. From the solid footing they had on the soil of the earth, they all felt their mortality and it felt like a gift to be just here and alive. The potential presence of death so near had shook them to realise that they were alive. Really alive. And it was a revelation. Like an awakening from a long and deep slumber.

  Descending fast, Gabe stretched himself out wide again. He knew he could do it. He knew that he was born to do it. This was his curse and his gift. He had to do it, for his mum, for his dad, for Grace, for his friends and for all the people that he felt judged and hated him too. Judging and hating was a prison of its own, Gabe realised, and if he felt people should give him a break, then perhaps he should give others the same benefit. So perhaps most importantly, Gabe had to do it for himself. And in doing it for himself, he was doing it for everybody else too.

  Gabe summoned every ounce of strength that he had, from his muscles and from his spirit. The growths, his wings, that he has kept in the dark, folded up tight behind him for so many years, were now in the fresh air with the wind blowing through them and the rays of the sun lit them up, free at last in their natural habitat after having been incarcerated for so long. They now spread out into their real, full magnificent glory.

  Immediately, Gabe started to glide instead of descend. His torso and legs skimmed the freezing cold water waves of the sea and only Grace could see him and she suddenly felt safe, totally safe, her body stopped compelling her to jump too. They were no longer falling.

  Gabe knew what he had to do and he pulled his wings up behind him and he turned his head up towards the blinding white sun, now burning bright and high in the cloudless blue skies above him and he soared up through the air like it was instinctual to do.

  Gabe flew up to Grace with ease and serenity.

  Gabe felt the heavy meshed weight of anxiety, that usually sat on his lungs, dragged on his shoulder blades and surrounded his heart, gradually lighten as it slowly unravelled and dissolved away. Until it was gone and it was, as if it had never even been there. Gabe could breathe, finally really breathe, as if for the first time. And now, in front of everybody that had followed them up here, with his secret finally exposed, Gabe hovered effortlessly in the air with his wings out bare, naked and real.

  Gabe looked to the crowd, into the eyes of all the people looking at him. He was looking the world in the eye and the world was, for the very first time, looking back at him.

  With everybody’s eyes on him; the masses, The Middles, The Beautiful and The Damned, everyone; incredulous and speechless, impressed and in awe. Gabe saw something in every one of them that he recognised in himself. He saw their own individual life stories, their secrets, their struggles that were as important to them as his were to him.

  Gabe could see how different everyone was and at the same time, how similar they all were. And right here, right now, Gabe made this his truth.

  And everything, in that moment, made sense.

  Gabe felt all the emotions, from love to pity, every feeling different and as valid. Not good, not bad, but just the experience, the adventure, the life.

  Every eye was on Gabe and they all too saw themselves in him, they saw their story, their secrets, their lives revealed. They saw the similarities and the differences and they knew that both were as precious. They glimpsed at the truth, and with that…Gabe began to fly.

  In the end a paradox, of course

  That nothing really matters, and at the same time, every little thing does.

  Thanks and Gratitude

  Always and forever to my children; Eden, Sidney and Hunter

  My love-kids; Kayley, Christian and Olivia

  To my soul sister, Julia King

  To all the friends and family along the way; past, present and future

  Sally Mapley for reading first and being so massively positive

  The brilliant Erasure and INXS for their music and the lyrics at the beginning

  Prince and Placebo for their constant unwavering companionship

  Ditto Puppy La La.

  And always to Trent, you healed my wings after they had been damaged almost beyond repair, I love you.