Born Different Read online

  Gabe really wanted to be an artist. Everyone told him that this was nearly impossible though, especially if you weren’t going to go to one of the big art schools or had no one famous in your family. But seeing as these were not options for Gabe and plus the fact that, as far as Gabe could work out, everyone, especially adults and particularly ones in so called authority, talked the biggest load of rubbish going most of the time. They spoke and dished out advice with plenty of conviction, only it was all bullshit. This made Gabe believe, have a small glimmer of hope, that they were wrong and that he might just be able to sell his paintings. Gabe dreamed that one day he would and the truth of it was that Gabe had to start trying to sell his paintings soon because he had to! He had to earn money now. Everything had a cost, even simple living. Just surviving was expensive.

  And Gabe felt that he had to draw. Not just because it kept him isolated and because people told him he was good at it but also because it kept him saner than he might possibly be if he didn’t. Other people might jog or eat a specific diet to stay healthier and Gabe knew he had to draw and paint and create. To him, it was his medicine. Painting in his studio, isolated and alone without his bandages on, with the air on his skin and a paintbrush in his hand were the closest Gabe ever came to feeling like he recognised himself as he truly was and not as someone with so many masks he had no idea who he was from one day to the next.

  “Art is his drug of choice,” is how Johnny put it.

  The problem was, Gabe knew, that if he didn’t start selling his art he would have to almost immediately go and get a job doing something else which would mean that he couldn’t hang out in his studio and paint. If he couldn’t hang out in his studio, he wouldn’t be able to live with his wings out much, if at all, as the job slowly but surely sucked the living hours out of him.

  Gabe had to believe that the only reason he had never sold anything yet was simply because he had never tried. Gabe hadn’t yet been confident enough to put a price to his paintings let alone get out there and promote himself and his work, and secretly he didn’t want to be parted from his painting either as he found himself bonding and getting attached to them. They were, after all, an extension of him, part of him even. There were also the voices in his head that were telling him that he still wasn’t good enough but he was trying to get better. Every day he was trying to get better. He pushed himself further everyday with every painting and he doubted if he would ever be satisfied. But, it didn’t matter now as the time had come. He was all out of choices because if he didn’t start selling his paintings he would have to do something else.

  Gabe knew there was only so long he could procrastinate for. There was only so long he could make up excuses and put it off before fate stepped in and made him up another life path. A life path that didn’t include fulfilling any of his dreams.

  The sun had broken free from the thick grey prison wall of cloud and Gabe felt the heat and light shine down on his face. It felt as if the suns golden rays were filling him up with some sort of spiritual life energy. In the early morning sunlight Gabe let himself relax as the golden yellow glow lit him up. And it was as if the world stood still for a moment and it felt good.

  Gabe stopped still on the pavement and he closed his eyes and as the sun started to heat his face, he tried to think things through. The first thought that he had was compelling, it told him that he should turn around and go home. Go back to his studio and start on this sculpture he wanted to do to make a big impact at The Exhibition. He really needed, more than anything, to start detaching from his friends now. He had needed their company and would be properly alone without them but they had drifted apart a lot these last two years. Not actually physically drifted apart, he saw them now as much as ever, it just wasn’t the same. They weren’t as close. And Gabe really needed to not be with them physically too but he didn’t know how he was supposed to go about doing that? Dump them? Avoid them? A big part of him didn’t want to. A big part of him liked being with them, that still remembered the days when everything was more innocent, genuine and fun. More honest. But everything had changed and Gabe knew that he had to get out now. They weren’t bad people, not really, were they? They just did things now that were illegal or worse, what Gabe believed to be bad, or just wrong. It had been OK for a while but it wasn’t OK anymore. It wasn’t as if they could claim that they didn’t know what they were doing. It all played on Gabe’s conscience which was exhausting. It wasn’t pretend. It was real life and it was his life and Gabe just didn’t want this to be his life anymore.

  It was time, not just to catch Graces attention, to maybe go looking for his father. It was time to really try and be an artist which meant it was time to leave a lot of his old life behind. They only had a couple of weeks left now. After The Exhibition, Gabe would have to get on with his life and that would mean going in a very different direction to his friends.

  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.

  Chapter 6

  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 trou
ble 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 invari
ably 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.