Born Different Page 8

  “You’d suit the black hair dye you would. And your eyes. Wow! They really would pop with a little bit of eyeliner under those lids. If you buy the dye you get the eyeliner free!”

  Gabe tried to smile convincingly and felt like he couldn’t say no and potentially offend this man’s tastes and opinions for the sake of £2.99. And why not? He said he wanted to be different, totally different Why not go the whole hog? It was no time for pussy-footing about it.

  “Yeah? Thanks. I’ll take them too then.”

  Gabe just wanted to get out now. He felt light headed but it felt good. Leaving the shop, he felt a sense of achievement that others might feel climbing their own mountain. He had got into a routine. He saw it now. All those years of school and now he was breaking free. He really was putting in some action to change and it felt good. It was one thing thinking about everything, having dreams and ideals, but nothing ever changed without some form of action. Gabe felt as if he had almost entered into another dimension. The sun was shining but it was still cold and the air was clear and fresh. He had no memories in his head from neither this morning nor any thought about the immediate future of the exam this afternoon. Gabe was surrounded by the moment and he felt revived already.

  If he went straight home, he could do his hair and change before the exam. There was just about enough time to dye his hair and get dressed in his new clothes. Enough time to make the transformation. And Gabe knew that if he didn’t do it right now, he never would.

  It would be the last time he saw any of the other students before The Exhibition; it might even get people talking about him and not for the usual reasons. It might even make him feel different to the way he usually felt and that couldn’t be anything but better. Gabe smiled to himself and realised, as if for the first time, just how miserable he had been.

  *******

  The huge school quadrangle was heaving with shrills and hysteria. The morning exam takers were leaving as the afternoon ones were turning up. Ill, pale looking kids were sitting with their heads in their hands. Some were crying, others were jumping up and down on the spot holding on to others doing the same thing, for whatever reason. So much tension and pressure for such young adults that should be running free and enjoying their youth. Yet here they were instead, feeling like they were on deaths row. Someone was sick, someone else fainted.

  Gabe realised now how nervous he was. His stomach was doing somersaults and he felt a bit sick for the smell of it and then he felt faint too. He suddenly realised that he hadn’t had anything to eat yet today. It was a bit like witnessing some trauma or fiasco except this was all planned and imperative. The authorities were putting them through this. This is what they had signed up for. This was a form of torture. But Gabe felt a protective bubble over him. He didn’t even feel like Gabe, dressed the way he was now.

  He had to go to the bathroom, just to splash his face with water, to run some cold water over the pressure points of his wrist to cool down. He was not looking forward to the next few hours of sitting in one place with a hundred other sweating, breathing kids.

  In the cool, damp, piss stinking room with urinals lining the wall, Gabe stood in front of the row of sinks in the dimly lit boy’s loos. He tried to calm himself down, he tried to breathe deeply; get some more oxygen into his system but the air was saturated with the mix of pungent ammonia and bleach. He tried to clock into a place of peace. He had rushed to get here after the transformation and he needed to calm down a bit. Everything was getting too much.

  Gabe checked his reflection in the mirror. He took the hood down of his new jacket, so that he could see his now newly dyed black hair. He checked the eyeliner. Dressed and framed all in black, he hardly recognised himself. The change was far more dramatic than he had imagined it would be.

  Suddenly, without warning, one of the cubicle doors flung open hard with a crash and in the reflection of the mirror Gabe knew instantly that it was Grace.

  She walked over and stood right next to him and turned the taps on full at the sink right next to his one.

  “The girl’s loos had a massive queue! Isn’t that always the way? One day they’ll figure out women need more toilets. Or...maybe we’ll beat them to it and evolve to have cocks too!”

  Gabe replied, “Yeah”, in a voice he didn’t recognise, in a voice that sounded to him like the voice of a pre-pubescent girl. He smiled and tried to give her a wink like he had practised so many times before in his fantasies but he pulled it off all wrong and Grace just raised her eyebrows and forced a grin as if to say, ‘What an idiot!’ and before Gabe knew it, the door had slammed and Grace had gone.

  Probably the one and only chance he had left of ever being alone in a room with Grace and he had acted like a twat.

  “Fail, epic fail.”

  But then Gabe slowly realised that if Grace was here then there was a good chance that the person who they had just ripped off was here too. Grace and Alistair walking to school this morning, he had seen them. Johnny would have also seen them from the park. Johnny had known that Alistair would have been here this morning. Johnny had planned it all of course. Alistair would have been sitting the exam this morning while they robbed them and no doubt while Gabe was sat here in this exam this afternoon, Alistair and the others would discover the robbery and be out to find whoever did it.

  Dread filled Gabe from the inside out. He really did have to get away from Frank, Dave and Johnny. Detach himself. Gabe no longer felt protected by their presence in his life. If anything, they were now pushing him towards his worst nightmare.

  And it wasn’t as if Gabe had other options, not yet.

  He would finish his paintings, create a masterpiece sculpture for The Exhibition by Friday next week, go and check out the address that had come with the picture of his dad. Go and buy his mum something nice. Maybe send her on one of those retreats she always went on about? Search the internet for places to sell his paintings and try and get a job in one of the galleries in town in the hope that they would occasionally let him hang his own works up. He’d work hard, make himself indispensable. Lock himself in his studio in his spare time, keep his head down and hopefully the hard work would pay off.

  Gabe didn’t want to turn out like his friends, follow them into a life of crime. He might have been in the gutter but that did not stop him looking at the stars.

  Gabe put the hood back up on his jacket and took another look in the mirror. He felt so different to everybody else that looking different, in a way, suited him just fine. And this thought sent a tingling up, from the base of his spine that shot down his veins and washed over his skin and cooled down his whole body. And, for a split second, Gabe knew what it felt like to feel comfortable in his own skin.

  The hall doors opened and students start filtering in to find their chair and desk where they were alphabetically placed. Some of them noticed something different about Gabe and gave him a second glance but as soon as they were all sat down and whispering they were told to be silent. The clock on the wall ticked and the teacher who had been given the thankless task of exam invigilator, who looked like he would rather be anywhere else but here, held up his hand as the papers were handed out. And even though now it was forbidden for anyone to talk and everyone was trying to be tight lipped, stomachs growled and audible sighs and last minute coughing fits reverberated and echoed around the huge hall. The tension in the room was palpable, thick like a viscose static. The air felt condensed with too little oxygen and everything seemed to be going in slow motion.

  When everyone was set and after a few false starts, the invigilator started the stop watch with his thumb as his other hand went down, along with the head of every person in the room. Everyone started reading and re-reading furiously, writing as if their lives depended on it, like they had been told it did.

  Gabe kept his head up and watched everyone for a moment, watching them all bent over, he thought that he didn’t want to be like them. He didn’t want to follow beliefs blindly. He wasn’t going to
like things, have to have things, do thing, just because everybody else did. Gabe wanted to have his own tastes, his own senses, figure out his own likes and dislikes. Find out his own truth and not take on others truths as his own. He didn’t see why people placed value on the worthless and rarely recognised the invaluable. Gabe wanted to find his own way, his own style, his own mind. He didn’t understand why everyone else had to be told or sold ideas that were all made up in some corporate or government office somewhere. It seemed that perhaps, the very thought of having your own mind, was a radical idea.

  Gabe thought of Alistair making his way back to the lock up. He thought of his friends out there somewhere laughing wickedly over all their dirty cash. He felt his nerves; in his groin, in his thighs, even in his wings. The adrenalin in his blood stream was compelling him to run, to fly, to not follow all the others like he was socially conditioned to do. Gabe caught the eye of the teacher who gave him a look and he knew what he had to do, so he too bowed his head and got on with the questions on the bits of paper in front of him. Hoping against hope, that his passion and love for the subject outweighed his lack of attention in class and zero revision.

  The aura of the room was so unnatural that Gabe noticed that his thoughts were dull and slow and lacking in any colour or animation. That was what sitting in a prison like hall, in straight uniform lines like brainwashed flesh covered androids, did to your imagination and passion.

  Gabe stared at the papers in front of him and he read, NAME:

  “Who are you?” Gabe asked himself.

  After two hours of constant writing and fact recall, and a long time spent going off on a tangent from the original question to write an essay on something he knew about instead, Gabe had done as much as he could. Evoking the passion he had felt for the subject before the school had turned them into thankless tasks, had been exhausting. He put his head on the desk and closed his eyes. He was shattered. Mentally, physically and emotionally drained. He tried thinking of something to look forward to but all Gabe could think of was how short the paper trail was from ripping Alistair off this morning. How short was the line that led to him? If Alistair was going to be a proper enemy then Gabe could kiss goodbye to any safe and peaceful feelings for a while and more tragically, to Grace.

  Gabe couldn’t feel any more wretched if he tried. It was almost as if he let go now he would disintegrate.

  Gabe tried to concentrate on his breathing, to take deeper breaths, and in his mind’s eye he tried to picture himself new, anew, all in black. He imagined himself as he wanted to be, carefree and happy. He imagined that he was successful, that all his paintings sold for big money and that if people judged him it was favourably. He let himself think about meeting his dad, another artist. Maybe he was successful already or even just waiting for his son to come and find him? Perhaps he was rich and full of love to make up for the lack of it over the past eighteen years? Gabe imagined that in his pocket were tickets to a faraway land where everything would be better.

  Then, out of nowhere, a flash of inspiration came. As soon as he had stopped thinking about it and turned his mind to something else, something completely different; no sooner had he let go of the mental torment of trying to figure it all out, the idea for his last piece, the sculpture, so simple and brilliant, just came to him with ease.

  Chapter 10

  Gabe got up and out the house early. He just wanted to get on with the sculpture now. Luxuriate in spending a few days alone in his studio, free from the constraints on his wings and everything else.

  Gina, with some help, had converted the large garage that was set back from the house, into an art studio for Gabe when he had turned twelve. The studio was not only somewhere for Gabe to go so that he could be out of the house and out of sight, but also as secret sacred place where Gabe could go to and be in absolute privacy, so that he could unravel the tourniquet around his torso and move freely without the fear of being disturbed. As much as it was a place for him and his growing collection of art, equipment and other paraphernalia.

  Their back garden was overgrown and secluded. The honeysuckle and ivy and other evergreen shrubs had grown wild, high and wide so that no one could have seen in, even if they had wanted to.

  The studio was meant to be a private safe haven for Gabe. The door had bolt locks and the windows had been blacked out so that Gabe could see out but nobody could see in. There were massive skylight windows to let in natural light and to let Gabe look at the sky, which he spent plenty of hours doing.

  The studio had electric, running water and was full of Gabe’s art, canvases, paints, white spirit, and paint brushes. Gabe had a kettle, sofa, blankets and even a small fridge in there, so that he need never leave. Gabe had spent a lot of time in here over the last six years and it showed. He might even have moved in here permanently if it wasn’t for the fact Grace walked past his bedroom window every day.

  Here in the studio, Gabe could stretch himself out. He could exercise, jump, dance, paint and have his wings unfurled and proud, yet still hidden from the rest of the world.

  And even though this was Gabe’s sacred place where no one was allowed to come, even his friends, they did come. Not together as a group but individually, they all had come at one time or other; when they had needed to desperately talk to Gabe about something, to confide in him or just to have him listen to them about something that they had on their minds. When they had each been going through their own personal hell, they had come to Gabe’s studio and knocked on the door and waited patiently, or not, as Gabe had finished what he was doing.

  What they assumed was some important part of his painting, little knowing that behind the breeze blocks that made up the structure of the garage/studio, Gabe, the Gabe that they thought that they knew, stood there with his wings splendid; furiously trying to pin them down again.

  It was one thing bandaging his wings in his room with time on his hands and another task completely, with someone banging on the door like they were going to knock it down. Especially when Gabe could see them standing there through the glass. He never quite believed that they could not see him when they looked in or tried peering closer though their blacked-out side of glass.

  Gabe always half expected them to say, “Hey Gabe, what were you doing in there with wings on when I looked in the window?” But they never did. No one knew. Even his friends that came here with their pressing problems and dark secrets of their own, knew nothing of Gabe’s big secret. A secret, Gabe thought, far bigger than any that they could and did tell him.

  Standing barefoot on the cold morning dewy grass and damp soil before entering the studio, Gabe could hear children walking to school on the street out the front. The whole world was out there now getting on with it just a few feet away. The laughing and screaming kids were on their way to the primary school that Gabe had gone to. The older kids he could hear were going to the same secondary school that Gabe went to. The kids in the primary school would filter up into the secondary school as all the kids in the secondary school had done. The same process, again and again, every year as the years passed. Just like Gabe had done and just like most of the people in Gabe’s school had done. All to sit these exams like his year were doing. Then all eventually spat out into the city and the rest of the world to get on with their lives, shaped in a way that might help them to be employable or acceptable members of a supposedly civilised society. Everyone in his school year would be released soon into the wilderness of more mind control and not for the first time, Gabe thought, that although everything changed, at the same time it looked as if nothing really ever did. Only Grace hadn’t walked past his house that morning and most probably, never would ever again.

  Gabe felt exhausted still and debated on whether he should just to go back to his room and stay in bed for the day. Perhaps he was coming down with something. He was dressed in his all new black clothes and had even put on the black eyeliner, he wondered if he should give the studio and sculpture a miss and go and find his friends
and start the party they had planned for later this afternoon a bit earlier? Johnny had given Gabe the money for it, which basically meant that he wanted Gabe to go and buy the booze for them all.

  But no, not right now. Right now, Gabe had to go inside the studio, take off his jacket, release his wings and get started on the sculpture. Stay hidden inside, at least until his mum’s last client had left for the day and he had the run of the house again. The last thing he wanted to do was meet his friends at any stage today, or any other day for that matter.

  As Gabe reached into his pocket for the keys, he noticed that someone had tried to knock the padlock and bolt off. Someone had been here. Gabe immediately guessed at who it might be. Someone looking for their money perhaps? The lock hadn’t been totally broken, perhaps they had been disturbed? Perhaps they were inside waiting for him right now? Maybe they had been in and destroyed his paintings, destroyed his future? It would serve him right.

  Gabe went and checked the outside windows. All were still intact, shut and secure.

  Gabe’s heart started racing and his hands were shaking as he let himself into the studio. His mouth was instantly dry with that familiar acrid taste and Gabe found himself battling the onset of a panic attack.

  The paintings were all still there, exactly in the same places and positions where he had left them, as was all his mess and collections. Gabe gave a huge sigh of relief. He was being paranoid; paranoia was becoming one of his main personality traits of late. The lock had just been hit by a branch or something. Maybe his mum had knocked it yesterday doing some gardening? Pull yourself together Gabe, he told himself. He was not cut out for this. Not one little bit.