Read Online Born Different by Faye Aitken-Smith - Free Book Online Page B

like he had repaid the
dues for that now, way over, he didn’t have to be indebted forever
for their protection. Did he? Perhaps on face value, if he met them
now for the first time, he might not even like them, or more than
likely be totally petrified of them. But because Gabe knew where
they were coming from, everything they did made some sense.
    Gabe thought
that most people tended to keep the worst of their backgrounds a
secret, they only ever exposed the best bits, the highlights. But
then, do you ever really know them? Can you ever really love
someone if you do not know their frailty, their fragility, their
path and their own individual struggle? Gabe knew the good and bad
and ugly facts about his friends. They may have thought that they
had chosen their paths too, but they, like Gabe, only really had
the path there in front of them. There were no other options. Not
yet, perhaps never. Their lives were unpredictable, although
everyone else just predicted the worse.
    Another text
message came through and Gabe said a prayer to no one in
particular, just a voicing out there into the atmosphere. “Just one
last time and I promise never to do anything like this ever again.
From now on I will paint and draw and earn what little money I can
properly! If you really don’t want me to do this, then
please give me a sign.”
    Gabe waited,
but there was no sign for him not to go ahead in the direction he
was going. There was no instant, sparkling, magical pocket full of
money. No raining of one hundred dollar bills, no visible rainbow
to chase leading to a pot of gold. There was no divine inspiration
whatsoever.
    Gabe didn’t
know why he should feel so torn. Money was money after all, wasn’t
it? Why was it that he believed that if he was good, then good
things might happen to him? And, conversely, that if he was bad
then the shit would hit the fan? Something along the lines of
karma. Gabe knew that this theory was flawed but it was just the
way that he felt and he couldn’t change it. Even if this wasn’t
what happened in the real world and it didn’t seem apply to anyone
else, as people that did bad things seemed to have great to
fabulous lives in the modern world, something still made Gabe
believe that it did apply to him. In fact, as far as Gabe could
tell the opposite of karma seemed to be true, in the short term at
least.
    Not only was
Gabe cursed with wings, he thought, but he was cursed with some
kind of ‘good complex’ which pissed him off more than anything as
it would have been easier to just live without that, like everybody
else did.
    But mainly,
goodness and badness aside, Gabe was just far too inconspicuous to
be a criminal, even a petty one. Gabe knew his ‘job’ in the gang
was as a decoy; no one suspected or liked to suspect, a disabled
looking young man. But that wouldn’t last forever and now it felt
more like a game of Russian Roulette. There was now the very real
chance that, God forbid, he got the bullet next time. Got himself
arrested, strip searched, handled by a stranger! Gabe, who couldn’t
bear anyone touching him let alone seeing him! No, he couldn’t
afford to be a criminal on lots of different levels.
    “Crime never
pays,” his mum had always said. But of course that was a lie too,
as Gabe noticed that crime actually seemed to pay very well. Much
better than most other things did in fact.
     
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    Gabe turned the
corner to the park and sure enough there they all were, standing at
the far end under a tree, instantly recognisable. Dave was there,
learning against the railing like the thug that he was. Sticking
his leg out at opportune moments to trip up Frank, who seemed to be
doing some kind of karate moves. Johnny cool and debonair, even
from a distance, was laughing and gesturing a lot with one hand
whilst he dragged laboriously on a cigarette with the other.
    Gabe stopped at
the gate to the park for a moment, just to watch them. From a
distance, he wanted to see