Born Different by Faye Aitken-Smith Page A

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