Free Born Different by Faye Aitken-Smith Page B

little ones that would end up dominating
his summer, if not his life?
    Gabe looked at
the faces of his friends and wondered if they thought at all and if
they did, what were they thinking about? He felt no connection to
them. If he did one big haul now he wouldn’t have to see them
again.
    This was
something different though, breaking and entering, stealing. Even
if he was only going to be driving, this was far bigger than the
usual, ‘hold onto this for a couple of days for me will you mate’
or ‘just stand here and shout for me if you see a copper Gabe.’
    But, Gabe would
love to see the look on Alistair’s face when he realised he’d been
shafted. Leave him broke for a while so that he couldn’t flash his
cash at Grace. Yeah, it was mean, even wrong perhaps, but what
Alistair was doing was wrong too. And yeah, two wrongs don’t make a
right, neither do two rights. Nothing made everything alright.
    And something
in Gabe twisted perversely and it made him smile and feel a bit
better, like a brief light wave of pleasure that magically
dissolved the worry. This might actually help his cause with
Grace.
    Gabe had no
other grand plans. This was the one that had fallen into his lap.
Like a golden opportunity. And even though Gabe knew deep down in
his own heart that he should walk away, he had nowhere to walk away
to. And time was ticking.
    “’Bout time we
got their ladies and fancy cars eh boys. About time we had a taste
of the high life. We gotta do this or we’ll be licking their shoes
forever. Licking their butts for our dinner!” Dave said placing his
hands up in front of his face, scrunching his fingers like he was
holding a bum and licking the air between the back of his hands
vigorously with his dark brown furred tongue.
    And Gabe
thought that however disgusting and funny Dave was, he was
right
    “The Beautiful
are going to find it impossible to fail in life however clever or
not they are. Whatever wrong choices they make or opportunities
they miss, there will be plenty more that follow. They have been
born into other paths, better paths, lucky paths, paths lined with
gold. ‘Bout time we got a bit of the gold girls.” Johnny was
convincing.
    The Beautiful
did always look so perfect. All of their clothes were high end
designer. Their clothes bore the names of the fashion designer men
and women that the world put on pedestals. Clothes that you had to
pay hundreds of pounds for. Gabe knew that labels were just
branding and people seemed to love all that. Brands were lifestyle
choices or preferences. It was probably some elaborate coded
messaging system but Gabe just didn’t get it. Brands helped
identify you, your place, your people. Brands labelled who you were
or who you wanted to be. There just wasn’t a brand yet invented
that fit Gabe’s ideas of his self-image. And there probably never
would be, as the brands tended to aim for the masses.
    But Gabe had to
admit that the expensive clothes that The Beautiful wore did wash
better or they got dry cleaned like they were supposed to. Their
clothes were never dirty, creased, bobbled or shrunk and well worn.
They could afford to follow fashions so that they always looked
faultless.
    Gabe knew why
he and his friend hated them so much, their perfection just
highlighted their imperfections. And it wasn’t fair. Why shouldn’t
they have a bit of that too?
    And then there
was everyone else in between. The Middles. Not as obviously
offensive to Gabe and his friends, just a lot more insidiously so.
The masses, the ones in the middle. They were middle of the road
but they took up the whole damn street. The mass of all the others
that when viewed as a ‘lump sum’, as Gabe and his friends did
indeed view them, were just so placid, insipid and mundane. They
may all sound different to each other, interesting and exciting
even, but Gabe thought that they were all kidding on too, whether
they knew it or not.
    All branded in
every aspect of their lives too. Maybe