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things that were occupying Gabe’s mind.
    Mostly though,
Gabe just clocked out altogether and went on a mad day dream where
he wasn’t there in the classroom at all. Gabe could go anywhere for
hours in his own head. But more often than not, Gabe was just
wishing that he was back home alone in his studio where he could
paint and just be, free from the bandages.
    He tried to
listen to the teachers, he promised himself to focus on the class
but his brain wouldn’t let him. He might hear the first sentences
at the beginning and that would set him to thinking, to
questioning, to daydreaming. Gabe was concentrating on all the
things that you couldn’t necessarily see with the naked eye. Gabe
was constantly thinking, analysing and having ideas and fantasies
and he couldn’t stop doing it as much as he couldn’t stop having
wings.
    He hadn’t
wanted to go on to the sixth form, he didn’t know why he couldn’t
just work on his art at home and attend The Exhibition, but that
was not possible. They ‘saw potential’ they had said and Gabe
hadn’t known whether to be offended or take it as a compliment.
They had added that he ‘needed to get some more guidance with his
art and take some ‘real subjects’ too as a back-up plan for the
real world.’
    The ‘real
world’? All Gabe knew about the real world was that people just got
into other routines and put their heads into the sand and lived out
there lives like robots. And Gabe thought that perhaps it was wise
not to take advice off of people that didn’t seem to be having
great lives themselves. Why should he take advice off anyone who
wasn’t living the sort of life that he thought he would like to
live? If he’d of wanted to be a teacher in this dirty city...then
sure. But he didn’t, so they could shove it!
    But as Gabe had
less idea then than he had now, which was still nil, about how he
was going to go about living his life and his mum and the teachers
had basically insisted with a heavy dose of emotional blackmail.
Making it clear he could not attend The Exhibition if he didn’t
attend the school. What else was he going to do? There weren’t any
jobs to go to, let alone ‘good jobs’. Staying in school would keep
him away from his gang of friends and their dodgy ways of making
money. And, probably as important as The Exhibition, there was
Grace; the girl who Gabe had still not managed to summon the
courage to speak to yet. She would be going on to the sixth form,
so in the end, Gabe had signed up.
    Within the
first week, Gabe had a panic attack. He hadn’t had one before. Gabe
had since come to believe that the panic attack was obviously a
warning sign. His body was trying to tell him something. His
rational voice had not been listened to, he was doing something
that he really didn’t want to do and his body had rebelled.
    He had been in
the long corridor before classes when suddenly, for no obviously
apparent reason, he felt like he was choking. What his body usually
did without Gabe having to think about, suddenly decided that it
wasn’t going to do it anymore. Like breath. His throat had just
constricted tight shut and his heart had started beating loudly and
faster than he thought was possible. The blood and feeling had
drained empty in his arms and his legs, from the tips of his
fingers and toes up, leaving them cold and numb. And Gabe thought,
after a few long seconds, that he was going to die.
    This was it!
Right here and right now in this hellhole place, in front of all
these idiots and strangers would be where he experienced his last
moments on this earth. And as he had struggled to breathe and not
pass out, when he was sure that his whole life was going to flash
before his eyes like he was told it did in your dying moments,
various other kids had stopped and had started pointing and
whispering behind their hands to each other and looking at him with
shocked, repulsed and twisted faces. And as seconds passed in slow
motion, Gabe could see that