We Can Be Heroes (6 page)

‘What about?'

Priti scrunches up her nose and parks her bum on to the wall next to mine. I notice that her tongue is bright pink from the strawberry lace. ‘Not about the whole “all boys are in love with their mums” stuff – that's just obvious,' she says. ‘More the one she's reading at the moment. About how women who care too much screw their kids up.'

I want to think of something clever to say in response to this, but I can't.

‘So are you going to share those sweets before they melt and make it look like you've wet yourself or what?'

When we get back from the parade, there's a new arrival.

‘You look just like your dad did at your age,' says
my uncle Ian who's sitting in Grandad's chair. ‘He was skinny and scrappy like you. Used to do whatever I said, but I still beat him up pretty regularly!'

Uncle Ian laughs. Grandad laughs. Granny tells him to watch what he's saying. And I remember why I don't like Uncle Ian.

He and my cousin Jed turned up while I was out with Priti and Co. ‘A surprise visit,' says Uncle Ian.

‘Cos we didn't have anything better to do,' says Jed.

Jed is only a year older than me, but it always seems like more. He's bigger than me and cooler and better at pretty much everything. I haven't seen him for ages and he seems to have grown about half a metre since last time and his hair is all long and scraggly.

Jed's OK (so long as you always agree with him) but I've always been a bit scared of Uncle Ian. He has this habit of knowing exactly what to say to make me feel really small and stupid. I've seen him do it to Granny too, and to Jed – it's just what he does. He used to be in the army and, even though he isn't
any more, he's still got what Jed calls his ‘Corporal Bollocking voice'.

‘Why don't you boys go and play in the garden?' suggests Granny after about five minutes. Jed is climbing all over the sofa like a great big gangly toddler, his feet in dirty trainers, looking as if they're about to smash into her favourite glass cabinet.

He pulls a face and says, ‘Play?'

‘Oh, you know, hang out,' says Granny. ‘Or whatever you young people do.'

Jed glances at me like he'd prefer not to and says, ‘Do we have to?'

‘Do as your gran tells you,' says Uncle Ian.

So the two of us head out into the back garden and I'm surprised to find myself wishing that Priti was here too.

‘My dad says your mum is turning into a nutcase just like mine,' says Jed in a big loud voice as he bounds out through the patio doors, leaping so high he nearly takes his head off.

‘No, she's not!' I say, wishing I'd grown a bit more. And wishing my hair wasn't so short.

‘That's what my dad says. He reckons your dad and him were both stupid enough to fall for women who are soft in the head.'

‘My mum's not soft in the head – she's ill,' I say.

‘Yeah, that's what they would tell you, isn't it?'

Jed's brought a ball with him and he starts doing headers and keepy-uppies. He's wearing a puffa jacket several sizes too big for him and it hangs off his shoulders. All his clothes hang off him, and not just because he's wiry – although he is – more like he's too cool for clothes. When I wear his hand-me-downs they don't look the same on me at all, although my mum says this is because I actually bother to do up all the buttons.

I sit down on the patio and picture a cartoon Jed, swamped in a giant puffa so large it drags along the floor while he does keepy-uppies. ‘What's wrong with your mum then?' I ask.

‘She's a bitch,' says Jed and, as he says this, he lets the ball fall from the air, catching it in his hands and looking straight at me. It's like he's daring me to challenge him for swearing.

‘Why? What did she do?' I sort of know already because my mum told me, but I ask anyway.

‘She tried to take me away from my dad.'

‘How?'

‘She took him to court, but he showed them she had a screw loose, which she does.' Jed kicks the ball hard against the fence. ‘I don't want to see her anyway,' he says.

‘Why not?'

‘I don't want her turning me soft in the head. It's bad enough I've got her genes, I reckon, without her hanging around messing with my mind!' He tosses the ball at me so quickly that I don't see it coming and I miss it. ‘I bet you miss
your
mum, don't you?' he says.

‘No,' I say quickly, picking up the ball, my face reddening.

‘I bet you do. I bet you cry for her at night, don't you?' He shrugs. ‘Don't worry about it. I used to as well, but now I've got tough. Come on, let's do penalties.'

So we play for penalties for a bit. I'm in goal and
I'm not very good, but I soon realise it's better if I don't actually stop the goals anyway cos when I do, Jed gets really pissed off.

‘My dad says your dad was the falling man,' Jed says after he's shot three goals in a row.

‘What?' I'm standing between the plant pots that Jed has set up as a makeshift goal and suddenly I see a picture of a stick man slowly falling in loop-the-loop motions, like a leaf from a tree.

‘The falling man,' Jed repeats. ‘You must have seen him on the telly. He's the guy who was the first one to jump out of the Twin Towers.' He stares at me as if I'm an idiot. ‘You know, in 9/11?'

‘Yeah, I know,' I say.

He pauses, stares at me, then starts grinning. ‘You haven't seen it, have you?'

I can feel myself going red again. I'm not supposed to have seen any of the 9/11 footage – my mum doesn't want me to – but I have anyway. My friend Lukas showed me the falling man on his laptop. We watched it over and over again. It was after that I made the thumb-flick cartoon.

‘God, mums are so lame!' says Jed. ‘Wrapping you up in cotton wool – pulling the wool over your eyes more like. OK, so it's like this,' he continues. ‘After the planes crash into the buildings, they're like a towering inferno. You must have seen pictures at least?'

‘Of course I have,' I say quickly.

‘Right, well there's this one guy who decides he'd rather jump out and die than get burned alive. So you see him jump out. Just this little man falling through the sky.'

I see it again, the little stick man, curling through the air.

‘Then some others do it too, but that first one, he's the coolest, I reckon, and that's your dad.'

I feel more blood rushing to my cheeks so I stare really hard at the ball that Jed's about to kick.

‘I reckon I'd do the same,' Jed goes on. ‘I'd rather die jumping out of a building than get burned to death. At least it'd be a laugh on the way down. And it'd be pretty cool to be the first one to jump. What do you reckon?' He looks at me.

‘I don't know,' I say. In my head, a giant boxing glove pings out on a spring and catches him square on the jaw.

‘Well, my dad's watched that falling man over and over and he says it's definitely Uncle Andrew. I think so too.'

‘Does he look like my dad then?' I ask, glancing up quickly.

‘Yeah!' says Jed.

I pause and then say, ‘So do you, like, remember him? What he looked like and all that?'

‘Yeah. Don't you?'

Now I see a midget with a giant hammer clubbing him over the head.

‘Course I do,' I say. But I've taken my eye off the ball and Jed kicks it hard so it goes straight past me into the flower bed behind.

‘Goal!' cheers Jed.

A giant anvil falls out of the sky and flattens him to the ground.

1. What did they look like?

2. Did they actually come up with the idea themselves or did someone else think of it and they just agreed to do it?

3. Did they have brothers and sisters and families and kids and homes and stuff? And did they tell those people what they were going to do?

4. Were they scared of dying? Or was it that they didn't like being alive and had rubbish lives so didn't mind dying?

5. And if not, how did they end up being the ones picked to do it?

6. What did they do in the day before it happened?

7. Did they ever have second thoughts?

8. Did they hate my dad and all the people in the Twin Towers when they did it?

9. Did they hate the kids like me who had dads and mums in the towers too?

10. Did they make it to heaven or wherever they
thought they'd get to? And, if not, did they ever regret what they did?

Jed is going to stay all summer. Uncle Ian has to work and Jed can't go to his mum for the holidays (‘for obvious reasons,' says Jed, rolling his eyes) so I suppose Granny and Grandad have no choice but to say yes. Granny says it will be like having her two boys back again. Grandad says it will be ‘bloody noisy!' and I think I agree with him.

Jed and I are sharing a room, and within five minutes, Jed's stuff is everywhere and he's climbing all over the furniture. I can tell he isn't impressed about having to stay. ‘I don't see why I had to come here anyway. I could have looked after myself,' he says. ‘I do it every day after school – sometimes Dad's not back till well late.'

‘It'll be fun,' says Granny brightly.

‘I doubt it,' says Jed, glaring out from under his hair. Then he says, ‘I'll stay for a bit, but if it gets
boring, I'm off. I've got my own key you know.'

It turns out that Jed gets bored
really
quickly and isn't into Granny's idea of fun. Or mine. I suggest things to do, but he says they're for little kids. Granny suggests things, but he says they're for wrinklies. Grandad says it's going to be a long summer.

While Grandad is in the garden, Granny goes to make a phone call. When she comes back, she's smiling. ‘I've made an appointment for you tomorrow, Jed,' she says cheerfully. Jed looks up from our game of snakes and ladders. (Jed cheated – I'm pretty sure he knows I noticed too – but neither of us said anything.) ‘Perhaps we can do something nice on the way back,' Granny suggests.

‘Whatever!' says Jed.

Then the doorbell rings and there is Priti wearing a bubblegum-pink ra-ra skirt and a T-shirt which says
My imaginary friend did it
.

‘You coming to play, Ben?' she says.

‘I can't. My cousin's here.'

‘Who's the kid?' asks Jed, coming up behind me.

‘This is Priti,' I say. ‘She lives across the road.'

Jed takes one look at her and says, ‘So you're the Asian invasion?'

‘Well spotted,' says Priti. ‘You must be the hand-me-down cousin?'

They stare at each other for a moment.

Priti seems less impressed by Jed than I expected. ‘You can come too, I suppose,' she says.

‘Why would I want to hang out with a pair of kids?' says Jed.

‘Don't then,' says Priti. ‘You coming, Ben?'

I look from one to the other.

‘I dunno,' I say. ‘Jed's just arrived.'

‘Suit yourself,' she says. ‘But Shakeel's gonna help us build a tree house in the garden.'

I glance at Jed. ‘She's OK,' I say. ‘Even if she is a girl.'

‘Thanks a lot!' says Priti.

Jed tosses his hair back off his face and checks Priti out again, then shrugs his shoulders and says, ‘There's nothing better to do here, I suppose.'

I breathe a sigh of relief and off we go.

* * *

Granny insists on walking over with us to Priti's house to make sure we're not imposing. It's Shakeel who opens the door.

‘Hello, Mrs Evans,' he says. Then he glances at Priti. ‘I do hope my sister has not been causing you any trouble?'

Priti grins at him and sticks out her tongue. He grins back.

‘No, no, quite the opposite,' says Granny. ‘She's been very kind to Ben, and to my other grandson, Jed.' She puts a hand on Jed's arm, but he shrugs it away. I see Shakeel take in the gesture. ‘Priti has very kindly invited them both over to play,' Granny goes on, ‘but I just wanted to check with your parents that it wasn't an imposition.'

‘I'm afraid my mother and father are both out at present,' says Shakeel.

‘Oh, I see,' says Granny. She seems uncertain suddenly.

‘But I know my parents will consider it no imposition whatsoever to have your grandsons here,' Shakeel goes on. ‘And neither do I.'

‘That's very kind of you, Shakeel.' Granny smiles.

‘It will be our pleasure to have them.'

Granny hesitates, glancing back to our house.

‘Perhaps your husband is not comfortable with this arrangement?' asks Shakeel.

‘Oh, no, no,' says Granny hurriedly, bright spots of colour appearing in her cheeks. ‘I was just concerned. Will there be someone around to look after them?'

‘I don't need looking after,' says Jed crossly.