Free We Can Be Heroes by Catherine Bruton

all year.) Jed looks a bit weird too. He rolls his eyes at me as they leave and when Granny tries to put a hand on his arm, he shrugs it off impatiently.
    Later on, Priti comes over and we hang out in my bedroom.
    â€˜He thinks he’s it, doesn’t he? Your cousin,’ says Priti, checking out some of Jed’s things, which arescattered all over the place. In fact, apart from the extra bed and a stack of manga comics, it hardly looks as if I sleep here at all.
    â€˜No, he doesn’t,’ I say. For some reason, I don’t want Priti saying bad stuff about him.
    â€˜Don’t pretend you don’t agree.’
    â€˜I don’t.’
    â€˜Yeah, right. Anyway, Zara doesn’t reckon he’s cool. She reckons she saw him out the window yesterday, doing keepy-uppies on your driveway like he thought he was some kind of Premiership footballer. She says he looks like a tramp. And I agree with her.’ Priti is wearing a red and white cheerleader’s outfit with a huge picture of some teen movie star emblazoned on her bum and red and white pompom bobbles holding up her pigtails.
    â€˜She says you can tell he doesn’t have a mum,’ she goes on.
    â€˜How do you know?’ I ask.
    â€˜I’m right, aren’t I!’ She grins. ‘You can always tell.’
    â€˜Anyway, he does have a mum,’ I say. ‘He just doesn’t see her.’
    â€˜Same difference.’
    Priti flicks through one of Jed’s football magazines. I pick up my notepad, but I can’t think what to draw.
    â€˜So can you tell I don’t have a dad?’ I ask.
    â€˜That’s not the same,’ says Priti, without looking up from the magazine.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜It just isn’t,’ she says.
    â€˜So you can’t tell then?’
    â€˜Yeah, you can. But it’s not the same. He talks funny too, your cousin.’
    â€˜He talks the same as you.’
    â€˜He so does not. He sounds like a total chav,’ she says.
    â€˜You both talk through your noses,’ I say. ‘My mum says that people in the city do that because of the pollution.’
    â€˜Yeah, well, at least
I
can talk about my mum without looking like I’m going to have a heart attack.’ She flicks the pages of the magazine, her red and white bobbles bouncing up and down with each turn.
    I imagine the bobbles morphing into giant red and white basketballs, crashing down around her head.
    â€˜How can you tell then?’ I ask after a moment.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜That I don’t have a dad.’
    She stops flicking and looks thoughtful. ‘Well, you’re crap at climbing trees and you’re way more polite than most boys I know. Oh, and you’re always drawing those pictures.’
    â€˜Is that it?’
    â€˜And you walk differently.’
    â€˜I do not.’
    â€˜Not like a girl. But not all swaggering and sticking out your crotch like most boys do. I guess they must get that off their dads.’
    â€˜That’s pants,’ I say.
    â€˜Don’t blame me if you’ve got unresolved issues about this! Hey!’ she says, suddenly leaping to her feet, looking very excited. ‘Do your grands have a computer in the house?’
    â€˜Yes. Why?’ I still have a picture in my head of myself swaggering like a cowboy with chaps on.
    â€˜We should do some research.’
    â€˜What are we researching?’ I ask.
    â€˜You,’ she says. ‘The whole 9/11 kid thing. You never talk about it. So I reckon we should find out more about it. Then I can help you.’
    â€˜I don’t want to be helped.’
    â€˜Try telling that to my mum.’
    Priti makes out that her mum is this terrifying professor type, but I met her yesterday after Shakeel finished showing us all the radio stuff, and she’s actually a tiny little woman with a soft voice and long hair down to her waist, like my mum. She wears hippy tie-dye stuff and dangly