Free Nicking Time by T. Traynor

first time she was allowed to gothere on her own, so she was really excited. So many things to choose from… She finally decided on a huge, fancy box of chocolates and a sherbet dip.”
    “And did you enjoy the birthday chocolates, Midge?” asks Bru, who’s heard this story before.
    “No, I didn’t, Bru, thank you for asking. Because Kit ate them! On my birthday she gave me
the sherbet dip
wrapped up as a present.”
    They find this picture – Kit’s chocolate-smeared face and my disappointed one – both outrageous and irresistibly funny. Skooshie nearly chokes with laughter and has to be thumped on the back by Hector.
    “Yeah, I know. And when my mum and dad pointed out to her that this wasn’t totally fair, that the money was for
my
birthday present, she got all indignant. She said, ‘I got him a birthday present. I just bought myself something with the money that was left over!’ I’ll never let her live it down.”
    At Lemur’s suggestion, we spend the next while looking for Kit. The plan is we’ll shout “Sherbet dip!” at her and run away. Person who doesn’t get caught wins. But disappointingly she’s nowhere to be found.
    “I have never been… so hot… in my entire… life,” puffs Hector as we slump down in the shade for a rest. And, like it heard him, the van chooses this moment to put in an appearance, its twinkly tune getting nearer and nearer as it comes up the road.
    And the shout goes up, “The van! The van!” Kids drop what they’re doing and start sprinting down to where he’ll park. Skooshie, Hector and Lemur start fishing in their pockets for money; Bru retrieves hisfrom his sock. We’re all flush because there was a wedding at the flats yesterday and we were at the front for the scramble. We had a few skint fingers from it – you have to be quick picking up the money once the bride’s dad throws it out the car window.
    But my pockets are empty. I’ve left my money in the house.
    “You go down – make sure he doesn’t leave before I get there.”
    My dad says that animals adapt to their environment. “Your platypus,” he told me, “is a really clever beast. It’s got webbed feet, to help it swim. It’s a really good swimmer. It hunts underwater, where it can stay for up to two minutes.” (This is longer than Bru or me. We’ve tried.) (Apparently, it’s also a “bottomfeeder” – this turns out NOT to be as funny as you’d think – it just means it eats stuff it finds on the river bottom.) “But it also needs to dig a burrow. Webbed feet not much use for that. So it evolves to a design that means the webbed bit can be pulled back to expose claws.”
    I still think this is dead cool. I love the idea of giving yourself another power, just because you need it. Like me, living in the high flats. I’ve got no money and the van comes. I’m a fast runner but that skill’s no use to me here. By the time I’ve run up and down the stairs and down to where the van is parked, it’ll’ve gone – I can guarantee that. The lift I can’t rely on – it might be up when I need it down and vice versa. I’ve used my superhuman brain to solve the problem and given myself the extra power of an extremely loud shout.
    I stand under our living-room window and bellow,“MUM! DAD! THE VAN’S HERE!”
    I don’t have to wait long. The blind shoots up.
    “Just a minute… Right, stand back. “
    It lands on the ground in front of me with a dull metallic
thud
, 10p in small coins, wrapped in a bit of newspaper. Once again I have successfully avoided being brained. Another instance of boy adapting to his environment. I take the most direct route to the van, which involves jumping over a few walls and leaping down some stairs.
    ***
    We eat our ice cream leaning against a wall in the last of the sun. In this heat you have to concentrate, licking quickly to catch the drips as they run down the cone. We’ve all gone for sauce but not flakes – we don’t want to use up our money