We Can Be Heroes

by Catherine Bruton

  ‘Look at me!’ she says as she whizzes past, pigtails flying, tassels rustling in the breeze. I just wave. Priti doesn’t even look up.

  ‘So d’you reckon your uncle Ian told his bomb-squad buddies about Shakeel?’ she says.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say. I can feel my cheeks colouring.

  ‘Cos we’ll be in loads of trouble if they find we were making it all up.’

  ‘Not as much as Shakeel will be in if it’s true,’ I say. ‘They’ll send him to jail.’

  ‘Or worse,’ says Priti.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard about lynchings?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Like in cowboy movies, when people take the law into their own hands and string the baddies up or shoot them through the head and put their heads on sticks.’

  I start pretending to doodle a picture of Shakeel dressed as a cowboy.

  ‘Can I play with you?’ We both look up and there is Stevie, right in front of us astride her pink bike, smiling and looking like one of those plastic kids from a breakfast-cereal advert.

  ‘Can you count up to a hundred?’ asks Priti.

  ‘No,’ says Stevie.

  ‘Can you spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?’

  ‘Um . . . no.’

  ‘Can you stand on your head for ten seconds or hold your breath underwater for a minute?’

  Stevie looks as if she might be about to cry as she shakes her head.

  ‘Then you can’t play with us,’ says Priti. ‘Now go away because we have important business to discuss and a silly baby like you wouldn’t understand.’

  Priti turns away and studies the chipped varnish on her nails so she doesn’t see the tears welling up in Stevie’s big blue eyes.

  Stevie looks at me. I go bright red and stare at the pavement. After what seems like a very long moment, I see her little feet in a pair of jewel-encrusted pumps pedalling away. I think of Blythe and I feel really mean.

  I’m just about to risk making Priti mad by calling Stevie back when Priti says, ‘So, like I was saying, Shakeel could be the victim of a lynching if anyone finds out.’

  ‘Who exactly is going to lynch him?’ I ask, glancing over to the Sanders’ weed-ridden driveway, to which Stevie has retreated.

  ‘I dunno. Irate locals? The bomb squad?’ She shrugs then looks at me, suddenly serious. ‘What will they do to him if he gets arrested?’

  ‘There’s no way they’re real bomb squad,’ I say.

  ‘I just wish Jed could’ve kept quiet until we had all the evidence,’ Priti goes on. ‘Then we could have confronted Shakeel ourselves and made him change his ways. Now who knows what your uncle Ian will do.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say, but I’m still thinking about Stevie.

  Just then Stevie’s mum comes out and calls her in for her tea. My grandad reckons only common people say tea. Anyone with any upbringing calls it dinner or supper, he says. I don’t get the feeling he approves of the Sanders much.

  Mrs Sanders is pregnant and she has this huge belly full of baby, but the rest of her is scrawny and her skin is blotchy red and peeling. She stands at the top of the driveway and yells Stevie’s name again dead loud, even though she’s only ten metres in front of her (something else my grandad hates). Stevie doesn’t much look like she wants to go in. She drags her sparkly shoes along the tarmac as she trails off after her mum and we hear her saying, ‘The big kids won’t play with me!’

  Mrs Sanders turns and looks over at me and Priti. ‘Why not?’ she snaps.

  ‘That Priti says I’m a silly baby.’

  ‘Well, that Priti is a mean cow,’ Stevie’s mum says loudly, looking back in our direction again to check we’ve heard and giving us a stare that is as sour as lemons. Then she slams the front door behind her.

  ‘And you wonder why I don’t associate with people like that!’ says Priti. ‘Come on. Let’s go to your house and get on with the project. We don’t need that scraggy-armed hippo giving us dirty looks!’

  So we go inside and Priti soon cheers up. Today Granny is in charge of us because all of Priti’s siblings are busy doing things for Shakeel’s wedding and Grandad has taken Jed to see the shrink. And Granny being in charge seems to make Priti behave all prissy and princessy, like some kid from an advert. ‘Yes, please, Mrs Evans,’ and, ‘That’s sooo kind of you, Mrs Evans.’ When I ask her why she’s pretending to be so nice, she says, ‘Are you trying to say I’m not nice?’

  ‘No, it’s just you’re not normally so girlie.’

  ‘So you’re saying that I behave like a boy?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ I hesitate because she looks really cross. ‘A bit.’

  She purses her lips like I’ve really offended her. ‘Come on,’ she says primly. ‘Let’s just get on with your stupid box.’

  So we go upstairs to my bedroom and look at the things we’ve got so far.

  ‘What else do we need?’ she says.

  ‘Didn’t it say an item of clothing?’

  ‘Yeah, how are we going to get hold of that? Is there any old stuff hanging around in the wardrobe?’ asks Priti.

  ‘No, I looked.’

  ‘Only one thing for it then.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Got to ask your granny.’

  I don’t really want to, but Priti is already off down the stairs. ‘Mrs Evans,’ she says, and she’s being so posh she sounds like the Queen.

  ‘Yes, dear?’ Granny emerges from the kitchen.

  ‘We were wondering – well, Ben was wondering if you could help us with something? It’s for this sort of project we’re doing.’ She stands on the tips of her toes as she speaks as if she’s trying to be a ballerina or something.

  ‘What do you need, dear?’

  ‘The thing is that we need something – a piece of clothing that belonged to Ben’s dad.’

  That’s how she says it – just like that – no hesitation as if she was asking for a glass of water or something.

  Granny’s cheeks go pink and she glances at me, but I can feel myself colouring too and I can’t say anything.

  ‘The thing is that Ben’s doing this thing,’ Priti goes on, hopping from foot to foot, which is something she does when she’s nervous. ‘Well, we both are. It was my idea, but it’s Ben’s box, so I suppose it’s a joint project. It’s about his dad, you see. A memory box. On the website we found it said it was a good idea for grieving kids. Therapeutic was the word they used.’

  ‘I see,’ says Granny. Her eyes are pink at the edges now and a bit watery-looking. I’ve got an awful feeling that she’s going to cry.

  But she doesn’t. Instead, she asks, ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Priti.

  This is just what I was dreading.

  But it’s too late. So we take Granny up to my bedroom and she sits down on the bed and looks at all the things in the box. And I think even Priti is starting to wonder if this was such a good idea after all because she keeps hopping from one leg to the other. She doesn’t look at me and I don’t look at her. We both just watch my granny as she takes out each thing slowly, one by one, looking at them carefully before laying them down neatly on the duvet next to her. She doesn’t say anything and neither do we.

  The last thing Granny takes out is my list of ‘Things I’d like to know’. She looks at this for ages. Then she puts everything back in the box carefully and closes the lid. Everything except the list which she keeps folded on her lap.

  When she looks up, her eyes are sparkling and the little pink spots in her cheeks are brighter now.

  ‘Can I keep this?’ she says quietly.

  We both nod.

  ‘I’m sure I can get you something your dad wore,’ Granny says, standing up. ‘I’ll look something out for you.’

  But she doesn’t say anything about the box or what she thinks of it.

  It’s four o’clock by the time Jed and Grandad get back and Priti has gone home. Jed says he wants to
go to bed and then goes straight up to our room and closes the door. I knock, but he just tells me to go away.

  I start to go downstairs, but Granny and Grandad are talking in the kitchen and I don’t want to disturb them, so I sit on the stairs with my notebook, but I don’t draw anything.

  Through the banisters, I can see my grandad leaning against the sink. He’s staring out into the hall, but he doesn’t seem to register that I’m there. He’s a big tall man and still has all his hair, so even though he’s pretty ancient, he still looks quite young. (I wonder if Uncle Ian gets mad that he didn’t inherit the tall genes?). Today he seems sad though and that shrinks him somehow.

  Granny asks Grandad how it went and he says, ‘Awful really.’

  ‘What did they ask?’ says Granny.

  ‘Just why he didn’t want to see his mum. Why he thought he hated her. Just what you’d expect really.’ Grandad looks down at his feet. ‘He got terribly upset though.’

  ‘Poor boy,’ says Granny and I’m not sure if she means Jed or Grandad.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do.’ Grandad looks up. His face is all crumpled and there are tears in his eyes.

  Granny goes up to him and puts an arm round him, which looks funny because she’s so much smaller than he is. ‘It’s not your fault, Barry,’ she says in a soft voice.

  ‘It’s that woman’s fault,’ says Grandad. He sounds angry now, not sad any more. ‘If she cared for him as much as she says she does, she’d just drop all this and leave him be.’

  ‘I don’t think she can,’ says Granny. ‘She’s his mother.’

  ‘Are you saying this is all Ian’s fault?’ Grandad shrugs Granny off and looks like he’s cross with her.

  ‘No, of course not,’ says Granny.

  ‘Because that’s what that psychiatrist was trying to get Jed to say,’ says Grandad. ‘I promise you. She was implying that his dad put him up to it. That he’s being brainwashed.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not what they were thinking,’ says Granny.

  ‘I’m telling you it was!’ He sighs. ‘I just can’t see an end to it all, Rita.’

  ‘I want an end to this as much as you do,’ says Granny. She’s holding a tea towel in one hand. I can’t see her face, just her fingers fiddling with the towel. ‘But until then we just have to love him through it. We have to love them both through it.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ says Grandad and he reaches for Granny’s hand, the one not holding the tea towel, and he holds it in his own big hairy one.

  And the two of them stand like that for nearly a whole minute, not saying anything, holding hands by the kitchen sink.

  Then Grandad says, ‘Has Hannah called?’

  I don’t hear Granny say anything, so I guess she shakes her head.

  ‘These women call themselves mothers,’ says Grandad, ‘but between the two of them there’s precious little mothering going on.’

  AUGUST 5TH

  Mik is a really bad babysitter, which means we think he’s a really good babysitter. He’s supposed to be in charge, but he just sits at his PlayStation and tells us not to bother him or he’ll kill us. So we basically get to do whatever we want.

  The problem is that there’s not actually much to do. After we’ve raided the biscuit barrel and jumped on the sofas with our shoes on and watched trashy TV (which is actually pretty dull) we get bored, so Mik tells us to ‘bugger off and play in the park’.

  I ask, ‘Are you going to sit in the tree house so you can keep an eye on us?’

  ‘And why the hell would I want to do that?’ Mik replies. ‘It’s only the other side of the fence, not the red-light district!’

  I go bright red.

  ‘Just don’t get yourselves kidnapped, OK?’ Mik says. And I remember the thing Uncle Ian’s tattooed bomb-squad buddy said about white kids being kidnapped and kick-starting the civil war. ‘Cos if you do, I’m not paying the ransom!’

  It’s probably because of my mum, but I’m no good at doing stuff I’m not supposed to. All the time in the park, I keep expecting Granny or Priti’s dad to turn up and start shouting, or one of the neighbours to catch us and snitch on us.

  ‘You know if we get caught, Mik will say he told us to stay in the garden,’ says Priti.

  ‘And even if he doesn’t, they’ll say that we should have known better,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, but when was the last time Granny pitched up to play on the swings?’ Jed points out. ‘Or your dad for that matter? Don’t sweat it!’

  I imagine Granny and Mr Muhammed dressed as little kids, flying high on the swings.

  Priti pretends she’s not bothered but I reckon she’s a bit worried about getting caught too because she suggests we play in the woods where we’re less likely to be seen. So we all trail off in the direction of the copse. Jed thinks we should be looking for condoms to see if Zara and Tyreese are ‘doing it’, but Priti says that’s gross. So we play Bomb-busters – which involves Jed-eye and Lil’ Priti nuking terrorist-cell bases – and we end up going miles further into the woods than we meant to.

  The park is actually massive. Beyond the swings is a field big enough to fit three football pitches in and all round the edge is this woody bit that stretches right down to the main road. Turns out there’s even a gate I never knew about leading to the shops on the Peacock Parade.

  This is where we bump into Tyreese’s gang. They’re all hanging out by the gate, sitting on their bikes, smoking and knocking back cans of lager, and by the time we see them it’s too late to turn back because they’ve already clocked us. I’m about to run for it anyway, but Priti has other ideas. She shouts, ‘Hey, Tyreese – how’s your kid brother?’ She’s got her hands on her hips and a funny look on her face.

  Tyreese looks at the others. Sitting on his bike he’s about twice as tall as Priti and he’s got this big grin on his face. ‘Why, do you fancy a piece of him?’

  ‘No thanks, I don’t go for white trash,’ she says, taking another few steps towards him. ‘Not like my sister!’

  She grins and Tyreese glares. I realise that his gang probably don’t know about him and Zara.

  ‘Oh, yeah, I remember your sister – what was her name? Nice bit of brown sugar!’ He puts up his hand for a high five and the gang roar with laughter.

  ‘But, hey!’ Tyreese goes on. ‘I haven’t seen her sweet little tush for a few days now. Your peeps packed her off to Pakistan or something? Married her to some fat, oily, middle-aged Paki?’

  The gang laugh again.

  Priti starts the hopping from foot to foot thing, but then stops herself. ‘Well, from what Zara told me, even “Paki” OAPs have bigger willies than you,’ she says boldly.

  I hear Jed whistle gently through his teeth.

  ‘Yeah?’ Tyreese says. ‘That why she couldn’t get enough of me?’ He revs his motorbike and thrusts his hips, making the other bikers laugh.

  ‘Perhaps that was before you stabbed her cousin,’ says Priti. Her eyes have narrowed and she’s glaring at Tyreese.

  ‘Don’t know anything about no stabbing, me.’ Tyreese grins at the gang, who all laugh. ‘But then, you all look the same ’sfar as I’m concerned.’ This gets another laugh.

  ‘And all you white-trash thugs look the same to us too,’ says Priti, starting to hop nervously again. ‘So I expect Zara’s moved on to the next bit of rough. But don’t worry, I’ll be sure to give her your love.’

  The bikers laugh, but this time Tyreese looks well mad.

  ‘Come on,’ Priti hisses. Me and Jed don’t need telling twice. Priti turns round and starts to walk off and we follow her.

  ‘As if I’d ever fall in love with one of you!’ Tyreese shouts. But Priti just keeps on walking, so fast me and Jed have to trot to keep up with her.

  ‘Keep walking,’ Priti hisses.

  ‘You rocked back there,’ Jed whispers.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Priti.

  ‘What if they follow us?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ sh
e says. ‘Just don’t look back.’ Glancing at her I can see she’s trembling although she keeps her head high and her shoulders back. ‘Zara always says if you talk the talk you gotta walk the walk,’ she says.

  So we all keep walking. I try really hard not to turn my head, but Jed takes a little peek. Tyreese shouts after us, ‘You tell that sister of yours I’ll be waiting for her.’

  We go back across the football pitches, rather than through the woods. I think we all reckon Tyreese is less likely to knife us out in the open. It feels like a long way back to the swings and when we finally get there, Jed turns to Priti. ‘For a little kid, that was pretty cool. Have you got a death wish or something?’

  ‘Live fast, die young: that’s my motto,’ says Priti, with a little flick of her head.

  ‘What was all that about then?’ says Jed.

  ‘He just annoys me, that’s all,’ says Priti as she clambers over the fence at the end of her garden and up into the tree house.

  ‘So has Zara really dumped him?’ asks Jed, jumping up after her.

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ says Priti. She looks a bit rattled, her skin pale beneath the green sparkly eyeshadow and circles of Barbie-pink blusher she’s wearing today.

  ‘I just don’t get what she sees in that loser, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s the bad boy thing,’ says Priti. ‘Makes her feel like a rebel!’

  ‘Why did you tell Tyreese she’d dumped him if she hasn’t?’ I say, forcing myself into the tiny gap they’ve left for me on the platform.

  ‘Wishful thinking!’ Priti replies.

  ‘Didn’t the whole stabbing-her-cousin thing put her off him then?’ says Jed.

  ‘Zara reckons Tyreese didn’t attack Said,’ says Priti. ‘She thinks he’s being framed.’

  ‘What do you think?’ I ask.

  ‘I said he was trouble from the start,’ she says, sounding a bit more like the old Priti now that we’re all safely back in the tree house. ‘But when I told her that, she just threw things at me. Sisters!’ She sighs. ‘What can you do?’

  THINGS I’D LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT PRITI

  1. Is she really cleverer than me and Jed (like she says she is) or does she just talk more?