home” ritual: they would walk together until they reached the north-west corner of the park, then Colin would go east, Danny would go north to the apartment blocks and Brian would go west. As always, however, they spent an hour or so sitting on the low wall, chatting, arguing and watching out for flash cars or good-looking girls.
It was while they were doing this, sheltering from the rain under the park’s enormous pine trees that overhung the path, that Brian spotted his younger sister approaching on her bike, doing her best to cycle around the puddles.
“Hey, here comes your girlfriend, Danny,” Brian said.
“Oh, ha ha,” Danny replied.
They watched as Susie wobbled her way towards them and stopped right in front of Danny. “Hi, Danny!”
Danny muttered a greeting, but deliberately avoided looking her in the eye.
“What do you want?” Brian asked her.
“Mummy says you’re to come home now and stop dawdling.”
“Does she really?”
“Yes.”
Brian thought about this. “OK… I’ll race you. You on the bike and me running.”
Susie wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to show off in front of Danny. “OK then.”
“I’ll even give you a head start,” Brian said. “I’ll let you get as far as the end of the road.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “No. You’ll cheat or something.”
Brian tried to look innocent. “Cheat? Me? Never! Danny will vouch for me, won’t you, Dan?”
“Sure,” Danny said, reluctantly.
With that, Susie tore off down the road, pedalling like mad.
Brian watched her go. “Sucker.” He turned to the others. “Pretty cool about the homework, isn’t it? A lot better than maths or geography.”
“Couldn’t you have come up with something easier?” Colin asked.
“It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t think he’d make us do an essay!”
“I’m going to pick Thalamus,” Danny said. “He’s my third favourite after Titan and Paragon.”
“So why not do Paragon, then?” Brian asked.
“Because he’s everyone’s second favourite. What about you?”
“Thunder.”
Danny laughed. “He’s the one with the dumbest powers! Power over rain! What use is that? You never hear stories about how he managed to use his abilities to do anything other than make a loud bang or cause a sudden downpour! Why not pick Apex? He was pretty cool.”
“Yeah, but no one knows much about him,” Colin said.
“That’s what makes him a good choice.”
Brian said, “Well, maybe you think that Thunder is a bad choice, Danny, but I’ve got a few ideas to make it work. Who are you going to choose, Col?”
Colin shrugged. “I don’t know… I’ll probably end up forgetting again and doing it when I’m having my breakfast on Monday morning.” He grinned. “I seem to work better when my Dad is standing in front of me telling me over and over that I shouldn’t put things off until the last minute.”
“You could always write it from the point of view of one of the villains,” Brian suggested.
Danny raised his eyes in disgust. “Brian, you’re a moron! He said we have to write about one of the heroes, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did. But look at it like this… Suppose that, say, Ragnarök thought that he was a hero.”
Colin looked up at this. “Yeah, he always believed he was doing the right thing.”
Danny nodded. “That’s true, but let’s face it; Ragnarök was a complete nutter. How the hell could robbing banks and holding the world to ransom be anything but the work of a villain? If you do evil things you’re still evil – no matter what the reason.”
They fell silent as they spotted a quartet of girls wearing the uniforms of St Mary’s.
One of the girls glanced at them as she passed. “Hi Danny!”
Danny was taken aback. “Er… Hi, um…”
“Judy,” Brian whispered.
“Hi Julie!” Danny said.
The girl gave him a filthy look and hurried a little to catch up with her friends.
Brian thumped Danny on the arm. “You idiot! I said Judy, not Julie!”
Danny rubbed his arm. “How was I to know? I’ve never even seen her before!”
Brian said, “Danny, two weeks ago she spent an hour listening to you going on about how Manchester City were the greatest football team in the world. She was all over you!”
“That was her?”
“How do you do it?” Brian asked. He got up from the wall, pushed back his sleeves and held out his bare arms. “Look at that! I’ve got muscles! Everyone knows that girls like muscles, but this lanky git gets more action than both of us combined!”
Danny said, “Maybe they go for quality over quantity.”
Brian sighed, shook his head, and sat down again. “So what time’s the party tomorrow night, Col?”
“About eight.” Like many people, Colin’s parents always threw a party for Mystery Day. For Colin’s mother, it was really just an excuse for a family get-together. Sometimes Colin felt that his parents only wanted the party so that they could embarrass him in front of his cousins. “You’re definitely coming, then?”
“Yeah, but… right, here’s the thing, OK? My folks are going out and they said it’s going to be hard to find a baby-sitter for Susie. So they asked me to ask you if she could come to your party.”
“I’m sure my folks won’t mind. And she’ll be able to keep my little cousins busy.”
“Speak of the devil…” Brian said.
The others looked up to see that Susie was cycling furiously back to them.
“She does not look happy,” Colin said.
Susie stopped her bike in the middle of the road and glared at them. “Brian!”
“Now what?”
“I’m telling on you!” She yelled across at her brother.
Brian
