Heroes Like Us: Two Stories by Onjali Q. Raúf

Author:Onjali Q. Raúf [Raúf, Onjali Q.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Nelson, I’m hungry! I can’t wait anymore. Look—my tummy’s gone in!”

I looked at my sister, Ashley, as she lifted her T-shirt and sucked her tummy in just as hard as she could. She knew I hated it when she did that, because it looked horrible—as if her tummy was being sucked down a hole.

“All right, all right!” I said, putting down my pen and getting up from the living room floor. I would have to finish my homework later.

I was hungry too. School dinners never filled me up anymore. For some reason, the dinner ladies always gave extra-small helpings on the days when the food was really nice—like fish finger and fries days. And was it just me, or were the fish fingers getting more skinny every week, as if all the fish in the sea were on a diet? Breakfast Club was still OK, but the cereal boxes felt like they were getting smaller too…

Ashley stomped into the kitchen with me, her ponytail swinging from side to side. She was hugging her favorite toy of the week. This week it was one of my old plastic cars, which she had decided to call Freddy. No one knew why.

She jumped up onto her favorite chair at the kitchen table, patted Freddy, and then looked at me hopefully.

It was time again.

Time for me to play the Pretend Game.

The Pretend Game was when I had to pretend we had food left in the house even when we didn’t.

I hated playing the Pretend Game. Out of all the games I had to play at home, it was the worst one. Especially when it was coming to the end of what Mum called “A Really Tricky Month.” That’s a month when the money Mum got from her job wasn’t enough to pay for food as well as for everything else we needed. But this month we were lucky. Someone had given Mum some vouchers, and I knew that tomorrow we would be heading down to the best bank in the world to cash one of them in.

“Hmm,” I said as I went over to the fridge and opened the door wide.

The fridge lit up with a warm yellow glow, as if it wanted to show us that it had something inside for us to eat. But the shelves were empty, apart from half a jar of jam, a plastic bottle of mustard that had been there since before I was born, one egg, and a tiny bit of milk.

I could have boiled the egg for Ashley, but I knew Mum probably hadn’t eaten all day at work, so I wanted to save it for her.

“Nope, nothing interesting in there,” I said, closing the fridge door. “Let’s try here!”

In the cupboard next to the fridge, there were packets of spices and salt someone at the Bank had once given us but which we had never used, a bottle of oil, and half a box of cornflakes. I could have given Ashley cornflakes, but I needed to save the milk for when Mum came home and wanted a cup of tea.

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