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to the sky and yell to the timber cathedral ceiling, ‘I AM A HERO!’
    The air feels fresh and new in my super-lungs.
    And then I’m aware of the whole group staring at me.
    â€˜Umm, let’s break for coffee,’ suggests the counsellor.

CHAPTER 5
THE DARK BEFORE THE
DAWN
    T he ride home is tense.
    â€˜I have never been so embarrassed! What were you thinking, Hazy? Pretending you were a superhero in front of all those poor people.’
    â€˜But, Mum –’
    â€˜That was right up there with the first time my cousin, Blinky, went on television as an all-time moment in Retina humiliation,’ Dad fumes.
    â€˜Dad, I –’
    â€˜We said we would go to the Vegie Bar on the assumption that you would fulfil your part of the bargain, young man.’
    â€˜What bargain?’
    â€˜Why don’t you just go on that new “Australia’s Craziest People” TV show and totally embarrass yourself and the family?’ Dad says.
    â€˜Keep your hands on the steering wheel, love,’ Mum says. ‘But your father is right, Hazy.’
    Now I’m getting mad. ‘But Dad, you’re the one always telling me people are much worse off than I am, that the condition is nothing to be ashamed of.’
    â€˜That doesn’t mean pretending you’re a superhero! All I’ve been saying is you’re lucky you weren’t born with three heads.’
    What do you say to that?
    Totally miserable, I watch the suburbs roll past my window.
    It never occurs to me to look out the back windscreen and up. If I had, I might have noticed the shadowy figure flying along behind our car.

CHAPTER 6
LEON
    B ack home, I retreat to the safe haven of my bedroom, staring at the face of my all-time favourite superhero, Golden Boy. Actually, I’m looking at criminal genius the Boatman, reflected in Golden Boy’s golden eye mask. Released by a leading newspaper as a souvenir of Golden Boy’s memorable victory over the Boatman, when he saved Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay from a giant plug-hole three years ago, the poster is huge – two metres by one metre – and has long held pride of place on my wall. That movie had been huge. I love Golden Boy.
    I ask the poster, ‘What do I do with my life, Goldy?’ But Goldy is silent. Maybe the disaster that is my life is too big a challenge even for the greatest of Heroes.
    Mind you, he isn’t exactly alone in his lack of ideas. I look around my bedroom, and dozens of the world’s best Heroes are equally mute on how I can turn my miserable life around. Apart from one or two patches of actual paint, my bedroom’s walls are completely covered in posters, artwork, comic covers and other images of Heroes. I’ve got a large-format poster of the Ace next to my bed that cost me more than a month’s pocket-money on eBay, but it’s a beauty, with the Ace flicking giant playing cards at a faceless villain. The Southern Cross is up there too, posing with the medal he won as the southern hemisphere’s top Hero for the year before. To his left, I have a poster of central Australia’s most famous Hero, Big Red Rock, wrestling a nameless alien monster. The Rock’s massive muscles are bulging in his desert-sand red bodysuit a moment before he lands a powerful right hook on the twelve-legged, four-headed, long-fanged creature from the planet Aaarngarn. The Flaming Torch is on the opposite wall, body flaming dramatically as he soars into the sky.
    Nothing else can carry me away from the rotten mess that is my blurry life like these Heroes can. For a while, my walls had a couple of Jedis and boy wizards, but I always found myself covering them up with new images of masks, capes, bright uniforms and superpowers. If I was going to be honest, I might admit a guilty truth: that I tend to be pinning up more and more pictures of female heroes, and not just because I admire their superpowers. The inky purple