by Non Pratt
“People want to see both of us doing them – we’re a team.” Sef takes his phone out, already open on one of our videos as if prepared to convince me. “OMG – you guys are adorbs. Freshest vid I’ve seen this week. Truth Girl’s such a little cutie. Anyone else totally shipping these two?” He glances up, barely registering how uncomfortable this is making me. “Love your channel – have you thought about opening up to challenges in the comments?”
The idea makes me nervous.
“So you’re saying they have to pay to challenge us?” Because that won’t work either.
“No, but we should do this anyway, take up challenges from our viewers. You always said audience involvement was the key to getting people to come back – and what better reason to come back than to check to see if we’ve done their dare?”
“How does that—”
“Two different things: accept challenges as part of our regular posts and make it just about growing the audience. No donations. To make money, we offer up something big – a series of proper dares set up so that we have to reach a target amount of donations before we perform.” The words come out hurried and desperate, his hands talking as fast as his mouth.
“What do you mean by ‘proper’ dares?”
Sef shrugs and I can feel his knee bouncing next to mine. “Things people want to see other people do that they wouldn’t do themselves.”
Things I would never want to do…
“Please, Claire.” Sef leans across the table and puts a hand on my arm, eyes wide and vulnerable, and there’s a tremor in his voice when he says, “I can’t do this without you.”
CHAPTER 15
I agree to the plan. How can I not? But Sef’s wrong if he thinks people will donate just for the sake of whatever qualifies as a “proper” dare. They need a reason to care – and that reason has to come from Sef. We need to separate the truth from the Dare Boy.
After a wasted hour of trying to sleep, I get my laptop out and hunt for a video I once saw of some guy on a train. (It takes a while.) The video is of him looking at the camera, not talking or anything, just staring a bit, sometimes reacting to the stuff happening around him, but the audio is him talking about what’s going on inside his head.
It’s powerful, hearing someone’s voice disconnected from their face, pulling you in, so that hearing their thoughts feels as close, as real, as hearing your own.
I send Sef the link, knowing he’ll still be awake. I don’t think he ever sleeps.
I want to film a trailer like this for the channel.
???
Just you, looking at the camera, while we hear a VO of you talking about Kam. Our viewers need to know why this matters.
His reply is a long time coming.
OK
x
I’ve never so much as put an “x” at the end of a message, but there’s no other reply that would feel right.
At the caravan the mood is subdued as we set things up for the trailer – a single stool for Sef to sit on while we play the audio file out loud and film his reaction.
“You ready?” I ask.
Sef adjusts his eye mask and gives a tight nod for me to press play on the audio file saved on his phone. It’ll be the first time I hear it and I’m not sure I’m ready…
“You know me as Dare Boy.” Sef points silently to himself. “But that’s not all I am. And this channel might look like two teenagers doing stupid stuff for the camera, but again, that’s not all it’s about.
“Someone close to us –” there’s a subtle shift in his focus to where I stand next to the camera and I feel the pressure of tears burning behind my eyes – “had an accident. He survived. But he can’t come on here and tell you a truth because he can’t talk. He can’t come on here and do a dare because he can’t move.
“We’re doing these things because he can’t and we invite you to donate because a life like his is expensive and not everyone has that kind of money.” There’s a pause on the audio and I see Sef’s eyes are glazed with tears that he quickly wipes away. “Isn’t the point of having money to make life better, even if that life isn’t yours?”
When the audio stops playing, I leave it a second before I go in and give him a hug where he sits, so that for once I’m the tall one. Sef’s chin rests on my shoulder as I hold him. It must have been hard for him to show that much of himself on camera, to talk about Kam in a way he rarely does, even to me. When Sef lets go, he sniffs and thanks me and asks for a biscuit break.
We sit huddled on the step outside, my mug of tea steaming in the winter air. The air in the caravan is heavy with unspoken fears, hope the only thing stopping us suffocating, but out here it’s cold and bright. A couple of tiny kids are swinging sticks at the skeletons of brambles along the bottom of the field. I laugh when one of them yelps, followed by a “Martin! You’re not meant to hit me…”
But when I glance over at Sef, he still looks sad.
“We used to do that,” he says, pointing his biscuit in the direction of the kids. “Uncle Danish used to avoid taking jobs in the summer so he could look after us on the days Mum had to work. He’d bring us here to run wild in the park and the woods while he worked on the caravan. He had a dog whistle he used to call us back for lunch and we’d sit –” Sef turns to point behind us – “up there on tatty beach towels and eat a picnic my mum had made for us. It was the only time she’d make bhajis, because she knew they were my uncle’s favourite.” He nibbles his biscuit and looks back to where the kids are fighting each other instead of the brambles. “Amir would get angry that we were so much better at everything than he was, then Kam’d take pity on him and the two of them would team up against me.”
He rolls up the leg of his jeans and points to a puckered pink scar on his calf.
“One time Amir got carried away and hit me with a post that had a nail in it – he didn’t know, was too little to see anything other than a really good sword. We were in the woods and the nail went right into my muscle. I was bleeding all over the place and crying because I couldn’t walk. Kam sent Amir running up to tell our uncle and then he piggy-backed me all the way through the woods and up the hill while Amir found Uncle Danish. Didn’t put me down once.”
It’s the most he’s ever said about his family and I press myself gently against him in gratitude for this day of firsts. For finally feeling like we’re friends.
The stress of the channel and mounting pressure of all the schoolwork I’ve not been doing make me distant and distracted around Kam, who’s clearly in an equally foul mood the way he keeps trying to talk, his intentions coming out as nothing more than a strained moan that frustrates him further. Each time I try to offer him choices as to what to do, he rejects them by turning away and refusing to look, and it would be cruel to force an answer out of him when it’s clear he doesn’t want to give one.
There’s a nurse with us today, although I’m not sure why. He’s a young man barely older than me, with no name badge and he keeps calling him Kamran.
“Look,” I say to the nurse, hating that I’m talking over the noises Kam’s making. “I don’t have to read. I’ve got my laptop. We could watch something on there?”
“There’s a private cinema for the residents—”
“I know,” I say, glancing at Kam, who still refuses to look this way, but has stopped trying to talk. “But I downloaded Moon.”
I detect something like interest in the way Kam goes still, but I have to point to the poster on the wall to get the man to understand.
“Moon is one of my favourite films too,” I say, more for Kam’s benefit than the nurse’s.
“You could give it a go, I suppose.” As the nurse glances out of the door like he’s worried someone will tell him off, I catch Kam looking at me and try to give him a conspiratorial smile. He doesn’t turn away, but he doesn’t look happy either.
My time is up before we can finish the film, but I suggest to Kam that we can watch it again next week and he goes so far as to
move his head in a nod. It’s the only time he’s really engaged with me all session and the whole thing leaves me feeling empty and depressed.
Kam might have a voice, but it’s one limited to other people’s questions – presenting him with options to choose from, or asking him questions he can answer with a nod or a shake – and I’m quiet on the journey home, contemplating the enormity of living a life like Kam’s, having to rely on others because you haven’t the tools needed to choose for yourself.
This tiny little taste of what it means to be powerless is too much for me and as soon as I get in, I’m at my laptop, opening up the channel, needing to do something, anything, to feel like I can make a difference. It gives me a lot more sympathy for Sef and the way he invariably turns every conversation I try to have about Kam into a conversation about the channel. The frustration I feel as Kam’s friend is nothing compared to what I’d feel if he were family.
We’ve overhauled all the graphics on our social-media accounts to tie in with our new and improved donation page, where there’s now a giant thermometer thingy indicating the amount we need to raise for each of the big dares.
£200: Truth Girl will shave her head.
£500: Dare Boy will streak across a football pitch during a Boxing Day match
£1,000: YOU CHOOSE!!!
I do not permit myself to think of how little £1,700 is compared to what we need, choosing instead to scroll down through the series of stills of Sef piercing his own ear. Although he’d insisted it was because we needed something on the donations page to show we were as good as our word, I can’t help thinking that in Sef logic, he was also hoping it’d make me feel better about committing to shave my head. It didn’t.
I scroll back up to the top of the page and read the banner:
TELLING TRUTHS, DOING DARES, SAVING LIVES
However much we raise, nothing we do will “save” Kam. This is his life now. There’s no cure and the value in him as a person isn’t the promise of what he might return to, but what he already is. If Kam is a princess locked in a tower, we’re the delivery drivers bringing him whatever it is he needs to live the happiest possible life in the tower, not the valiant knights come to break him out.
In real life you can’t always write the happy ending you were hoping for and sometimes I worry that Sef has yet to realize the difference between supporting someone and saving them.
DECEMBER
CHAPTER 16
The emotional sucker punch of our new trailer is working. The video has earned tons of new comments, loads of people saying they’re sorry to hear about our friend, how they appreciate the fact that we’re really in this for someone other than ourselves, that we’re keeping it real…
Although once you attract more views, you attract more arseholes.
I smell bullshit.
SOB STORY ALERT.
Is ur “friend” such a state u2 ashamed to show him on film?
Each one makes me wish I could climb into the screen and punch their avatars in the face, but if we want people to set us challenges in the comments, we can’t be moderating them.
Staying on-brand, Sef writes the comments up on cards and on Saturday, I pick out one that asks us to confess to crimes we’d rather no one knew about (Sef seemed like he had quite a lot to choose from), before it’s Sef’s turn to choose.
His grin grows as he scans whatever’s written on the card and the tip of his tongue presses mischievously against his teeth when he looks over at me.
“Paperrose348ugh asks, ‘Are you guys a couple?’ ” He delivers it with a slight Californian twang that makes me laugh. “Well, Truth Girl, are we?”
“Is this your way of asking me out?” I play along. “Because it needs work.”
In a flash, he’s dived down onto one knee, hands clasped as he gazes up at me. “Tell me the truth, fair maiden. Art thou my girlfriend? My snookle noodle? My spunk monkey?”
“Disgusting.”
“My sweetest of hearts, my ace of spades, my caddy of clubs, my diamond in the rough—”
“Who are you calling rough?”
“… the apple of my eye, the clementine of my heart, the grape of my wrath—”
And I can’t think of any other way of shutting him up than by turning to camera and saying in as loud a voice as possible, “No. We are not a couple.”
Sef’s up and back on his stool. “She loves me really.”
“Like a ship loves a barnacle.” I glare at him, desperately trying not to smile as he blows me a kiss.
A rare perfect take.
“What next?” I ask, stopping the camera and heading over to the kitchen, hoping to find a clean mug I can use for a cuppa.
“Well, there’s the one with the toothpaste…?” I have my back to him, but his grin’s so wide I can hear it.
One of our viewers has dared me to lick a toothpaste heart off Dare Boy’s chest. I am not keen, but I can see the wind is still lashing at the grass and a stray bin bag wafts past the window. Silly-Stringing a car dealer’s is a no go for today.
I guess I don’t have much choice.
Monday and I’m in the library catching up on the reading I should have done over the weekend. Having intimate knowledge of the cinematography of Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice isn’t the same as having read the book and Mr Kontos has been writing pointed comments to “pay attention to the text” on my essays.
Glancing up at the doors, I see Sef walk in and – as always – I get a thrill at seeing him on school premises, as if we’re agents in the field pretending not to know each other. An illusion Sef ruins by heading right for where I’m sitting in the comfy chairs by the window. I look around, wondering if there’s anyone here to see, but Mr Douglas is in his back room with a cluster of Year 10 library assistants and the only other person around is a tiny little Year 7 hunched over one of the consoles on the far wall.
Sef sits down, sprawling across the two seats opposite me and follows my gaze to the ancient DVD case he’s holding.
“Monologues.” He holds it up for me to see.
“Any good?”
“Amazing. Having one actor commanding your attention with a single story. Wouldn’t cut it on YouTube, though.”
Something in the way he’s smiling makes me suspicious.
“What?”
Looking far too pleased with himself, Sef takes his phone out and comes to sit next to me, his thigh nudging against mine.
“Last night’s video was popular,” he says, scrolling through the comments for TRUTH: Coupled up?
They start off quite innocent:
Too cute!!!
Not a couple. *subtle wink*
S...U....R.....E......
Dareboy is hawt
“I’m so hot right now.” I elbow Sef in the side when he says this.
I would
So would truthgirl whatever she says
“I would NOT!” I hiss at the screen, glancing round to check no one heard. “They can’t ask for the truth and then call me a liar.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much…” Sef is insufferably smug.
“The lady doth think you’re a tosser.”
“I’ve told you before, Claire, all this flirting is unprofessional.” His voice has a low pitch to it that sends a forgotten thrill through me. One I try to ignore.
Are they filming in a lab?
…
…?
BECAUSE CHEMISTRY.
Awful
Loooool
How funny would it be to dare them to kiss???
DO IT!
Dare you to kiss Dare Boy/Truth Girl
(on the lips)
Kiss!
Kiss!!!
*chants* kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss
“I don’t care how many people dare us to kiss,” I say, pushing his phone away. “I’m not doing it. Not for all the money in the world.”
He raises his eyebrows and grins. “Maybe just for free then?”
“Sef.�
� I twist round to look at him, wanting to make sure he gets the message. “You have a girlfriend. Licking toothpaste off –” I can feel the heat rising as I remember tracing a heart on his bare chest and I vaguely wave in his direction rather than say the word – “was bad enough but it wasn’t, you know, something people actually do in a relationship.”
Or that’s how I justified it to myself. Besides, it was the opposite of sexy.
“Kink shamer.”
I’m annoyed with him for being so flippant. “Whatever. I don’t kiss other people’s boyfriends. Not even for a dare.”
For the first time since he sat down, Sef breaks eye contact to run his hand up the back of his neck, looking out of the window, then over at the poster advertising an author visit for the Year 8s – anywhere but at me.
“Yeah. Well. I’m pretty sure Laila wouldn’t give a shit.”
“I’m pretty sure she would.” More to the point, I would.
Finally his attention settles on me. “And you’d know what my ex wants better than me, would you?”
His ex?
“What? When?” And for good measure, another, “What?”
“Broke up with her. Ages ago.”
“Define ages.” I feel like I’ve swallowed down a mouthful of food without chewing.
Sef gets extremely fidgety, flapping the DVD case back and forth like an ineffectual fan. “The other week.”
“Define. Other.” I sound very unimpressed. I am very unimpressed.
“I didn’t exactly write down the date. ‘Dear Diary, today my relationship ended. Sad face.’ ” He doesn’t sound very sad and I feel illogically angry on Laila’s behalf.
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“Any reason I should?” he says, looking across at me, his face pulled into tight, frustrated lines.
Reaching for my bag, I shove my book inside and stand up ready to go. If Sef needs an answer to that question, then we’re not the friends I thought we were.