Truth or Dare

by Non Pratt

  But he knew I had.

  “Zahid didn’t think I’d do it. Bet me ten quid and everything.”

  “A tenner?!” Kam was right to question that part of the story. I stopped smiling and went back to contemplating the Lego. “Zahid probably doesn’t even have ten pounds. Or if he does, he has to give Auntie Iffat a receipt for whatever he spends it on. You were stupid to take the bet.”

  I scowled, annoyed with him now he wasn’t on my side.

  “He didn’t think I would do it.”

  “Come on – Zahid knew full well you’d do it.” Kam threw a pair of balled-up socks at my face and I batted them away.

  “Yeah, well, then he should have been prepared to pay!” The promise of hard cash was what got me through ingesting those dusty little rabbit turds.

  “When are you going to learn?” Kam shook his head. “The only person you can trust to be honourable is yourself, Sef. Zahid’s as trustworthy as a vegan shark.”

  He stood up and frowned at the shelf next to him, where the crew of the Lego pirate ship were artfully arranged in the sort of debauchery that Auntie Iffat would not approve of when she came up here to clean.

  “Next time –” Kam adjusted the angle of the broom the deckhand was holding – “get your payment up front.”

  Everything we’d filmed for the channel had been daft stuff almost anyone could copy if they wanted. As Claire had said way back when we set the terms and conditions: that was the point.

  Now we needed to change the model, a promise of something our audience wouldn’t dare to do themselves … something more daring than firing jelly beans at each other from our mouths or telling people what colour underwear we had on.

  The problem was that the only decent (legal) dares I could think of were either dangerous or involved nudity. Or pain. There was no way Claire would agree to any of them without having a London-sized freak-out about it.

  That’s the problem with people who think too much about things – in front of the camera I could goad Claire into doing almost anything, but I needed leverage to get her there.

  Frustrated, I clicked back through our videos, reading the comments, not knowing what I was looking for until I started to see it. The comments about us, our chemistry, the “Are you guys a couple?” question…

  It’s not like I’m some stage actor with a weird hang-up about watching myself onscreen, but I’d never felt the need to do more than give Claire’s edit a cursory once-over before posting. After posting, all I cared about were the comments, the shares and the views and likes. I had enough of other people’s videos to watch without wasting time on our own.

  But in doing so, I’d missed what the magic was. I’d always thought it was about what we did, but watching TRUTH: What colour is your underwear? I realized it wasn’t what we did, but the way we did it.

  Claire looked horrified as I stood to pull up the waistband of my knock-off Calvins, before – as was the way with our truths – she had to answer too.

  “Black pants. And before you ask, I’m not showing anyone. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  “Always, Truth Girl.” Then, with a wicked grin, “I believe the phrase ‘underwear’ refers to more than just your pants…”

  Blushing furiously through her smile, she pulled the neck out on her T-shirt to glance down, her other hand stretched out to keep me at bay, even though all I’m doing is giving the camera a meaningful look.

  “Purple. With a turquoise trim,” she confirmed.

  “Sexy.”

  “Shut up.”

  Dare Boy and Truth Girl had as much, if not more, of the same chemistry that Claire and I had in our messages. As I watched with a clear head and honest eyes, I saw things I missed during filming – things that couldn’t be edited out. The veiled looks Claire gave me when she thought I wasn’t looking, or how much we touched each other, nudging each other’s thighs with our knees – hugs and shoves – both of us talking with our hands as much as our mouths, Claire’s gestures mirroring mine.

  Onscreen, she pushed me playfully off my stool as she told me to shut up about her bra being sexy, her ears bright red and a grin a mile wide on her face.

  This was gold and we were wasting it on stuff people could copy when we should have been spending it on something better. Something bigger.

  I was prepared to do almost anything to help Kam – all I had to do was convince Claire that she was prepared to do the same.

  Her scarf was ridiculous. Fifty metres long and knitted from the sort of colours you’d find in the bargain bin. When Claire finally emerged, her nose was pink and her cheeks flushed.

  “You quite finished there?” I said, enjoying the side-eye she gave me and the indignant, “It’s cold out.”

  I took her to Cine Obscura because that’s where we’d met before and for all Mia radiated disapproval so tangible I could feel it all the way across the foyer, it was still the place I felt safest outside our caravan.

  Uncle D’s caravan.

  Only, once I got her there, I didn’t know how to start, my fingers almost as busy as my brain as I tried to work out what I wanted to say, lining up all the arguments I had in my arsenal.

  “So. Here’s the thing. We do the dares and ask people to pay to copy us. But that’s all the wrong way round. People need to pay first, then see the dares.”

  “Why would they pay, though?” Voice set to sceptical.

  “We give them an incentive…”

  “What kind of an incentive?”

  “Offer up dares worth paying for.” I glanced up from where I’d been spinning my can around on its coaster, knowing she wouldn’t like what I was saying.

  “Sef…”

  I rushed in too soon, too desperate to convince her.

  “The amount we’ve raised averages out at fifty-four pence per video. The money you’re planning on spending on a GoPro is more than we’re ever likely to make if we carry on like this.”

  I regretted mentioning it the second the sentence came out. Claire’s loaded compared to me, but it’s not something we’d actually discussed – she just quietly left petrol money in the change pot in the central console, offered to sort out train tickets and never asked me to pay her back… The GoPro thing might not have been fair, but it was also true.

  “I don’t mind you doing dares…” she started to say.

  “People want to see both of us doing them – we’re a team.” It was what I’d been waiting for. I read the comments from my phone. “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?” I looked up to see her squirming in her seat and skipped the one that said, Has anyone dared them to kiss? “Love your channel – have you thought about opening up to challenges in the comments?”

  “So you’re saying they have to pay to challenge us?”

  “No.” This wasn’t going the way I’d planned – I was going to tackle the money issue separately. “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—”

  I could tell she wasn’t getting on board.

  “Two different things: accept challenges as part of our regular posts and make it just about growing the audience. No donations.” I boxed off the words with my hands and pushed them to the side. “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.”

  “What do you mean by ‘proper’ dares?”

  I shrugged.

  “Things people want to see other people do that they wouldn’t do themselves.” I was losing patience, needing her to agree, to trust me on this one. “Please, Claire.”

  And before I could check myself, decide whether what I was doing was fair, I was leaning in sliding my fingers a litt
le way up the smooth skin of her forearm. I didn’t know how much Claire might be prepared to do for Kam, but perhaps she would do it for me.

  “I can’t do this without you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Just you, looking at the camera, while we hear a VO of you talking about Kam. Our viewers need to know why this matters.

  I’d pushed Claire further than she was comfortable with on the dares, now she was pushing me on the truth.

  After my Thursday night shift at the cinema, I drove over the bridge, the arches of the viaduct following my progress like three hooded eyes and took the road up to the lookout, past the school and into the countryside beyond the lights of the town.

  Truths slip out more easily when there’s no light to see them by.

  Felt stupid the first time I tried.

  “Hi, so, it’s me and…”

  Sounded like I was leaving an answerphone message. Never was any good at those.

  “This is me. Dare Boy.” That wasn’t right either. This truth belonged to me, not Dare Boy.

  “I hate this.” I didn’t know who I was really talking to until I felt the familiar heat in my eyes, guilt creeping out as tears. “I hate that I can’t talk to you. Why aren’t you here? Kam? I love you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…” I could barely breathe for the misery clogging my throat. “Fuck.”

  Brought my fist down too hard on the wheel and Mrs Bennet let out an indignant little “Peep!”

  “I don’t want your stupid fucking car!” I hit her again. “Or your fucking computer or your fucking room…” Didn’t mention Cheddar. Of all the things that had once been Kam’s, his ugly little cat was the only one that brought me comfort.

  “I want my brother back!” I screamed at the ceiling, at the night outside and the silence inside and I was sobbing so hard I thought I’d choke as I collapsed forward, pressing my forehead against the wheel until it hurt.

  “I’m doing this for you,” I told the speedometer.

  All for someone who didn’t know. Did he?

  But the only way Kam would know about the problems we were having paying for his care would be if someone told him. And who would do that? What kind of monstrous parents would pass problems like that on to the son they’re trying to protect?

  “I’m trying to protect you too,” I said. “I’m sorry. I love you. Let me help, let me make up for it…”

  And I scrunched my eyes tight and cried into the night as I whispered the truth into my phone. “This is all my fault.”

  Whatever barriers I’d put up fell away as I sat with Claire on the step of the caravan and told her about the summer I got my scar. Dare Boy and Yousef Malik no longer seemed like separate performances so much as two halves of the same whole.

  A whole that only Claire would ever see.

  “So we gonna film you saying you’ll shave your head?” It was the only dare we’d been able to come up with that met my criteria for being interesting and Claire’s for being “safe”. Even so, you could see she was on edge about it.

  “Do I have to?”

  “Film the video or shave your head?”

  “Either. Both.” But she’d already got up from the step, ready to re-enter the studio. “I really don’t want to do this, you know.”

  I did know. “You think I want to streak across a football pitch on Boxing Day?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. You’re obsessed with getting naked.”

  “Am I now?” And I pulled up the hem of my T-shirt as I followed her inside. “You think the world isn’t dying to get a load of this?”

  “The world might be. I’m not.” She turned away to fiddle with the camera and I ducked round to make sure she could see me.

  “You can totally pull off a shaved head.”

  “Really?” She did that disbelieving little head-roll-chin-tuck thing at me.

  “Yes. Really. You have a beautiful skull.”

  “Creepy.”

  “And a beautiful face.”

  “Now I know you’re lying.”

  “Fine. Your skull is kind of average and your face is funky-looking.” She fought back a smile. “But bald girls are sexy, so deal with it.”

  But the way she was fiddling with the settings on the camera, adjusting the reflectors that were already perfectly angled, was all just a way to stall filming the appeal and I nudged her gently on the arm.

  “How about we film something else first? That proves we’re worth our words.”

  “Like what?”

  I frowned, thinking of something that would show her I was willing to do something that would last beyond the time it took to film, something I couldn’t hide from everyone else. Something to show solidarity.

  CHAPTER 15

  It’s quite hard to hide the fact you’ve pierced your ear when:

  A) You wear your hair short and sharp round the sides like I do

  B) Your ear swells up and starts leaking pus

  and

  C) Your little tit of a brother draws your mum’s attention to it

  She wasn’t very sympathetic to the infection.

  “Invent a time machine and go back and stop yourself from doing something so stupid.” Mum stared at me with crossed arms and a disapproving stare before relenting. “There’s some TCP in the bathroom cupboard. If you get it, I’ll bathe your ear.”

  Amir sniggered into his cereal as I winced and yelped at how rough she was.

  “Be glad your father’s not here.”

  “Why?”

  “He doesn’t like this sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  But she got very evasive. “Let me talk to him before you see him later, yes?”

  It wasn’t much easier going to school, where Matty led the charge on ripping the piss out of me so loud that everyone within earshot joined in.

  “I thought you’d back me up!” I slapped Finn on the arm – he’d been gently stretching his ear for the last six months.

  “Yeah, but mine’s on brand… Yours makes you look like—”

  “A twat?” Matty.

  “A poser?” Helen.

  “A wide boy!” One of the lads from my Drama class pitched in.

  “A moron?” Laila – who was looking seriously annoyed with me.

  Finn grinned at the others and then at me. “Take your pick.”

  When the bell went for next lesson, Laila pushed on ahead of me and went to sit with Helen, leaving me to Matty’s mercy. All lesson I watched the back of her head, wondering when she’d turn round.

  She never did.

  When I first started at Cine Obscura, before the novelty wore off, Finn and Matty would come and find me on a Saturday night once they’d got bored of bumming around town.

  “Didn’t know you two were such a fan of Hungarian cinema,” I said looking up to see them approach. It was May, it was wet and I wasn’t surprised to see them.

  “What?” Matty screwed up his face as he studied the listings behind me while I wiped down the counter.

  “Thought this was Coen brothers week?” Finn pointed at one of the posters.

  “Next week,” I said. “And before you ask, no, you can’t get a discount.”

  “Not even for your oldest friends?” Matty tried for puppy-dog eyes and I slapped him in the face with the cloth I’d been using.

  “That rules you out then.” I only started hanging out with Matty at the end of Year 10.

  “Bet he’d answer different if someone else was doing the asking,” Finn said with a lazy drawl as he leaned back on my clean counter and eyed up the empty foyer.

  “You mean someone prettier?” Matty joined in.

  “Someone more female.”

  “Someone called Laila Jalil,” Matty finished, his grin wide and knowing.

  “Fuck off.” I wrung my cloth out in the sink with my back to them.

  The week before, things had shifted gear with Laila. We’d always been friendly, but a load of us had been round at Bradley Summers’ house for a barb
ecue and all I could remember of the night was lying squashed next to Laila on a sunlounger left out on the lawn, talking with our heads bent close and me playing with a strand of her hair that kept falling from where she’d tucked it behind her ear.

  “You know she’s seeing someone,” I said, trying not to think of how I’d been noticing the way her school shirt gaped open a bit and daydreaming away the lessons we shared wondering what it would be like if she undid all the buttons down to that point…

  I had a feeling Laila might have been noticing my noticing.

  “Whatever,” Matty said. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

  So far most of my encounters had been limited to one-off kisses with nameless girls in nightclubs or something a little fumblier with girls I knew from school who got bold with booze at a house party, but Laila was cut from the cloth of girlfriend material.

  By the time we broke off for study leave, my head was filled with thoughts of her when it should have been filled with facts about the impact the Industrial Revolution had on the standard of living among the working classes. There wasn’t a day that passed when I didn’t send her a sneaky Snapchat, starting off a spiral of flirty messages until she’d tell me to get back to work. That I was distracting her.

  The night our exams ended, everyone in our year descended on the high street, fake IDs at the ready, sequinned skirts and shiny shirts shimmering like a shoal of fish as we moved from pub to bar to club. Everyone was hugging and kissing each other on the cheeks the drunker they got, although Laila and me were both sober and she seemed to be saving all her hugs for me. But then she pulled me close and shouted in my ear, “I didn’t break up with my very nice boyfriend just for hugs, you know…”

  Four weeks we’d had, spending all our free time together without either of us being fully committed. When Laila left to go travelling with her family, we suspended our relationship on the understanding that things would turn serious once she got back.

  Neither of us banked on the kind of serious it turned into, though.

  I owed Laila more of an effort than I’d been putting in.

  “Do you want to come over to mine for a bit?” Both of us had frees and it was likely to be quiet at mine for once – Mum would see Kam straight from work, then pick up Amir from Nerd Club, and Dad was working so many jobs the chance of him being home was pretty slim.