Truth or Dare

by Non Pratt

  Laila had her books open on the table by the common-room window and when she looked up, it was with the kind of smile I should have taken as a warning.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Things started out OK. I offered her a drink, we sat on the sofa. We kissed. Only our kissing soon moved from vertical to horizontal, Laila’s hands running up under my T-shirt, her pressing herself into me so that I couldn’t help but notice the feel of her body against mine.

  “Shall we go up to your room?” Laila whispered, glancing at the huge front window. Our house is set back from the street enough that Mum has refused Dad’s repeated request to put nets up, but it’s still pretty exposed.

  Once we were in my room – Kam’s room – it felt all wrong. A girl kicking her shoes off to climb on the bed, kissing me, touching me, should have brought with it the thrill of doing something my parents would thoroughly disapprove of.

  It didn’t. Instead it seemed as if I could only experience it through some internal narrator.

  Kissing, kissing, pause for heavy breathing…

  Rubbing up against each other.

  Careful now, that’s how fires start…

  Laila getting impatient as she tried to guide my hands.

  That’s a breast and … roll to disengage. Well played, sir.

  Laila, however, has never been content to be passive. Of the two of us, she was the one who knew how to have a relationship.

  What? No, not there. Oh, well… Yes, but … no. No, no, no.

  Every time she made a move for my flies, I shifted so she couldn’t get a grip. By the third time, it had become ridiculous, as my girlfriend attempted to wrestle me round the bed while we remained locked at the mouth. Laughter bubbled up in my throat, but there was nothing about this that felt funny.

  “This is stupid. What’s going on?” Laila sat up, her lips a little darker from all the kissing, hair rucked up and tangled. She’d never looked more beautiful and I’d never wanted her less.

  “I’m sorry.” I tilted my head back against the wall, my eyes closed. I didn’t really have anything else to offer. I was sorry.

  “Is that it?” I couldn’t tell what question she was really asking, so I didn’t answer. “Look at me, Sef.”

  But I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see myself reflected in her eyes. Someone supposed to be much more than I was.

  “Look at me.” Her voice was softer now, she was closer and her fingers were on my chin, turning me to face her. “Please, just talk to me.”

  “I don’t want to talk,” I whispered.

  There was the softest possible sigh as she let go and leaned away. “You never do, but if you can’t talk to me, can’t touch me, what are we going to do together?”

  I looked at her then, with a weak sort of smile: “Watch films and cuddle?”

  “I’m not in this for films and cuddles. You can get those from Finn. Or your mother.” She traced a pattern on the thigh of her leggings. “Limping on like this is making it harder for both of us.”

  “Are you breaking up with me?” I asked.

  “I think you want me to.”

  I didn’t say anything, but that was an answer in itself.

  Laila slid off the bed and pulled on her shoes and jacket as I sat watching her. Before she left, she leaned over, one knee resting on the bed, and stroked my hair.

  “I’m so sorry this happened, Sef.” She kissed my forehead. I think she might have been crying. “If you ever change your mind about talking, I’ll still be here to listen.”

  I stayed where I was on the bed, sitting in silence, dusk turning to dark outside my window.

  The only person I wanted to talk to was Kam.

  CHAPTER 16

  Want to wake up to something sexy?

  Claire replied with a photo of her peeking through her fingers as if frightened of what I might send, but for once I played it straight and sent her a screengrab of the number of views last night’s video had gathered overnight.

  Seriously sexy.

  I’ve more where that came from…

  There was actually some cash in the donation fund. Quite a lot, actually.

  PHWOAR.

  And saving the best till last…

  I pulled down my duvet and tried to tense what little I had in the way of abs.

  YOU TRICKED ME! NOW MY EYES ARE BURNING.

  I replied with a little kissy emoji.

  I hate you.

  Which made me laugh as I hurried down the stairs to where I was already late for breakfast.

  Smiling to myself, I replied. You love me.

  “What’s so funny?” Dad asked as I sat down and grabbed the cereal box. We were talking again now I’d agreed to seek medical help and Mum’d had a go at him for being aggressive.

  “Nothing,” I told him, but my phone went again and Amir snatched it from where I’d put it on the table, not yet faded to lock screen.

  “Ooh…” He’d already scrambled out of his chair and was dodging around the table, keeping it between me and him as I lunged for my phone.

  “Don’t you dare—”

  “Who’s C-l-a-i-r-e?” He dragged it out with so much relish you could have put it in a jar and sold it at a farmers’ market.

  “No one – give it back, you little c—”

  “Yousef!” Dad snapped, anticipating the abuse. It’s what Kam used to yell at me when I did this to him.

  Mum stepped in from the kitchen, where she’d been brewing a coffee to take on the train rather than risk being tempted by a Costa she couldn’t afford at the station.

  “What’s all this? We live in a house not a zoo.” She glared at me in particular and I sunk back into my chair.

  “Tell Amir to stop reading my messages.”

  Mum plucked the phone from his grasp to hand to me, giving Dad a withering look like maybe he should have tried doing the same.

  “Sef’s cheating on his girlfriend,” Amir piped up.

  “No, I’m not!”

  “With someone called Claire.” His greasy little face had oozed into a repugnant grin.

  “I raised my sons to treat girls better than that!”

  It always made me uncomfortable when Mum commented on relationship stuff. Kam hadn’t ever had one and the only thing willing to date Amir is his left hand and a box of tissues – I was her test case.

  “I—” I darted a look of white-hot hate at my brother for forcing me into doing it like this. “I’m not cheating on Laila. We broke up.”

  Mum’s vague interest crystallized into disapproval. “For this Claire girl?”

  “No! Claire’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Says on your phone that you love her…” And Amir caught my eye as he made to lift up the front of his shirt, enjoying the look of outright horror on my face at how much of my conversation he’d seen.

  “Who – Laila?” Dad wanted in too. Brilliant.

  “He means Claire.” Mum did not approve.

  “No!” I was stressed with all the questions, the three of them interrogating me. “This is a violation of my privacy.”

  “Your family wanting to know about this new girlfriend?” Mum uses “this” to indicate her disdain for whatever follows.

  “I haven’t got one! She’s just a friend.”

  “That you love,” Amir added.

  “Learn to read, dipwank. I’m telling her she loves me – and it’s a joke.”

  “Don’t call your brother a … whatever it was that you said.”

  Dad’s reprimand was half-hearted because all three of them were laughing at me as I growled into my soggy cereal. No good wishing Kam was there – it’s not like he wouldn’t have been ripping into me worst of all.

  “So what did happen with Laila?” Mum asked on the way to the station. Although Amir had his headphones in, I caught sight of him in the rearview mirror looking up like he knew what we were talking about.

  “Nothing.” That was the whole problem, wasn’t it?

&n
bsp; “Sef. Indulge your mother. Talk to me.”

  Mum had been excited when she found out I was seeing Laila at the start of summer. Demanded I bring her over for tea and afterwards I’d heard her on the phone to Auntie Iffat saying I was dating “a nice Pakistani girl”. I don’t like it when Mum gets into that kind of mentality, but I figured she was allowed one free pass to Auntie Iffat since they’re engaged in some kind of nuclear arms race when it comes to their teen sons’ accomplishments. Me picking a palatable girlfriend was definitely one up on Zahid, who’d recently been in trouble for sharing a porno link on the school network.

  It’s not like she thought we were going to get married or anything, but I still hadn’t wanted to tell her it was over. Didn’t want to disappoint her on this, too.

  “I wasn’t being a very good boyfriend.”

  Mum tutted and I could tell she was about to bring up Claire, thinking of all the lectures she’d given me on treating girls with respect.

  “I wasn’t cheating on her, Mum. I just wasn’t the person she started going out with. Laila was the one who ended it.” Are you breaking up with me? I think you want me to… “We’re still friends.”

  I didn’t even know if that was true – of Laila, or any of the people who’d once been so important to me.

  When I pulled over by the station, Mum leaned across to stroke my face, guiding me to look at her.

  “Perhaps it’s best for you to take some time to be yourself for now,” she said, her face softened by love and grief. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  She kissed my cheek amid the brief bustle of her leaving and Amir getting in the front. Both of us sat there in the car, engine idling as we watched Mum march towards the station, Thermos in one hand, overstuffed handbag in the other.

  “Thanks for dropping me in it, you lumpy dumpling,” I said to Amir once I’d pulled back into the traffic.

  “Like Kam wouldn’t have done the same if he’d caught you sexting someone.”

  “Mate. It wasn’t sexting.”

  “Sure. All my selfies look like sleazy Tinder profile rejects.”

  “You’re too young for Tinder. And sleaze. And sexting. Not that what you saw on my phone was sexting.”

  The way Amir was looking at me made me so twitchy I nearly missed a light turning red and had to step on the brakes.

  “Was that you giving me a big-brother lecture?” he said after he’d bounced back into his seat.

  “Might have been.” I frowned at the road ahead, not entirely sure that’s what I’d intended. “Did it work?”

  Amir laughed and looked down at his phone, slipping his earphones back in. “Like I’m ever going to listen to you.”

  Which is exactly what I’d have said to Kam.

  DECEMBER

  CHAPTER 17

  PabloPickaxo had dared Truth Girl to draw a toothpaste heart on Dare Boy’s chest and lick it off. It was one of the racier dares that had come in through the comments, but I was game. It wasn’t like the weather gave us much of an option on Silly-Stringing a car dealer.

  Claire stared out of the window at where the wind was whipping through Sunny Slopes so violently that there were flowerpots all over the place and someone’s picnic table had wedged its legs around the corner of Uncle D’s caravan.

  “OK…” She turned to look at me, eyes narrowed cautiously. “Off your T-shirt, right?”

  “It says chest.” I waved my phone, where I’d been logging all the dares that came in. “I’m freshly waxed and everything.”

  I’d just done a dare, waxing a strip of hair from my chest and nibbling the hair from the waxing strip.

  “And this isn’t, you know, weird?”

  I knew what she was referring to. Dodged it.

  “No weirder than anything else we’ve done.”

  “I meant—”

  “I know.” I turned away from her to fiddle with the tripod, bending down to check the camera was in position. “You meant about Laila?”

  Even though I wasn’t looking at her, I sensed the awkward way she shrugged.

  “I don’t think she’d care, Claire, or I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

  Both one hundred per cent true and one hundred per cent lie depending on how my answer was interpreted. I’d already decided things would be easier if Claire carried on believing I still had a girlfriend. Things would be different if Claire was updated on my relationship status, but I didn’t want to give her false hope and I didn’t want to have to change the way I behaved around her – it was too much fun.

  When the edited video came through, I got the all-over skin tingle that comes from knowing you’re watching something special.

  She’s so awkward that this in itself was enough to get me grinning. The pair of us argue about the best way to apply toothpaste to my naked chest, then the video cuts to several short shots of us actually trying to get it on, ridiculous muzak playing in the background, pausing every so often to allow the viewer to hear how much we’re laughing – toothpaste everywhere, dropping off my body, smeared all over Claire’s hands and arms – until we finish with me holding my mask on and saying, “I think I’m about to cry this thing off.”

  Claire’s giggling too much to get started and even once she does, she keeps stopping every two seconds.

  “This is the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.” “What if I overdose on fluoride?” “Stay still! You’re making it harder.”

  Which was too easy.

  “I’m making what harder now?”

  And she slaps me right in the middle of my chest, leaving behind a toothpaste palm print.

  “Making more work for yourself there…” I tell her.

  The video cuts from that to when I started letting out groans and gasps, whispering, “Yeah … that’s the spot.”

  “I hate you.”

  “You hate PabloPickaxo.”

  “No. It’s definitely you I hate. Pablo never said anything about simulating sex noises.”

  My whip-fast “Oh, these aren’t my sex noises.” Accompanied by a neat little cut of me giving the camera a salacious look.

  Didn’t know it would take off the way it did, but looking back I can see why. It was a sharp contrast to the video we filmed the following week after I’d wound her up about kissing me and fallen flat on my arse about breaking up with Laila.

  I’d not wanted to click on the file she sent through, remembering how awkward it had been to film, Claire folded up, keeping her hands and her smiles and her thoughts to herself and me overcompensating, filling the space between us with noise. I’d left myself at the mercy of whatever edits she chose to make and it would have been very easy to make me look like an utter twat.

  I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t one.

  But Claire is nothing if not fair and the cut she sent over was fine.

  Fine. A word that doesn’t do what it says on the tin. Watching it through, there was none of the buzz of our old videos. The argument we’d had was there, in the thin line of her mouth, the studious concentration on the dare at hand.

  I clicked back to the toothpaste video, where the pair of us look like we’re friends who might be something more, having the kind of fun people want to be a part of. The internet loves a good ship and the views on that particular video had rocketed up, dragging the donations with it. And the subs.

  I rewatched the video she’d just edited.

  Truth Girl and Dare Boy had all the rapport of a dog chasing a car.

  Banter was part of our brand – if we couldn’t get it back we’d lose the audience I was so excited to finally start getting.

  We’d fail. I’d fail.

  But Claire had cooled off so fast that our friendship had turned frigid. I charted it in her messages – the brevity of each one inversely proportional to how long it would take for her to reply. I’d never had to go longer than the length of a lesson before and all the waiting made me restless, forever checking my phone in case she’d sent me something. One morning, Matty got hal
fway through telling me about some epic night out before I realized he was making the whole thing up when he uttered the sentence “… so then I asked a giant badger where was the best place to score some crack and he told me DiMaggio’s.” Finn just laughed at me and teased me for being a space cake, but you could tell Matty took it personally. I’d been phasing out during a lot of our conversations.

  The one and only time Claire responded with her usual speed was when I sent her a message during lunchbreak to say we’d met the target for shaving her head. Even then, her single thumbs-up emoji lacked enthusiasm.

  I tried to type a thousand and one different messages that might encourage another rapid response, but in the end, all I sent was a string of excitable emojis. Rockets and stars and a fried egg.

  “Don’t you have Drama now?” Finn nudged me as he plopped down onto the common-room sofa next to me.

  Glancing at the clock, I realized the bell must have gone fifteen minutes ago.

  “Shit.” I got up and grabbed my bag, hoping I had everything packed already, then paused a moment. I needed to get hold of some clippers if we were going to cut Claire’s hair at the weekend.

  “Do you want a lift home this evening?” I asked Finn.

  CHAPTER 18

  Finn had stopped shaving his head a while ago and went to the barber with Matty like someone bothered about his looks. Years he’d been ripping into me for taking care of myself but three months of sixth form and he’d turned dandy.

  “Who they for?” he asked after he’d dug them out of the bottom of his wardrobe.

  “Would you believe me if I said they were for me?”

  Finn smiled. “I’d offer to do it for you and call your bluff.”

  I handed them back. “Go on then.”

  He just laughed, shaking his head at me. Known me too long. “If you wanted them for yourself, you’d have asked me to do it straight off.”

  “Thanks.” I took the clippers. “I’ll bring them back once I’m done.”