by Non Pratt
“I don’t want extra sessions,” I said.
“You’ll have extra sessions whether you want them or not!” Mum jabbed a finger in the direction of the front room. “Please, Sef. This is not healthy.”
After we agreed a sum for me to pay back the damage, they called Amir down and then, their faces as calm as if they were telling us they’d decided to buy a new fridge, they told us the things they thought we should know. The things they’d hoped never to have to tell us.
“Kam’s made strides since he went to the Recreare.” Mum only needed to say that for my benefit – Amir knew those strides, had been walking the path with him. “And we’re proud of how hard he’s worked to get where he is. So proud.”
There was a catch in her voice and Dad reached across to take her hand.
“Kam is severely disabled,” he said, a word I’d never heard used in our house before then. “Hard work does not change that and although we hoped for the best, it has not happened.”
“What do you mean?” Amir looked from Dad to Mum.
“What your father is saying is that Kam’s condition is complicated and he continues to need a very high level of care. We’d hoped he could continue to receive this at the Recreare.” Hoped. A word that rang out as loud as a gunshot. “Kam moved there on a short-term basis, but long-term care requires a financial assurance that we can’t give them.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t have enough money, Amir. Your uncle’s been helping and we’ve looked at everything we can do, but we don’t have enough.”
“How much do you need?” I asked, only daring to dart a look in my parents’ direction, ashamed of how I’d shouted that same question down the phone only hours earlier.
“It doesn’t matter how much, Sef…” Mum said.
“What if—”
“There are no ‘what ifs’.” Dad spoke up, lifting his glasses to rub his eyes. “It is too much. This is not just about the next six months, but the rest of your brother’s life. Now is the time for us to think about putting what we do have to the best possible use. We must find something that we can afford.”
Amir was frowning, confused. “How does everyone else manage?”
“Compensation claims…” Mum began, her words bitter pills forced down my throat, the poison of their meaning seeping into me.
“Then we get one of those!” Amir stared at them, desperate for hope.
Mum glanced at Dad. “Amir. We’ve tried. There’s no money,” she said. “Kam will have to move before March.”
CHAPTER 27
The second I left the front room, I messaged Moz, ready to grovel over what a dick I’d been about the money. But Moz is as quick through his moods as he is through his infamous hook-ups and I pitched the idea I’d been toying with for the last few days, expecting him to go for it.
Chicken only works if you think the other person won’t pull away. Moz’s reaction was underwhelming.
I won’t pull away.
Then I will. I don’t want to die.
Why do you tell me that if you want me to believe it???
Because it doesn’t matter, the viewers aren’t going to believe it, they’re not stupid, they know neither of us wants to die – and the second they think it’s framed is the second you lose them.
So you think us going “We’ll play chicken if you raise forty thousand quid” isn’t going to work?
40K??? Are you high? 20, like before.
IT’S NOT ENOUGH.
IT’S THE BEST WE CAN DO.
I smacked the screen of my phone against my forehead a couple of times, trying to get it together before I replied.
That’s all we asked for last time. Can’t we ask for more?
Not if you want to reach the target.
Whatever. So chicken’s out…
Didn’t say it was out, mate. This is a private chat right?
Please don’t send me a picture of your dick.
Like you’d be so lucky. I meant you’re not sharing this with your girlfriend?
No. But I forgot and had to add, She’s not my girlfriend.
Whatever she is, are you game to prank her? Properly.
As I said before: there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to save my brother.
PART THREE: CLAIRE & SEF
FEBRUARY
SUNDAY
SEF
Ahead of me is a wall of white light and I hold out for as long as I can. Longer than Moz.
We swerve and I’m roaring with the effort of keeping my hands locked around the wheel, the car sliding sideways. It’s all happening too fast and as the car snakes beneath me, my foot slams down stupidly on the brakes, arms yanking the wheel the other way, throwing us into a full spin. Claire screams at a deafening bang and the judder of something smashing against us. The impact jars my arms, my shoulders, my neck and my teeth clack together, slicing into my tongue.
I’m shaving along the edge of death, laughter sparking out of me, lighting up the dark.
The car slows and stops, and my foot falls off the clutch so the engine bangs, jolting us forward one last time.
There’s pain in my chest and shoulders and sides, cramp in my wrists, blood on my tongue, my body on fire with being alive.
Wanting to feel the same fire burning in her, I lean over to kiss Claire…
“WHAT THE HELL?”
She lashes a sharp, violent slap across my face, then launches her whole body at me, straining against the seat belt as she pummels and punches any part of me she can reach, shouting and screaming at me.
“I hate you – why did you do that – you could have killed us…” She’s sobbing, too angry to take in enough air to breathe and she starts choking.
I reach out, but she shoves me off.
“Don’t touch me!” She unclicks her belt and pulls at the door handle. “Unlock it.”
I do and she’s out of the car, staggering away from me towards Moz. Scrabbling out of the car, I run after her.
Up ahead Moz is already out of his car and whooping at the night sky. “That was AMAZING!”
He holds a fist up for Claire to bump and she slaps him, too.
“Ow!” Moz presses his hand to his face looking utterly shocked. “What was that for?”
The noises Claire stutters are hot rocks spitting from a volcano before the lava flow wipes out the island. I reach for her arm, hoping to quell the rage, but she spins round, anger concentrated on me.
“I said don’t touch me. Ever.”
And then she’s off, marching away across the track.
For the first time in his life, Moz looks like he isn’t so sure of what’s happening.
“You need to sort this out, Sef,” he says, walking back to his car. “I’m going to give you two a bit of space – this better not have been a massive fucking waste of my time.”
CLAIRE
I hear the rev of an engine, one throatier and more powerful than poor Mrs Bennet. Moz has gone, then.
“Claire! Where are you going?” Feet scuffing on the loose gravel behind me.
“Home.” I flinch away from the hand Sef’s reached out to hold me back and keep marching forwards. Everything hurts, the burn on my neck and an ache in my chest where the seat belt bit into me, the skin on the palm of my hand from slapping Sef and then Moz. My heart hurts so much I can barely withstand the pain of it.
“Don’t be daft. I’ll drive you—”
“I will never get in that car again.”
“Won’t you?” Behind the words there’s a flicker of a smile, a hint that he’s thinking of the things we’ve done in the car that have nothing to do with his driving and he’s sidling closer like he thinks that’s all it takes to change my mind.
I put my palm flat to his chest, stopping him from getting any closer. His eyes are so dark it’s hard to tell the swell of his pupils from the brown of his irises, the excitement, the edginess rolling off him in waves.
This is who he is, isn’t it? My boyfriend, my b
est friend, my co-performer … whatever else he’s pretended to be, this is the truth.
“It’s over,” I say.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m done,” I say. “I can’t be with someone I can’t trust.”
“Be with?”
“I’m breaking up with you, Sef.”
“As in…?”
“As in everything.”
There’s a second of silence between us – an impossible ocean of hurt and love and broken trust that neither of us knows how to cross.
“Claire…” He’s moved closer and he’s reaching up to touch my face, to run his thumb across the overlong hair by my ears. It’s the move he made the night we first kissed and I don’t mean to lean into the feel of him, but I’m going to miss him touching me like this and…
SEF
This is it. She’ll change her mind. She can’t. I need her and she needs me and it’s going to be fine, we can get through this – we just…
Claire pulls away, sucking her lower lip a little, biting back words she doesn’t want to—
No.
“Claire?” My voice doesn’t sound right. It’s trembling.
“I’m sorry, Sef, but—”
“I love you.” The words come without my permission – an explosion in my heart and fear of what they mean floods through me. I need her.
It’s come too late. Claire’s mouth is parted in shock and I want her to tell me she loves me too. Anything to let me know that what I’ve said means something—
“No one who loves me would risk my life for a bet,” she says, gently.
There are too many emotions fighting within me to know what I’m going to say or how I’m going to react, as if I’ve lost control of myself as well as everything else.
“You say it like what we’re doing – who we’re doing this for – doesn’t matter!” I’m surprised at the way she’s recoiling from me until I realize I’m shouting. “This wasn’t just some bet – we’re trying to save Kam!”
Claire’s gone still and white.
“You can’t save him! Kam will never be the way he was before – you can only help him live this life…”
But my hands are up at my face as if I can block out the pain of what she’s saying, because I have to be doing more than helping him, this has to be worth more…
“We are helping,” I say, “He needs money—”
“He needs his brother not to have killed himself in the process!”
And with those words, everything falls away, my hands slide down to my sides and Claire slips beyond my reach. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Kam does not need a brother like me. He deserves so much better, so much more. Whatever she thinks I am to him, it is nothing compared to what I should have been.
CLAIRE
“Is this it?” he says quietly, as if my words have flipped a switch and now he’s shutting down. “You’re really putting an end to this?”
“I can’t be a part of it. Kam’s life isn’t worth more than mine. No one’s is.” I want to touch his face and kiss his forehead and tell him that Kam’s life isn’t worth more than his either, but he’s pulling away, nodding.
“Sure, whatever. We’re done. I get it.” And he’s backing away, turning and striding back to the car, slamming the door and revving the engine, wheels spinning angrily as he drives off in a spray of gravel, leaving me there in the abandoned industrial estate with no clue how to get home.
SEF
I drive away regretting everything that has happened, everything I have said and everything I have done – not just tonight, but every lie I’ve ever told, every truth I was too frightened to admit to her.
Not that it matters. None of it does.
I drive recklessly, taking corners too fast, pulling out round cars that are staying within the speed limit. I don’t care about anyone or anything.
Anything except Kam.
I park badly. So badly that I scrape the bumper of the car behind. I drive off and park even further away from my house and hope no one noticed what happened. The camera’s been rolling this whole time and the battery’s dying, but Claire’s left her bag in the back with the cables inside – along with a cardigan and her purse. All stuff I’m going to have to give her back.
Upstairs I set everything up to transfer off the camera and get my phone out to check for messages. There’s one from Claire and my heart leaps into my throat before I actually read the words.
You can use the footage from tonight. Wouldn’t want to have nearly died for nothing.
The laugh it wrings from me isn’t pleasant.
I compose a hundred and one different replies and send none of them. Instead I message Moz to ask him if he’ll edit the footage and he calls me back from the car.
“Made up with your lover yet?”
“Finished with her, actually.”
I expect him to go on about it, gloating that he’d guessed all along, but after a short pause, he says, “Are you OK?”
This tiny kindness from Moz nearly unravels me. But I wasn’t calling him for comfort.
“I’ll survive,” I say bitterly. That’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it?
Moz re-evaluates my tone and asks why I’m calling.
“Look,” I say. “I know we agreed that Claire would work on this, but…”
“Send me the files, I’ll do the editing.”
“How long?” I ask.
“I’ll get the teaser up as soon as I can, but there’s no saying how long it’ll take to reach the target for us to release the full thing.”
I already have a tab open on the donations page – we’re only two thousand short of the target for this dare – so close yet still so far from what Kam needs. I’m more optimistic than Moz. I have to be.
“Moz.” I hear the authority in my voice. “My family have been told to look at new homes for my brother. I’m going to have to do something else or we’ve no chance of making a difference.”
“Brother?”
There’s a pause in which I realize I’ve not exactly been straight with Moz, either. “Yeah. Kam’s my older brother.”
“Mate…” There’s a sigh on the other end. “I’m sorry, but even if we post for another dare, it’ll take longer to raise the money. Diminishing returns—”
“So we post a teaser until the money’s raised.”
“A teaser of what?”
I close my eyes and think of the bravest thing I’ve ever done. The stupidest.
“Let me think on it,” I say. “I’ll have an answer for you by the time you’ve got the editing sorted.”
CLAIRE
Seren makes me a hot drink, stirring sugar into my tea with one of Hallie’s toddler-sized spoons. The plastic handle is green with anatomically questionable dinosaurs all over it. I keep staring at it after she drops it into the sink ready to be rinsed.
“Claire?” Seren hands me the mug. “I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do. Talk, listen, make you some food…” My stomach contracts at the thought. “I can commandeer the front room and turn the sofa into a den, hunt a unicorn down and steal a vial of its tears … anything. OK?”
And I put my tea down to look at her and hold my arms out for a hug, my best friend stepping into my arms without question and wrapping herself around me. Like with her and James, when I felt at my most desperate, Seren was the person I turned to (and her dad, who is very suspicious as to why they just drove out to an industrial estate in the middle of the night to collect me).
Up in her room, I ask if she can lend me a jumper as it dawns on me that I left my bag in the back of the car I swore I’d never set foot in again.
The only thing I walked away with is my phone.
I look down at it now, wishing it would tell me something other than the time. Like where Sef is and what he’s doing, how he’s feeling.
Seren reaches over and gently removes it from my grasp.
“What happened?” she asks.
My te
ars ebb and flow with the telling of it, the betrayal of the boys teaming up to prank me like that, the rage as I relive the fear of believing I was going to die, feeling stupid now that I haven’t, because when you think about it, Moz would never risk his own life even if Sef would…
“You don’t think that’s true, though, do you? About Sef, I mean,” Seren says, handing me yet another tissue to add to the soggy little pile I’ve collected in my lap.
Without being there in the car, without seeing the way Sef was laughing, the manic gleam in his eye before he hit the accelerator, it’s hard to believe it could be true.
But I was there, and I know.
“I think he’d risk everything for Kam,” I say.
SEF
I’m going to make a video of my own. There’s nothing set up to post on our channel tonight, but the time for daft little stunts is over, anyway – the last few weeks have stripped away the pretence that this is about anything other than money.
Instead, I’ll make one to drive interest to the donation fund and bait our viewers for the chicken video – a video that doesn’t require maintenance to get people watching it. No more bantering with people in the comments. I’m as done with all that as Claire is.
Combing my hair flat and giving it my best Dare Boy style, I set up Claire’s camera and start to film myself as if I’m about to go and meet Moz and Claire.
Pulling my mask on, I sit down on my bed and look right into the camera.
“Hey hey, lovers, it’s me, Dare Boy, getting ready to record the most epic dare your pretty little eyes have ever seen…” It’s so easy to slip into the character I’ve been playing for the last six months that it’s almost second nature to mess around doing V-style dance moves in front of my eyes.
There’s a knock on my door and before I can get myself together, Mum pushes it open.
“Mum!” I yank my mask off, catching Amir’s eye as he peers over Mum’s shoulder on his way back from the bathroom, the collar wonky on his checked pyjamas.
“I heard you talking…” Mum frowns like she thinks I’ve got someone in here, although where I’d hide them, I’m not sure.