the dare

There is a pipe that crosses the longkang behind the houses. An old water pipe, fat and grey, up on two legs, going from our side to the far side over the top of the drain. In the dry season the drain under it is nothing, a trickle and some leaves. In the monsoon it turns into a brown river that goes very fast and makes a sound like it is in a hurry to be somewhere worse. It runs down to the river, and the river runs to the sea, the one with Singapore on the far side of it.

Nobody has ever walked across the pipe in the monsoon.

That was the dare. Walk the pipe, our side to the far side, over the fast brown water, first one in the whole kampung to do it.

A dare like that needs a rule, and ours had one. The sacred one. The rule that makes it a real dare and not just a thing your mother says no to.

You do not ask a grown-up.

Not one. Not about the pipe, not about the water, not about anything. The whole point of a dare is that you do it on your own nerve, with nobody bigger checking it first. The second a grown-up gets involved it stops being a dare and turns into a chore with a helmet.

Everybody put their hand in.

Except Faiz.

Faiz lives a few houses down, and Faiz is the most unbearable kid I know, and I will be fair and tell you why. Faiz asks a grown-up first. Every time. About everything. The grown-up always knows the answer, so it always works out, so Faiz never falls in anything or breaks anything or learns anything the hard way, which is the only honest way to learn anything. You cannot beat a kid like that. He just keeps being fine.

"I want to do the dare," said Faiz.

"The dare has a rule. No asking grown-ups."

"I know the rule," said Faiz.

"Do you, though."

"I know the rule," said Faiz again, which is not quite the same as saying he would keep it, but I was not listening that closely.

We planned it like an operation, because that is the only way I know how to plan anything.

Pei Pei built grips, two rubber pads for your hands, in case the pipe was wet, which it was going to be, because everything is wet in the monsoon.

Aiman sold tickets to watch. Then he sold the same spots twice. Then he sold a premium spot, which was a slightly higher bit of the bank, for double.

Kavi was the announcer, which meant the whole kampung knew the exact time of the dare, including, as I found out later, the exact people we were trying hardest not to tell.

"Is the pipe slippery," I said.

A grown-up would have known. We sent a slipper across on a string instead, and learned nothing, except that we now had one slipper.

"How deep is the water," said Hana.

We found out by Ah Wei dropping a whole nangka in it. The nangka did not sink. It shot off downstream at the speed of a motorbike and was gone, off toward the river and the sea, and I did not enjoy learning that about the water this close to crossing it.

"What do we do if somebody slips," said Hana.

"Nobody slips," I said. That was the whole plan for that part. Divya wrote it down, so it would be on the record that she had asked.

The day came. The drain was a brown river. The pipe was wet and grey and a great deal longer over fast water than it had ever looked over leaves.

I went first, because it was my dare.

I put Pei Pei's pads on my hands and got up on the pipe. The water underneath, going that fast, makes your legs forget how to stand still, which they have known how to do since you were one year old.

I took one step. Then another. Behind me, Faiz climbed up onto the pipe too.

"Not the third bracket," said Faiz, quiet, right behind me. "Step over it. Put your foot past it."

"I am doing the dare, Faiz. I do not need you to "

Then my foot found the third bracket on its own, the way a foot finds the one loose stair in the dark. I felt it give. Just a little. Just enough to tell my whole body something was wrong over very fast water.

"Step over the third bracket," said Faiz.

I stepped over it, the long way, and put my foot down on the solid grey pipe past it, and the wrong feeling went away. I do not know why I listened. I think it was the calm in it. I kept going, and the pipe held. Every step. Steady as a floor. All the way to the far side.

I got down on the far bank with my heart going like Kavi at his loudest. I had done it. I was the first.

Then the others came across, one at a time, and each time I heard Faiz say it again, quiet, behind each of them.

"Not the third bracket. Step over. Past it. Good."

Divya came across reading her own notes. Kavi came across announcing every single step at the top of his voice, "STEP. STEP. NOT THAT ONE. STEP," so that the whole kampung got a live commentary of a thing they could already see. Ah Wei came across last, slowly, mostly because he had found something to eat halfway and stopped to finish it over the fast brown water, which is the most Ah Wei thing a person can do.

Nobody slipped. Pei Pei's rope caught nobody, because nobody fell, exactly as planned, which is the only time a plan of mine has ever worked exactly as planned. I should have wondered about that. I was too busy being first.

It was only on the bank, drying my feet, that I worked out the third bracket was not a guess.

"How did you know about the bracket," I said.

"I asked Atok," said Faiz.

"You asked a grown-up."

"Two days ago. He said the pipe is solid, older than the houses, but the third bracket from our side is loose, and you put your weight on the pipe and never on the bracket." He said it the way you read out a bus time. "So I told everyone where to step."

"You broke the rule," I said.

"I know."

"You could have just let me find that out."

Faiz looked at me like I had said something genuinely strange.

"But then you would have fallen in," he said.

And that was so completely Faiz, so plain and so unbearable and so exactly right, that I did not have one thing to say back, which does not happen to me much.

Aiman tried to charge me for being first across. I told him to send the bill to the third bracket.

Then we sat on the far bank, all of us, dripping, and watched the brown water go past under the pipe, fast, on its way to somewhere worse. Faiz sat in the middle of us this time, instead of a few houses down, and nobody sent him back.