the dare

There is a pipe that crosses the longkang behind the houses. It is an old water pipe, fat and grey, up on two legs, and it goes 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 the drain becomes a brown river that goes very fast and makes a sound like it is in a hurry to be somewhere worse.

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, and be the first one in the whole kampung to do it.

A dare like that needs rules, and the dare had one sacred rule, the rule that made it a real dare and not just a thing your mother says no to. The rule was this. 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 is involved, it stops being a dare and starts being a chore with a helmet.

Everybody agreed to the rule. Everybody put their hand in.

Except Faiz.

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

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

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

"I know the rule," said Faiz.

"Do you, though," I said, because I did not believe him, and I was right not to, but not in the way I thought.

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 our 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 sold the same spots twice, then sold a premium spot that was just a slightly higher bit of the bank. Kavi was the announcer, which meant the entire kampung knew the exact time of the dare, including, I would later understand, the exact people we were not supposed to tell.

The trouble was, the whole way through, asking a grown-up first would have been smarter.

When we could not work out if the pipe was slippery, asking a grown-up would have been smarter. We found out instead by sending a slipper across on a string, which taught us nothing except that we had lost a slipper.

When we could not tell how deep the water was, asking a grown-up would have been smarter. We found out instead by Ah Wei dropping a whole nangka in it to see how far it sank, and the answer was that it did not sink, it shot off downstream at the speed of a motorbike, which is a fact about the water I did not enjoy learning that close to crossing it.

When Hana asked, sensibly, what we would do if somebody slipped, the plan was that nobody would slip. That was the whole plan for that. 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 lot longer over fast water than it had ever looked over leaves.

I went first, because it was my dare. I put Pei Pei's rubber pads on my hands. I got up on the pipe. And I will tell you that the water underneath, going that fast, makes your legs forget several things they have known since they were one year old.

But the pipe held. Every step. It did not wobble, it did not roll, it was as steady as a floor, and I walked the whole way across over the fast brown water and stood on the far side with my heart going like Kavi at his loudest, and I had done it. I was the first. Then Faiz came across, careful, and then Divya, and the rope Pei Pei had rigged caught nobody because nobody slipped, exactly as planned, which is the only time a plan of mine has ever worked exactly as planned, and I should have wondered about that, and I did not, because I was busy being the first.

It was only after, drying my feet on the far bank, that I found out why the pipe had held so well.

Faiz had checked it.

Not on the day. Before. Two days before, on his own, Faiz had gone to Atok, who knows the longkang and the pipe and everything else that does not change, and Faiz had asked him, straight out, whether the old pipe was safe to walk on in the flood. And Atok, who does not waste words, had told him the pipe itself was solid, it had been there longer than the houses, but the third bracket from our side was loose and you should put your weight on the pipe and never on the bracket. And Faiz had remembered exactly that, and on the day Faiz had gone over the loose bracket second, right behind me, and quietly told each person after him where to put their feet, all the way across, so that not one of us ever stood on the one part that would have dropped us into the fast brown water.

Faiz broke the dare's one sacred rule. He asked a grown-up. And it is the only reason all of us are dry.

I thought about that for a while on the far bank.

The careful kid was in it the whole time. The kid who asks first, the unbearable one, had taken the most dangerous part of the dare and quietly made it safe, without telling anyone, without taking the credit, while I got to be the first one across on nerve I did not even fully have.

"You broke the rule," I said to Faiz.

"I know," said Faiz. "Atok said the third bracket is loose."

"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 anything to say back, which does not happen to me often.

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

Next time there is a dare, Faiz asks first. I have decided. We will keep the part where we do it on our own nerve, because the nerve is the fun. But the part where somebody quietly finds out which bracket is loose, that part is Faiz's now, and it is not unbearable any more.

It is just the reason we all get to the other side.