One of the best places to go and play was up the lane. From where I lived, you crossed the main road into Auriga Street and then, instead of going over Bowden Rec towards the school, you turned right. This brought you on to a long stretch of smooth path - what the town council called a `linear walkway`, but which used to be the old Kenniston-to-Northampton railway line. Sometimes the pathway ran along the top of a raised bank; sometimes it dipped down so you were in a little valley surrounded by bramble and dogrose bushes and rowan trees. The walkway went on for miles, and in the summer was always busy with cyclists and people out for a stroll, and kids playing.
On this particular day, I`d phoned my mate Pete Clements after coming home from school. I hadn`t seen Pete all day, and over the phone he told me he had a bad dose of cough and cold, and wouldn`t be fit till the weekend. He made his voice sound croaky, and coughed every few seconds, just to prove how bad he was. The fact that we were having a spelling test in Mr Dilks` class tomorrow had nothing to do with it, of course.
" Well I`ll come round on Saturday then, I suppose..."
" Yeah (cough cough) OK Steve. Thanks for (cough) ringing (cough)."
" I`ll tell Mr Dilks you won`t be in this week - "
" (cough) You`re a real pal (cough cough cough cough!)."
" See you Pete."
" See you (cough) Steve (cough). Bye (cough)."
I was disappointed not to be seeing him that afternoon. I had other friends, but mostly they liked to stay in and play on their computers or watch videos. Pete and I preferred to be outdoors, especially in good weather. The sun had shone all day; it was a brill September afternoon, and I was going to make the most of it.
" Mum," I said, strolling into the kitchen, kind of casually. " I`m going out to play, OK - up the lane."
" I heard you on the phone...You`re going out with Peter, are you?"
I gave a little sigh and explained that he wasn`t well, but I`d only be up the lane so I`d be quite safe and in any case there were loads of people about and I wouldn`t talk to strangers and no way would I take sweets from them!
Mum thought about it and gave a little sigh of her own.
" Well you must be back before it gets dark."
" Yes Mum." It was four o`clock now, which meant I didn`t have to be home for three hours or more.
" And don`t you go getting your jeans mucky. Your other pair`s in the wash."
" No Mum."
" And that`s a school shirt you`re wearing - Don`t get that mucky either."
" Why, are my others in the wash too?"
" And don`t you get lippy with me, or you won`t be going out to play at all!"
" No Mum. Sorry Mum."
I thought I`d be able to escape without further haggling, but because I hadn`t eaten tea yet, Mum made me up a pack of sandwiches. They were my favourites, cheese slices and tomato sauce. And I liked the tomato sauce spread so thickly that it oozed out the sides when you took a bite. Mum wrapped the sandwiches in greaseproof paper, then in a plastic bag.
" And you`ll need something to drink."
" Orange juice please. I`ll have it in my canteen..."
Last Christmas my main present was an Action Guy Special Forces Survival Kit, which included a water canteen that you could clip on to your belt. Mum filled this up with orange juice, and I clipped it on to my belt. It felt really cool - because the juice had come straight from the fridge.
" I`ll see you later then, Mum!"
" Don`t you want your jacket, Stephen? It will be getting cold later."
" I`m OK, I`ll be warm enough running away from all those strange people with sweets!"
Mum started to yell something after me, but the traffic on the main road drowned out her voice. Besides, I was too busy chuckling.
*
Sometimes kids from the school turned up anyway, just on the offchance of catching a good game of touch-tig or football, or cricket at this time of year. I thought maybe I`d bump into Pete or Wilko, but as I wandered along the walkway where it bordered the park, I began to feel I`d be out of luck today.
A couple of cyclists swished past me, heading out into the countryside. In the distance, the walkway ran past the golf course, and then through fields for miles until it ended at the main Northampton Road. I watched the cyclists dwindle to little dots of blue and purple dayglo brightness. Then I stopped walking and squinted - not because the sun was glaring into my eyes, but to listen harder for what I thought were the sounds of voices coming from not far away.
And the more I listened, the more I became convinced I could hear voices off to my left, over the bank and down in the tangled ground at the back of the park.
I scrambled up the bank, sniping like a Special Forces Action Guy out on a mission, and peered cautiously through the bushes. I`d been right. Down on the waste ground, five boys were playing some sort of throwing game. It looked like they`d collected some old tin cans and lined them up on the top of a low wall nearby. One kid pitched a stone and struck a can square-on. Can and stone tinkled out of sight behind the wall.
The boys laughed and cheered. The kid who`d hit the can grinned and got ready for what I supposed was his free bonus shot. I eased forward for a better view. A twig snapped under my foot.
The five boys glanced round and saw me, and a second later were charging up the bank to get me like a band of wild savages. I let out a little squeal and turned to make a break for it. But the leg of my jeans got tangled in a clump of brambles. I tugged furiously, feeling desperate and panicky, but thinking how ridiculous it was that I was still hanging on to my bag of sandwiches.
While I was pondering this, feeling mad laughter rushing up from my chest, one of the kids took hold of me and dragged me backwards. Then all of them were there, whirling around me. One boy sat on my shins, and a couple of others pinned my arms to the ground. Someone snatched my sandwiches away...
Then it all went quiet. A face loomed above me - the face of a scruffy, ferretty-looking boy with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
" Whatcha going to do, Nige?" one of the others whispered.
Nige - ferret-face - sniffed thoughtfully as he gazed down at me.
" Don`t know yet. But first," he said to me, " I want to know what you were doing spying on the Double Dare Gang...?"
*
I`d heard about this gang, mainly through rumours and stories in the playground. These kids dared each other to do crazy things...But the person who thought of the dare was always double dared, so he had to do it too. If he didn`t, he was called a yellow-belly chicken for weeks afterwards, and had to hang his head in shame. Nobody I actually knew belonged to the DD Gang, though I recognised a couple of kids from my English group in Year Seven; and one or two of the boys gathered round looked old enough to be in Year Nine. I wondered what awful things they did to earn them that reputation.
" Like I said," Nige repeated, interrupting my thoughts, " I want to know why you were spying on us."
" W-Well..."
" Let`s just duff him, Nige," said one kid, a plump and hostile-looking boy who was shaped like a peardrop. " I could sit on him!"
" Leave it out, Neil," Nige replied. " Let`s give the kid a chance to explain..."
" Well, I`d heard about you, right, and one of my friends in Year Seven, right, said that you sometimes came out this way to play that great-looking throwing game. So, right, I thought I`d see if it was true, right - and it was! And I thought it would be really fun to join in, so that`s what I want to do, if you`ll let me, please. Right?"
" Right," Nige said. He pointed his finger at my face. " But what you haven`t heard is that the only kids who can play our games with us have already joined the Double Dare Gang. Right?"
" Right," I said brightly, " so I`d like to join then. OK?"
The other boys made funny expressions at one another, sort of secretive. And they were grinning, which made me feel uneasy. Nige`s finger never wavered.
" We have a rule in the gang, which is that if you want to join us, you`ve got to pass a bravery test. Are you going to do our bravery test, kid?"
" Well, um, that is, er, my Mum said I, ah, had to be back home by, er, by..."
" He`s just a yellow-belly chicken," said Neil, the peardrop-shaped boy. " Let me sit on him!"
" Are you a yellow-belly chicken, kid?" Nige asked me, cocking his head sideways. " Or are you worthy of being called a Double Darer?"
" Uh, well...What is this bravery test anyway?"
All of the boys got off me like lightning and one huge, square-looking kid who was even bigger than Neil hauled me upright one-handed.
" I`ll show you," Nige said, beaming in a friendly way. " Follow me."
" Well, all right," I replied; though as the big square boy still had hold of my shirt collar, I didn`t think I had any choice.
*
We walked along the edge of the waste ground towards some garages not far from the allotments: well, marched actually, as though I was going in front of the firing squad. That`s what it felt like, anyway, and suddenly I felt all squishy inside. I tried to convince myself it was because of Mr Dilks` spelling test tomorrow - that always gave me butterflies...Except this felt more like a flock of seagulls in my stomach.
" It`s quite a nice afternoon," I said, my voice coming out smaller and higher than I`d intended. " For the time of year."
I was trying to be friendly, as well as trying to show these kids I wasn`t scared. But it didn`t seem to work. Nige just grinned as if he didn`t believe me at all; Neil the peardrop-shaped boy sniggered, and the huge square kid seemed not to have much of a clue what was going on. There were two other boys in the group. One of them was really skinny and had slightly goofy teeth and greasy black hair. The other one wore glasses with these great thick lenses, which made his eyes look as though they were popping out.
" I`m Steve," I said, giving the cheerful approach one last go. " Who are you?" I asked the kid with glasses. He stared right back and didn`t answer.
" We don`t give our names away to people who aren`t in the gang," Nige explained.
" But you`re Nige, and he`s Neil!" I pointed to Peardrop.
" You don`t believe they`re our real names do you?" Nige wondered, shutting me up and making me feel more lost and alone than ever...
" But they are, Nige," said Neil.
Nige shut him up with a glare.
" Yeah, but we won`t tell him that until after he passes the bravery test..."
We came to the garages. And stopped. The square boy let go of me and Nige said,
" Right, this is it."
`It` was nothing more than a rutted track. Chippings had been put down once, a long time ago, but these had been pressed into the dirt by the passage of cars that used the garages, and the boots of gardeners on their way to the allotments. At the far end of the track stood a barrier of chain-link fence overgrown with bindweed and nettles. In the other direction was the school-end of the Rec and the gunnel that led to the church. Out-thinking me, Nige, the square boy and the skinny kid stood barring my only escape; Neil and the one with Professor-type glasses put their hands on their hips and just stared.
" What`s going to happen?" I asked, the last word catching in my throat because the obvious answer had come to me...They`re going to make me fight the huge square kid! And he`s going to make such a good job of squashing me, I`ll look like one of my sandwiches.
" I`m not very good at fighting..."
The words came out before I could stop them, and I didn`t care. I didn`t care if I was called a yellow-belly chicken and everyone laughed at me in the playground. I didn`t care if I couldn`t play the stupid stone-throwing game. I didn`t care if I never saw these kids ever again!
That thought tripped a trigger in my head and I started laughing. It happened like that now and again. Sometimes it happened when I was being told off by Mr Dilks at school, or Mrs Williams the music teacher. It was like a door opening inside and some other part of me came running out. And the more Mr Dilks shouted, the more I wanted to laugh. Once, I had, and Mr Dilks had gone absolutely purple and given me a week`s extra homework...
But Nige wasn`t angry. He was laughing too. In fact, they all were, even big square kid and Peardrop, whose belly was wobbling with mirth.
" Fighting?" Nige came over and put his hand on my shoulder in a brotherly way.
" Who said anything about fighting, Steve?" He lifted his other hand and pointed.
" Look at the garages."
There were about six of them, built all in a row but with a gap between each. They were made of breeze blocks and had flat roofs that sloped slightly backwards to take the rain to a soak-away behind. Most had wooden double doors in various states of disrepair: a couple were fitted with the newer metal up-and-over doors.
" What happens is this," Nige said. " You go up on the roof of that garage there, the first one in the row. You run as fast as you can and jump across the gap on to the roof of the second garage..."
" Is that it?"
" No. Then you run along the rest of the row, jumping each gap as you reach it."
" But I might miss and fall down between the garages...I`ll get my shirt dirty - and it`s a school shirt...And I might hurt myself!"
Nige made a funny expression that had a little bit of disappointment in it, and a little bit of pain. Then a smile came to his face, though his eyes had a gleam in them I didn`t entirely trust.
" But I dare you, Steve. I dare you to do the bravery test and jump those garage roofs..."
All laughing had stopped now, and the boys were looking at me seriously and deeply. I thought that all of them must have taken the bravery test at some time - either this one or something just as difficult. And if they could do it, so could I.
The feeling changed inside me; a hardness where the panic had been before.
" All right," I told Nige, " I`ll do the test...But you`re doing it as well. I double dare you to jump with me."
A smile appeared on Nige`s face and spread and spread until he was grinning at me happily. He shrugged.
" I wouldn`t have it any other way."
The big square boy, whose name was Brian I found out, offered to hold my sandwiches, and gave us both a bunk-up on to the roof: this one, like all of them, was made out of sheets of corrugated iron held together with rivets.
" It doesn`t feel too safe," I announced. The roof rivets creaked and squealed and bounced gently as I walked across to measure the gap.
" You won`t be on it long enough for that to matter..."
If Nige said any more, I didn`t hear him. I was looking down between the first two garages. The gap was about four feet, and the drop was about ten feet. At the bottom lay piles of rubbish, rusty tin cans, soggy newspaper, an old wheeless bike frame and puddles of black water slicked with oil. And the smell of dog poo was so powerful it nearly knocked me over.
I felt the roof moving softly as Nige came across and stared with me into the gloom.
" Are you going to chicken out now, Steve?" he smirked. I clenched my teeth together and shook my head.
" No way. Are we racing it?"
" If you like. I`ll give you a five-second start, OK? I`ve done this before," he added casually. " I sort out all the bravery tests when kids want to join the gang."
" What bravery test did you do to join?" I asked him.
Nige`s face changed. He glanced at his wrist and jabbed a finger at his watch. (It wasn`t a real watch, but one he`d drawn on in pen. The time said half past three, which was the end of the school).
" Let`s just get on with it, we haven`t got all day." And he turned away and walked back to the starting point.
I took my position beside him.
" I`ll start you off," Neil called up from the lane. " I`ll shout GO - and that`s your signal to run, Steve. Then I`ll shout GO for Nige after five seconds...Are you ready?"
" Ready," I said, although my stomach was churning and my hands were shaking like leaves.
" OK...Three - two - one - GO!"
It was a good racing start. I pushed off strongly with my right foot and tried to ignore the way the iron roof was bouncing and squeaking under me as I ran. Halfway across I adjusted my pace so that I`d finish a stride at the far end, ready to jump.
As I launched into the air, I heard Neil shout Go again and knew that Nige was after me. The gap flashed by below and I landed with a clang on the second roof - nearly stumbled - then found my balance and put on a spurt.
Nige landed before I was three-quarters across. One of the boys in the lane gave him a whoop of encouragement: I saw out of the corner of my eye that they were keeping pace with us as we ran.
I reached the second gap and misjudged it slightly, catching my foot on the edge of the third roof as I touched down. I felt my left ankle twist and a sharp flash of pain stabbed up through my leg.
Nige landed lightly behind me, the rhythm of his running upsetting mine as the iron shuddered under our shoes.
I raced him across the roof, and as the gap came up we were neck and neck.
I glanced at him just before we jumped - and that was my big mistake.
I knew I was in trouble straight away. As Nige leaped ahead of me and hit the next roof at a gallop, I felt myself stumbling, then falling...
There was a terrible second of fear. The world, which had been tilting slowly, turned upside down and dropped upwards out of sight.
My arm scraped down the rough surface of the breezeblock wall and I opened my mouth to scream - But before I could, it was filled with stinking water as I hit the puddle face-first, luckily landing on a soggy bed of newspapers which broke my fall.
I lay there for a couple of minutes as wet yellow stars drifted in front of my eyes like snowflakes, and all the different pains from all the different places in my body brought themselves loudly to my attention.
For a little while I didn`t do anything except feel sorry for myself. In the end, it was the sound of the kids laughing in the lane that got me to my feet...
I came out from between the garages looking like a cross between Frankenstein`s Monster and the Mud Menace From Outer Space. I was soaking wet, my shirt was torn, I had cuts and bruises everywhere, and my Action Guy Special Forces Survival Kit water canteen had exploded when I came down on top of it.
All of the kids except Brian were laughing at me. He was busy finishing off the last of my cheese and tomato sauce sandwiches.
Nige was rolling around on the ground having a fit of hysterics. After a minute or so, he picked himself up and came over to me wiping the tears from his eyes.
" Oh, that was amazing! Brilliant! I haven`t laughed so much for ages...You missed!"
" I know," I said miserably, noticing for the first time the big lump of doggie-do stuck to the back of my hand. I wiped it on my trousers, because nothing seemed to matter now...I hurt all over - but I hurt most of all inside, because I`d failed the bravery test and would never be a member of the Double Dare Gang.
I began to sniffle. Nige came over to me as though to slap me on the shoulder again. But he changed his mind when he saw the state of my shoulder.
" Tell you what, Steve...I don`t know how long your Mum will ground you for, but when you`re free again, turn up here sometime and join us..."
" But - but I don`t understand," I said, not knowing whether to smile or sob. " I lost the race, and I missed the jump, and I fell down between the garages, and..."
" Yeah," Nige nodded with sparkly eyes. " But even though you were scared, you still had a go. Besides, failing isn`t falling down, it`s staying down. You`ll only have failed if you don`t come back for your next dare."
So that was it. That was how I joined the infamous Double Darers. And you know, I might never have gone back after that day`s humiliation (and after what Mum did to me after I got back home), except for something the kid with professor-style glasses said to me as we were walking back up the lane...
I`d been lagging behind the others, putting off the moment when I arrived home. One of the them, the kid with glasses who was in my English group, broke off from the rest and walked beside me.
" Hi. I`m Kevin Howells...Don`t feel bad about missing the jump. Nige did exactly the same thing when he joined the Double Dare gang a few years ago."
" What - you mean..."
Kevin nodded. " He chickened-out as he came to the first gap; didn`t know whether to jump it or not, and dropped like a stone between the garages. The leader of the gang in those days - a kid called Bruce - did the same thing Nige did for you, and let him join."
" I feel better about it now," I said, and Kevin chuckled.
" So does Nige, I`ll bet. He`d been too scared to go back up on those garage roofs - until you double-dared him today."
*
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