"GIRLS"

1st Prize Winner of Writing Contest #2

Photo by Aman Upadhyay on Unsplash

GIRLS

by Anagha Smrithi

“It doesn't take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone's gaze.”

— Ling Ma 

Lola disappeared on a Wednesday. 

To tell you about Lola, I have to take you back to the Bad Old Days. 

Back then we were Girls. Our mothers yanking our difficult hair into too-tight braids. Just Girls. Throwing stones at the gooseberry tree before biology class. Huddling together in the run-down sports centre toilet, practising how to suck in our stomachs till they looked flat. “Suno, you all are Just Girls,” Mr Shekhar, our maths teacher, would say. “What do you know, other than your gossip, gupshup, fashion, blah blah blah.” So yes, we were Just Girls. 

Unlike what the adults thought, we knew a fair bit. For instance, we knew what could get us into trouble and how to do it anyway. Jerusha and I knew that we couldn’t tell anyone about Lola’s secret. Not even Devi. 

Every Girl has her secrets. You just have to know where to look.

Anyway, it was June 2013. There were four of us that year: Lola, Jerusha, Devi, and I. 

It was the summer of green-screened cell phones and half-empty tubes of fairness creams. Of expired lip-gloss and getting catcalled by men while still in our school uniforms. Like I said, it was the Bad Old Days. But we didn’t know that yet.

We had all finally gotten our periods (Devi was a late bloomer) and upgraded to adult bras. After school, we bought cheap popsicles and paani puri from the corner stand. On Fridays, we would pool our money together and buy a single cold coffee from the cafe across the street, passing it around the table to take turns. Yes. Life was good. 

---

Lola’s real name was Lalitha. 

She was embarrassed to share a name with our class teacher, so we just called her Lola.

Lola, with her easy sway and eyebrows that had been threaded at the salon. Lola, skipping class and telling the teachers that her lipstick was really just tinted lip balm, from America. 

She kept her secret for two months. 

Then one day, with an air of adult nonchalance, she told Jerusha and I. “So by the way, I’m meeting someone after school today. It’s one full scene aanh.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “And don’t tell Devi.” Devi was, of course, a goody-two-shoes.

Lola-Not-Lalitha was in a good mood that day. Her hair tied back in a silky black ribbon that fluttered in the wind. Her skirt ended a few inches above her knee. She looked radiant even in the glaring light of our school building. She drew us closer. “Listen, you girls are my bestest friends, so please, please come with me today?” Jerusha blushed at this sudden warmth and nodded. There was no saying no to Lola. 

When no one arrived by 4, we started to wonder if Lola was pranking us. She was a good liar after all. 

But soon enough a blue Maruti slowed down around the corner. We were near the back gate of the Old Park, where no one could see us. We were Girls. We knew how to make ourselves invisible. A man poked his head out of the window, a smile cracking his face. Lola squealed. 

He was well-dressed. Better dressed than the boys we knew. He stepped out of the car in a clean flannel shirt, artfully faded jeans, and sunglasses. A thick beard bristling around his face. A box of cigarettes in his breast pocket. “You’re cool with all of us hanging out, na?” Lola asked us, as an afterthought. 

“Yup, yup.” Jerusha answered tightly, looking up at the stranger. “I’m cool.”

We were Girls. We knew how to swallow our discomfort like a pill. How to ignore the aftertaste of metal.

---

Abhishek, Lola’s boyfriend, was 25. 

We never learnt what exactly he did for work. Something in finance. He carried cigarettes, car keys, and condoms in his pockets. He winked at us and touched our shoulders.

He insisted on calling Lola by her real name, Lalitha. He said it sounded more adult. 

Later that evening, he offered to show us how to smoke. Before I could say anything, he lifted my chin up and pushed the cigarette between my lips. One swift movement. “Wooh!” Lola cheered. Jerusha clutched my hand. There I was, in my school uniform, my eyes burning. The taste of smoke pooling in my mouth. 

The burnt taste of everything that was yet to come. 

Abhishek leaned in closer, his man face and man beard only inches from mine. “You look hot with that cigarette.” His lips twisted into a smile. I squirmed, suffocated by the conflicting sensations brewing inside me. The nausea that sprang in my belly and slithered up like a snake. The hot, tingling blush that bloomed in my chest in spite of me. I coughed.

Lola (now Lalitha) swatted Abhishek’s arm. “Such a bad influence you are.” And then with a faux-stern sweetness, crisscrossing her legs and looking up at him adoringly, “But don’t flirt with my friends and all aanh!”

Abhishek ignored this and leaned against a wall to light a new cigarette. It dangled off his lips like he had practiced it in front of a mirror. 

“So tell me, how old are you Girls by the way?” Jerusha and I glanced at each other. I spoke up without looking him in the eye. 

“Jerusha is 14. I’m 13, same as Lola.”

Then he laughed. A wide, ugly laugh that cracked open the afternoon sky.

“Such children you are.” A booming laugh. “Kids only.”

---

Now that we were all implicated in the secret, there was no going back. 

Abhishek came around every Friday. In his blue Maruti and faded jeans. A hint of cheap rum on his breath. 

Rusted back gate by the Old Park where no one comes except for a stray dog named Lucy. No one knows what happens here. Except for us. Us three Girls. And Lucy the dog. And the fruit flies swarming around the jackfruit carcasses on the floor. And Abhishek. With his tall body and broad man-shoulders that Lola (now Lalitha) loved.

Loved, she loved him. His hands in his pockets. The way he openly kissed Lola on the mouth. The way Jerusha and I pretended to look away. 

One Friday, Lola left to get us ice cream (the good kind, Abhishek had pressed a crisp 500 rupee note in her hand.) Then he moved closer to me and squeezed my thigh. His arm climbed around my waist, brushing up and down my hip. “You’re like, one quiet type no?” His hands lingered. The wind was still. There was a stench in the air. Rotting jackfruits and afternoon heat.

He asked us if we had boyfriends. Jerusha shook her head wordlessly. Then she grabbed my arm, looking for an escape. “Dude, I really, really have to pee.” I nodded, “Okay, let’s go.” Abhishek grinned widely. “Oho, you go to the washroom together and all? What do you Girls do in there?”

We didn’t tell Lola how his hands had wandered up my waist. Or how he’d asked for Jerusha’s number after. Like I said, we all had our secrets. 

Abhishek texted Jerusha that night and all month after. They spoke about her favourite songs and how she hated physics class. Until one day he asked Jerusha if she’d ever taken a nude. No. She hadn’t even thought about it. She was still getting used to the pokey bra straps, the bursts of hair, the new weight of her body. The giddy feeling she sometimes had when she looked at Lola.

But she didn’t say any of that, not to Abhishek, who wouldn’t understand. So she just said no. 

He texted back. It was 1 AM. Her face lit only by the small square of her BlackBerry phone. Her family asleep in the other room. Her little white pomeranian named Cupcake, curled up on the floor and scampering in his dream.

I don’t know what happened after. All I know is that when everything went down with Lola, Jerusha seemed scared too. Scared not just for Lola, but for herself. 

---

I told Devi during our sleepover. 

Jerusha and I may have been best friends, but Devi and I shared a deeper kinship; we were both ugly. Our arms unwaxed, our thighs too wobbly for shorts, our cheeks scarred purple from persistent pimples and childhood chicken pox. Lola would never understand. Sometimes when the boys played Truth or Dare, the most humiliating dare of all was asking Devi or I out. 

That Friday, it was just the two of us. We stood gleefully before my bathroom mirror, scrubbing our faces raw with a mixture of sugar, lemon juice, and rose water. We took a How Hot Are You? quiz on my laptop, then took it again with different answers — blue eyes, smooth skin, long straight hair, until we got Blazing Hot!! and Totally Smashable!

After midnight, Devi lay on my bed and closed her eyes, humming the tune of an old Tamil song. Then she turned to me sleepily. “Lola’s been acting damn weird da. Is she doing something crazy and all?”

I turned towards her in the dark. The opportunity to gossip about the pretty one in our friend group was too good to miss.

I swore her to secrecy. We didn’t want Lola to be mad at us. Lola, who wanted to marry Abhishek. Who said she would run away with him if she could. 

---

Deep down, Devi wanted Lola to get into trouble. But not in this way. Not this much.

Devi was the one who told her mother. 

Her mother, the school principal, wore a starched sari every day and glared at the students from the assembly podium. 

Her mother, who would watch as Lola’s mother slapped Lola (now Lalitha) in the principal’s office. One tight slap. Four blotchy red-white fingerprints across her cheeks. She sat stiff in the back of the car the whole way home, refusing to cry.

Later that night, Lola’s father smashed her cell phone against the floor. He couldn’t believe he’d raised such a whore. Devi’s phone was also taken away by her mother. She was a good, decent Girl, unlike us. She didn’t need the distraction. 

Lola’s chair remained empty for three weeks.

When she returned, her usual high ponytail was pulled back into a tight braid. Her eyes raw with crying. She was no longer the unappointed leader of our group, which pleased Devi.

We had lunch together in silence, Lola picking at her roti and barely meeting our eyes. 

We thought that would be the worst of it. 

Until Abhishek texted me a few nights later. He wanted to know where Lola was. I told him what had happened. Then he called. Three rings. The low snarl of his voice on the line. “That bitch. That fucking bitch Lalitha told everything off to her parents??” I held my breath.

“Fuck. Fuck. FUCK,” he screamed. His words rumbled with a slur. The thick scent of alcohol drifted through the speaker. “I don’t give a fuck about her phone. She can’t stop talking to me. You think this is right or what?” I tried to speak up. Abhishek got louder. “Tell her she better call me. Otherwise, you know what dude? I’ll show her, I’ll bloody show her.”

Abhishek had never held down a steady job in his life. He wasn’t particularly smart or well-liked. But he knew how to get back at a Girl. 

And that’s how the photos came out. The ones that would immortalise Lola as a Girl. 

The rest of us grew up, but Lola would be a Girl forever. Somewhere on the internet, those photos still exist. Lola in a black bra, holding a dying cigarette. Lola lying on a cheap hotel bed in the nude, her face half-lit by a nearby window, smiling. In love. 

---

Lola disappeared on a Wednesday. 

Even though I asked her to stop, Amma read out parts of the news story to me. “School girl, 14, disappears after alleged revenge-porn case… Abhishek Suresh, 26, the main accused in the case is being investigated by the Cyber Crime Dpt, Bengaluru.”

Amma’s face was a placid ocean with a current whirling beneath the surface. A mother’s rage.

Wordlessly, she cut out the newspaper clipping, rounding out the edges with safety scissors. She placed it in her folder of important things, next to my score sheets and A+ assignments.

“Next time,” she said, “Next time you say you want to go to a boy’s house, you want to hang out with boys after school, this-that,” Amma continued, storm-eyed, “I’ll take this out and show you.”

I started to cry. Lola could be dead in a ditch, her glossy, pin-straight hair plastered with mud and insects. Maybe she had drowned herself, green moss and lake scum covering her pale face, small fish swimming past her glassy eyes. She’d been gone a week.

“Girl, don’t cry over this, she had it coming,” Amma scoffed. “The police will find her kanna. She is doing this for sympathy so that nobody scolds her for what she did with that boy.”

Abhishek was a man, not a boy. But I bit my tongue. 

Lola was always stubborn. So when she wanted to disappear, she stayed disappeared.

Lola’s family was tired of the reporters and police. They had an elder daughter who needed to be married off, they didn’t need the negative attention. They packed up and moved to Canada, where nobody knew their family secret. That’s all that Lola was now. She was Lalitha, the ruined Girl. A photo floating on the internet, seen 220,455 times.

A bad secret.

A Girl who had it coming.

A Girl forever. 

---

Jerusha and I were expelled from school later that year. We were too close to the “incident.”

Lola’s disappearance felt like a heavy, palpable presence, more than any sort of absence.

It pressed down on our hallways and classrooms like a sweaty palm, wet and mottled, ready to grab our throats at any moment. The problem, our teachers would theorise while we were getting expelled, is Girls these days. And the cell phones.

Our mothers would agree, glaring at us. Shame, shame, shame.

Back in our day, they would say, Girls knew how to stay in line. 

We left our old school steeped in shame and grief. Jerusha was homeschooled. Then she left for college soon after I did. We fell out of touch, occasionally texting on a birthday.

We found other lives. But sometimes, on a quiet Sunday, or while falling asleep, it would return. The damp, heavy palm of Lola’s disappearance. Descending on our shoulders. Pulling us back into the past. Turning us into Girls again. 

---

It’s been five years since we met.

The last time I saw Jerusha was before she left for college.

Now, she sits across from me; older, quieter. Her hair is shorter, a sleeve of tattoos running down her arms. We talk about normal things, like Jerusha’s journalism work and her girlfriend, whom she met in college—normal things, like how Devi got married last month.

Neither of us were invited. Her husband is an IAS officer, top rank. Good for her.

We don’t talk about Lola. Everything we talk about circles around the periphery of her body anyway.

Her cold, ghostly breath blows beneath ours, whistling. It brings in the smell of rotting jackfruits, the sound of Lucy the dog whining in the corner, the weight of Abhishek’s manhand on my thigh, the knowledge of what Jerusha did or didn’t send him that night.

The entirety of what it meant to be a girl.

Jerusha tries to read my face, as if for permission.

"So, something happened recently. I don’t know if I should tell you."

"What?"

"He sent me an Instagram request."

"Who?"

"Abhishek."

A snake with his name flips in my belly, a bad secret. For ages, we never learned what happened to him afterward. And Jerusha couldn’t stand it. So, she dug around last year, she tells me.

And this is what happened: Abhishek went to jail for two weeks. Then, he got bailed out.

"His dad is some big shot," she shrugged.

"Why the fuck would he send you an Instagram request?"

"Who knows. I obviously blocked him, but I looked at his profile first."

"And?"

"He’s married. He’s a consultant now. He was in Bali last month.

"Oh."

"Yeah. And he has a kid, yaar."

The snake rises up to my throat. The terrible heat of his palm singes my thigh. "He has a kid?"

"I haven’t told you the worst part," Jerusha exhales through her teeth. "It’s a girl. A baby girl. And he named her Lalitha."

“GIRLS” by Anagha Smrithi is the 1st Prize Winner of

love & liberation daily’s Writing Contest #2

Anagha Smrithi is a poet and writer from Bangalore, India. She writes about the body and everyday spaces. She is the author of the newsletter

A Poem A Week by Anagha Smrithi

on Substack.

You can also find her poetry published in Anthropocene, Nether Quarterly, Catharsis Magazine, LiveWire, and Delhi Slam Poetry among others. She lives between India and Sri Lanka and enjoys long walks, sunsets, and baking bread.

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