The knock comes while Priya is still talking.

She is on the floor with her back against the bed frame, her glass of rum sweating a ring onto the wood beside her, and she is telling us how the city works — how a girl from a village has to learn fast or get eaten, how the men in Chennai will smell the country on you before you open your mouth, how you have to look at them like you already know what they want so they can't surprise you with it. Meena is nodding. Bhavani is at the window with her arms crossed, watching the sea go dark. Ravi is picking at a loose thread on his knee. Suresh is on the floor at the foot of the bed, close enough to me that I can feel the heat coming off his shoulder, and every few minutes his hand drifts to the front of his trousers where the phone sits, and every few minutes he takes it away again, like a man checking a pocket for keys he knows are there.

"You have to understand," Priya says, and she takes a sip, and the ice knocks against her teeth, "men are not complicated. They are simple as dogs. You just have to know which one bites."

Lakshmi laughs. She is sitting cross-legged against the wall with her salwar pulled up over her knees, and she has been drinking since we got here, and her laugh has gone loose and loud. "Says the girl with the boyfriend who owns three textile shops."

"Arun's father owns three textile shops," Priya says, and she smiles into her glass. "Arun owns a scooter and a very good line of talk."

Meena snorts. The room smells of sea salt and spilled rum and skin — that's the only way I can say it, the smell of six bodies in one small room on a hot evening, the salt on the window sill gone crusty white, the floorboards warm under my thighs and cool in the gaps between them. I have my potli bag in my lap. I have not touched the glass Priya poured for me. It sits by my knee, half full, the arrack in it clear as water, and every time I look at it my stomach turns over.

I have never drunk in my life. Not once. In my village, a girl who drinks is a girl whose father has failed, and my father has not failed, he has only been unlucky in his daughters. I think of him sometimes at night, sitting on the front step with his beedi, and I wonder if he knows I am here, in a room that smells of rum, with a phone in a boy's pocket that could end me.

"Kavi." Priya is looking at me. "You're not drinking."

"I don't drink, akka."

"Everyone drinks."

"Not me."

She laughs and lets it go, and I am grateful, and I am also watching the window, because the sea is going dark out there and the curtain keeps lifting and slapping the wall and every time it lifts I can see a slice of the beach and the lights of the fishing boats and a man walking a dog along the sand, and I think how strange it is that all of this is happening in a city where people walk their dogs at night while a girl sits on a floor with a photograph of herself in a boy's pocket.

Bhavani turns from the window. "It's getting late."

"It's not even dark," Priya says.

"It's dark enough."

"Sit down, Bhavani. You've been standing there like a watchman for an hour."

Bhavani sits. She sits on the far side of the room, near the kitchen door, and she pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them, and I notice — I notice everything now, that is the thing that has happened to me, I notice everything — that she keeps glancing at the door. Not the front door. The kitchen door. And I think of Arjun, and I think of the bathroom at the rooming house, and I look away before she can catch me looking.

Ravi says, "So what do we do? Just sit here till sunset?"

"We talk," Priya says. "We get to know each other. That's what people do."

"We already know each other."

"You know each other's names. That's not knowing." She sets her glass down and leans forward, and her bob swings against her cheek, and her jhumkas catch the light from the one lamp in the corner. "I'll go first. My parents think I live in a hostel in Adyar. I don't. I live here, alone, and I have lived here for eight months, and they have never seen this room, and they never will."

Meena laughs. "That's not a secret, Priya, everyone knows that."

"Fine. Then you go."

And that is how it starts — the game, or the thing that becomes the game, the thing that is not yet the game but is already pulling at the room, already changing the way we sit. Meena goes. She tells us about her father, who died when she was twelve, and her mother's tea stall, and how she wants to be a nurse so she can send money home, and how she faints at the sight of blood and has not told her mother that either. Lakshmi goes. She tells us about the tin of money under her cot and the fiancé in Kanchipuram she has not seen in a year and the way she counts the money every night before she sleeps. Bhavani goes, and she tells us she lied to her parents about the hostel, and I watch her mouth while she says it, and I think, that is not your biggest lie, and I keep my face still.

Ravi goes. He tells us he is failing his IT course and has not called his father in four months, and when he says it his voice goes thin and he looks at the floor, and for a moment he is just a thin boy from Trichy who is afraid, and I feel something turn over in my chest that I do not want to feel for him.

Suresh goes last. He says, "I have a girlfriend in Salem. We talk on the phone every night. I have never kissed her." He says it with a small smile, and the mustache lifts, and his eyes slide to me when he says the last part, and I look at the floor.

Then it is my turn, and I say the smallest true thing I can find. "I came to the city and I don't know anyone here."

Priya says, "That's not a secret, Kavi, that's a fact."

"It's the only one I have."

She laughs, and the room laughs, and I laugh too, and for a moment I am just a girl on a floor in a room that smells of rum, and the sea is loud, and the curtain lifts and slaps, and the floorboard groans under me when I shift my weight, and I think, this is what it is to have friends.

And then the knock comes.

Priya is mid-sentence — she is saying something about Arun, about how he once drove her to Pondicherry on a scooter and they ate fish curry on the beach and she got sand in her hair and he picked it out strand by strand — and her voice just stops. Her hand goes still on her glass. She looks at the door.

The knock comes again. Three raps. Quick. Familiar.

"That's Arun," she says, and she is already getting up, and I watch her cross the room in her bare feet, and I watch the floorboards dip under her, and I watch the condensation on her glass slide down and pool on the wood, and I think, no, and I don't know why I think it, but I think it.

She opens the door.

Arun is standing there with his helmet under his arm and his hair pushed back and a plastic bag of bottles in his other hand, and behind him, in the stairwell light, there are shapes — shoulders, heads, the low murmur of men's voices — and I count them without meaning to, I count them the way I have learned to count, and there are three of them, and one of them I know is Arjun, and the other two I have never seen in my life.

"Surprise," Arun says.

Priya says, "You didn't tell me."

"I told you I'd come."

"You didn't tell me you'd bring the whole team."

He steps past her into the room, and the boys come in behind him, and the room that was six of us is suddenly nine, and then ten, and the floorboards groan and the door swings shut and the latch clicks, and the smell of the room changes — more sweat, more cologne, more rum — and I am still sitting cross-legged on the floor with my potli bag in my lap and my untouched glass by my knee, and the two boys I do not know are looking around the room the way men look around a room when they are deciding where to sit.

Arun sets the bag down. Glass clinks. He looks at Priya, and then he looks at the rest of us, and his eyes pass over me and do not stop, and I am grateful for that, and I am also — I do not know what I am.

"Introductions," he says. "This is Vinoth." The taller one nods. "This is Karthik." The one with the gold chain nods. "You know Arjun." Arjun lifts his chin at the room, and Bhavani, by the kitchen door, does not move, and I see it, I see the way her shoulders go still, and I look at the window.

Priya is standing by the door with her arms crossed. "You could have called."

"I'm calling now." He grins at her, and it is a good grin, a grin that has gotten him out of things, and she shakes her head and lets it go, because she always lets it go, because that is the kind of girl she is, and I think, I want to be that kind of girl, I want to be able to let a thing go.

Arun reaches into his bag and pulls out a deck of cards. Not playing cards. A small box, worn at the corners, the kind of box that has been in a scooter's glove compartment for a year. He holds it up.

"We're playing a drinking game," he says.

"What game?" Lakshmi asks.

"Every card is a dare. You take a card, you do the dare. You don't do the dare, you drink." He opens the box and fans the cards out, and I can see the writing on them from here, small black letters on white, some of them with pictures, some of them with just words. "Simple."

"Where did you get that?"

"Karthik's brother brought it from Bangalore."

Karthik, the one with the gold chain, says, "It's a good game."

Priya looks at me. I do not know why she looks at me. Maybe she is checking. Maybe she is asking. I do not know how to answer with my face, so I look at my glass, at the arrack in it, clear as water, and I think of my father on the front step with his beedi, and I think of the phone in Suresh's pocket, and I think of Ravi's hand in the dark theatre, and I think, I should go home, I should stand up and say I am tired and walk out of this room, and I know I will not, because the door is locked, and because Priya said no one leaves until sunset, and because there is nowhere for me to go.

Arun sits down on the floor across from me, and the others arrange themselves, and the room becomes a circle. Vinoth and Karthik sit near the window. Arjun sits near Bhavani, not next to her, but near, and Bhavani does not look at him, and Arjun does not look at her, and that is how I know. I know now. I know the shape of it.

Ravi is on my left. Suresh is on my right. I do not know if that is an accident. I do not think it is an accident. I think Suresh moved, when the boys came in, the way a man moves to keep a thing in reach, and I sit between them with my hands in my lap and my anklets cold against my heels.

Arun shuffles the cards. The sound of them is soft, paper on paper, and the sea is loud behind it, and the curtain lifts and slaps and lifts and slaps.

"Who starts?" Lakshmi says.

"You do," Arun says, and he fans the deck toward her, face down.

Lakshmi pulls a card. She reads it and laughs and shows it to Meena, and Meena laughs too, and Lakshmi stands up and does a thing with her hips — a dance move, a film move, something from a song — and the boys whistle, and she sits back down, and the room is laughing, and it is fine, it is just a game, it is just a room of young people on a hot evening, and I let myself breathe.

Meena goes next. She pulls her card and holds it close to her chest and reads it twice, and then she groans and takes her glass and drinks — a long pull, her throat working, and when she sets it down there is rum on her lip and she wipes it with the back of her hand and says, "Pass." The boys boo her. She says, "I'm not doing that in front of my friends," and the booing turns to laughter, and Vinoth leans over and tries to read her card and she folds it into her palm and will not let him.

Ravi's turn. He reaches into the fan and pulls one out without looking, and he reads it and his ears go red — I can see it even in the lamplight, the tips of his ears going dark — and he says, "Pass," and drinks, and the arrack makes him cough and his eyes water and Karthik slaps him on the back and says, "First time?" and Ravi says, "No," and everyone knows he is lying.

Then it is Suresh, and he takes his time with the deck, turning the cards over in his fingers, and I watch his hands because I have learned to watch his hands, and he pulls one and reads it and smiles his small smile and says, "I'll do it." He stands up and walks to Priya and kneels in front of her and says something I cannot hear, and she laughs and shakes her head, and he says it again, and she rolls her eyes and leans down and he whispers into her ear, and whatever he whispers makes her laugh harder, and he sits back down and the room claps, and I do not know what the dare was, and I do not want to know.

Arjun's card makes him stand and touch his toes ten times, counting out loud in a flat voice while Bhavani stares at the window, and the boys count with him, and he does not look at her once, and she does not look at him, and the not-looking is so loud that I wonder how no one else can hear it.

Vinoth has to swap shirts with Karthik. Karthik's shirt is too small for him and rides up over his belly and the room howls, and Karthik sits there in a shirt that strains across his chest and grins like he has won something.

Priya pulls a card that says she must sit in Arun's lap until her next turn, and she does it without blinking, settling against his chest with her glass in her hand like it is nothing, like it is the most ordinary thing in the world, and he loops an arm around her waist and keeps talking to Karthik about a match, and I watch the way her body fits into his without any space between them, and something in my chest pulls tight and I do not have a name for it.

Then Arun looks at me.

"Village," he says. "You're the only one who hasn't gone."

"I haven't drunk either," I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I meant it to.

"Then you'd better hope you get a good card." He fans the deck toward me, and the cards are worn soft at the edges, and I can see the black ink of the writing on the backs of some of them bleeding through, and I reach in and I pull one out and I turn it over and I read it.

Kiss the person to your left.

I read it again. The words do not change. I look up, and every face in the room is turned toward me, and I look left, and Ravi is sitting there with his knees pulled up and his arms loose over them, and he is looking at me, and his face is doing something I cannot read — not the theatre face, not the threat face, something else, something that has gone careful and still.

"What does it say?" Lakshmi calls out.

I do not answer. I fold the card in half and I fold it again and I hold it in my fist.

"Show us," Meena says.

"It says kiss the person to your left," Karthik says, leaning over, reading the card in my hand upside down, and the room goes quiet, and then it goes loud — whistles, hoots, Vinoth slapping the floor, Lakshmi saying ohhh, Priya sitting up in Arun's lap with her eyebrows high, and I feel my face go hot from my throat to my hairline.

I look at the glass by my knee. The arrack in it has not moved. Clear as water. My father on the front step with his beedi. My mother's anklets on my ankles, tied the year before she died. A girl who drinks is a girl whose father has failed. But there is no card in this deck that says drink and be safe — there is only drink, or do the thing, and the thing is Ravi, and Ravi's mouth, and Ravi's hand in the dark theatre, and the phone in Suresh's pocket, and the door locked, and no one leaving until sunset.

"Drink it," Ravi says, quietly, just to me, and I do not know if he is helping me or testing me, and I do not know which one I would rather it be.

I pick up the glass. It is warm from the floor and it smells like something gone bad, and I lift it to my mouth and the smell goes up into my nose and my stomach turns over hard, and I set it back down.

"I can't," I say.

"Then kiss him," Arun says, and he is smiling, and it is a good smile, and I hate it.

I turn to Ravi. He has not moved. His knees are still up and his arms are still loose and he is watching me the way a man watches a thing he has already decided he will get, and I think of the dark theatre, and his hand closing around mine, and the word he said — good girl — and I think, this is the same thing, this is the same thing wearing a different shirt, and I lean in.

I have never kissed anyone. I do not know how it is done. I put my mouth on his mouth the way I have seen it done in films, a closed mouth, a press, and his lips are dry and warm and he does not move at first, and then his hand comes up and his fingers find the back of my neck under my braid and he holds me there, and he tilts his head and his mouth opens against mine and I feel his tongue touch my lip and I pull back.

The room is cheering. Someone is clapping. Lakshmi is saying something I cannot hear over the blood in my ears. I sit back on my heels and I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand before I can stop myself, and I see Ravi watch me do it, and his face closes like a door.

"There," Arun says. "That wasn't so bad."

I do not answer. My mouth tastes of rum even though I did not drink — it is on his lips, it has come off onto mine, and I can taste it, and my hands are shaking, and I put them under my thighs so no one will see.

"My turn," Vinoth says, and the game moves on, and the cards go around, and the room goes back to laughing, and I sit between Ravi and Suresh with my mouth still tasting of rum and my first kiss behind me, given away on a floor, in front of everyone, to a boy who has already had me in the dark.

Priya catches my eye from across the circle. She lifts her glass to me, just a little, a private thing, and she smiles — and I do not know if it is a sorry smile or a well-done smile, and I do not know which one I would rather it be, and I smile back anyway, because that is what I do.

The cards keep moving. Karthik has to lick salt off the back of Meena's hand. Arjun has to say the name of the girl he likes, out loud, and he says a name that is not Bhavani's, and Bhavani does not flinch, and I watch her not flinch and I think, she has learned to do that, and I wonder how long it took her to learn.

Then it is Suresh's turn again, and he pulls a card and reads it and looks at me — just a glance, a half-second — and he says, "Pass," and he drinks, and I do not know what was on that card, and I will spend the rest of the night not knowing, and that is its own kind of hand on my neck.

Ravi's turn comes around again. He pulls a card and reads it and his jaw tightens, and he drinks, and he drinks the whole glass this time, and he sets it down hard, and his eyes are wet and bright, and I do not know what he saw on that card either, and I do not ask.

The light outside the window has gone fully dark. The sea is a black sound. The curtain lifts and slaps and lifts and slaps, and the floorboards groan every time someone shifts, and the room is warm with bodies and rum and the smell of skin, and the game keeps going, and I keep sitting in the middle of it with my hands under my thighs and my mouth still tasting of him, waiting for my turn to come around again.