Morning comes the way it always comes in this room — not all at once, but in pieces. The ceiling fan first, its rattle finding the rhythm it lost in the night. Then the light, thin and grey, seeping through the one window that faces the lane, catching the dust that hangs in the air like the room is breathing it. Then the sounds of the others waking — a cough, a cot creaking, someone's bare feet on the concrete.

I have not slept. Or maybe I have, in pieces, the way the morning comes. My palm is still stiff with what dried there, and I have kept my hand away from my body all night, held out from the sheet like it belongs to someone else. When the light is strong enough to see by, I look at it. The skin is the same skin. There is nothing to see. But I can feel it — a wrongness, a residue that has nothing to do with what is visible.

Across the room, Ravi's cot is empty. His blanket is folded at the foot, neat, the way a boy folds a blanket when he wants to look like he has nothing to hide. I stare at that folded blanket for a long time. I do not know what I expected. That he would be gone? That he would be sitting on the edge of his cot, watching me, waiting for me to open my eyes so he could see what I knew?

Bhavani is awake, sitting up on her cot with her hair loose and tangled around her shoulders, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand. She sees me looking and smiles — a sleepy, unguarded smile, the kind that has nothing behind it.

"You are up early," she says. "Or you did not sleep?"

"I slept," I say. The lie comes out smooth. I did not know I could lie like that.

She stretches, her arms over her head, and yawns wide. "Sunday," she says. "No college. I am so bored already. There is nothing to do in this room except look at the wall."

"We could go somewhere," Lakshmi says from her cot, her voice muffled because she is still lying down, still half in sleep. "There is a theatre near the main road. They show Tamil pictures in the morning for cheap. Twenty rupees."

"Twenty rupees," Bhavani says, sitting up straighter. "For a whole picture? In the dark, in the cool? That is the best idea you have had all week."

"I have good ideas every day," Lakshmi says. "You just do not listen."

The room comes alive around the idea. Suresh says he will come if there is a fight scene. Meena says she has to study, then changes her mind when Bhavani says there will be a song with the actor Vijay. Arjun, from his cot, says nothing, but he gets up and starts folding his blanket, which is his way of saying yes. Ravi is still gone. I notice this the way you notice a missing tooth — with the tongue, over and over, against the gap.

"Kavi?" Bhavani says. "You will come?"

I want to say no. I want to stay in this room, in the daylight, where I can see everyone's hands. But if I say no, they will ask why, and I do not have a why that is not a lie, and I am not good enough at lying yet to build one. So I say yes.

"Good," Bhavani says. "You have been in this city three weeks and you have not seen one picture. What kind of girl are you?"

The kind who does not know what she is, I think. But I smile, and I get up, and I go to the tap to wash my face, and I keep my right hand away from my face, away from my mouth, away from everything.

We leave the rooming house at ten, all six of us, and the lane is already hot, the sun bouncing off the concrete in a way that makes the air feel solid. Bhavani walks beside me, her hair loose down her back, her silver nose stud catching the light. She talks the whole way — about her B.A., about the professor who gives marks for attendance, about her cousin's wedding in Vellore that she is saving for. I listen and nod and say "mm" in the right places, and all the while I am counting the people in front of me and behind me, and Ravi is not among them.

"Where is Ravi?" I ask. I try to make it sound like nothing. Like I am asking about the weather.

"He said he would meet us there," Bhavani says. "He had to go somewhere first. Why? Do you like him?"

"No," I say, too fast. "I was only asking."

She laughs. "You are so serious, Kavi. In the village, is everyone so serious? Or is it only you?"

"Only me," I say, and she laughs again, and I am grateful for the laugh because it covers the sound of my heart, which is beating too loud, too fast, like it knows something I do not.

The theatre is a old building on the main road, its signboard faded, its walls stained with betel juice and time. The man at the counter takes our twenty rupees each and gives us tickets that are just torn slips of paper. Inside, the air is thick with old velvet dust and cooling sweat, the smell of a hundred bodies that have sat here before us. The work lights are still on, dim and red, casting long shadows across the frayed plush seats. The screen is blank, a grey rectangle waiting.

We find a row near the middle. Bhavani goes in first, then me, then the others, a line of us shuffling past knees and bags. I sit down and the seat is sticky under my thighs, the plush worn thin, the springs tired. Bhavani is on my left, talking to Meena on her other side. On my right, there is an empty seat. Then Suresh, then Arjun, then Lakshmi at the end.

The work lights go down. The screen lights up, a wash of colour and sound, and the theatre goes black around us — not dark, but black, the kind of black that has weight, that presses against your eyes. The music starts, loud, the kind of music that fills every corner of the room. On the screen, a man is running through a field. I cannot follow it. I am too aware of the empty seat beside me.

Then someone sits down in it. I do not have to look. I know the shape of him, the thinness of him, the way he settles into the seat like he has been here all along. His knee presses against mine. Through the cotton of my salwar, through the cotton of his trousers, I feel the heat of him, the bone of him, the fact of him.

He leans close. His breath is hot on my ear, damp, the smell of tea and something sour underneath.

"If you tell anyone about last night," he says, "I will kill you."

The words are quiet. So quiet that no one else could hear them over the music, over the sound of the film, over the hundred small noises of a theatre full of people. But they land in me like stones in still water. I feel the ripples go out, through my chest, through my arms, through my hands, which are gripping the armrests so hard that my knuckles ache.

I do not say anything. I cannot. My throat has closed. On the screen, the man is still running. The music swells. Bhavani laughs at something Meena said. The world is going on around me, normal and loud and bright, and I am sitting in the middle of it with a boy's threat in my ear and his knee pressed against mine.

The tears start. I do not want them to. I have been holding them since last night, holding them through the walk, through the ticket line, through the sitting down. But now they come, hot and silent, sliding down my cheeks in the dark where no one can see. I do not wipe them. If I move my hand, he will know. If I make a sound, he will know. So I sit very still and let them fall, and the salt gets into the corner of my mouth, and I taste it, and I think: this is what fear tastes like.

His hand finds mine in the dark. I do not see it coming. One moment my hand is on the armrest, the next his fingers are lacing through mine, prising my grip loose, curling around my palm. His hand is warm. His hand is dry. His hand is not shaking at all.

"You owe me," he whispers. His mouth is so close to my ear that I feel his lips move against the skin. "You owe me, Kavi. You know that, don't you?"

I do not answer. I do not know the answer. Do I owe him? For what? For last night, when he used my hand while I pretended to sleep? For the fact that I did not stop him? For the fact that I lay there afterward with his wetness drying on my palm and did not say a word?

"You will give me your hand," he says. "Here. Now. Under the seat."

His fingers guide mine. Down, off the armrest, into the dark space between our seats, into his lap. I feel the fabric of his trousers first — thin cotton, worn soft, the kind of trousers a boy wears every day because he has only one pair. Then I feel the heat through the fabric. Then I feel the shape of him. He is hard already. He is hard and waiting, and he has been waiting, and he knew I would do this, he knew it before he sat down, before he leaned close, before he said a word.

"There," he says. "You see? You know what to do."

I do not know what to do. That is the truth. I have never touched a boy's cock before last night, and last night I did not touch it — he touched it with my hand, he moved my hand, I was only the instrument. But now his fingers are pressing mine against him, curling them, showing me the shape, and I feel it through the cloth: the length of him, the thickness, the way it strains against the fabric like it is trying to get out.

"Open it," he says.

My fingers find the button of his trousers. They are shaking. I do not know if he can feel them shaking. I fumble, once, twice, and then the button comes loose, and the zip, and then my hand is inside, in the warm dark of his trousers, and I feel him through his underwear — thin cotton, damp at the tip, and under it the heat of him, the pulse of him, the fact of him.

"Take it out," he says.

I do. My fingers close around him, and he is hot, so hot, hotter than I expected, and the skin is soft, softer than I expected, soft like the inside of a wrist, and beneath the softness there is a hardness that has nothing soft in it at all. He is wet at the tip. My thumb slides through the wetness without meaning to, and he makes a sound — a small sound, a breath, a hiss — and his hand closes over mine, tightening my grip.

"Like that," he says. "Move it. Up and down."

On the screen, the man is singing now, a love song, his voice high and sweet. The theatre is full of it, full of the music and the colour and the hundred people watching, and no one is watching us. No one can see. The dark is total. The seats are high. My hand is in his lap, moving, and no one knows.

"Faster," he says. His breath is coming shorter now, his knee pressing harder against mine, his free hand gripping the armrest on his other side. "Faster, Kavi. Don't stop."

I do not stop. I cannot stop. My hand is moving and my arm is aching and the tears are still sliding down my face, and I am thinking, this is what I am now. This is what I do now. In the dark, in a theatre, with a boy who threatened to kill me, my hand moving on his cock like it is the most natural thing in the world.

"You like it," he whispers. "I know you like it. I felt you last night. You did not move away."

I did not move away. That is true. I lay there with my eyes closed and my hand wrapped around him and I did not move away. I told myself I was asleep. I told myself it was not happening. But I did not move away.

His hips lift, just a little, pushing into my grip. His breath is ragged now, a sound like something breaking. "Don't stop," he says again. "Don't you dare stop."

I do not stop. My hand moves faster, the way he showed me, the way his own hand moved mine last night, and I feel him swell, feel him throb, feel the wetness at the tip grow slick under my thumb. He is close. I do not know how I know, but I know. His whole body has gone tight, his knee hard against mine, his breath held, his hand crushing the armrest.

Then he comes. It is sudden and not sudden — I feel it build and then I feel it break, and his cock jerks in my hand, and the wetness spills over my fingers, hot and thick, more than I expected, running down my wrist, into the crease of my palm. He makes a sound — a low, choked sound, almost a sob — and his hips push up once, twice, and then he goes still.

On the screen, the song is ending. The man and the woman are running toward each other through a field of flowers. The music swells and breaks and the theatre is full of it, and no one has seen anything, no one knows anything, and my hand is wet with him and my face is wet with tears and I am sitting very still, waiting for him to let go of me.

He does not let go. Not at first. His hand stays over mine, pressing my fingers around him, holding me there in the warm wet dark of his trousers. His breathing is slowing. His knee is still against mine.

"Good girl," he says. His voice is different now — softer, almost kind. "You see? That was not so hard."

Then he lets go. He takes his hand away, and I take mine away, and I feel the wetness on my fingers, cooling now, the same wetness as last night, the same stiff film already starting to form. I do not know what to do with my hand. I cannot wipe it on my salwar — the stain would show. I cannot put it in my lap — the stain would show there too. So I hold it in the air, in the dark, my fingers spread, and I wait.

Beside me, Bhavani is laughing at something on the screen. She has not looked at me once. She does not know. No one knows. The film goes on, the colours changing, the music playing, and I sit in the middle of it with my hand held out in the dark like something I am trying to dry, and I think: this is my life now. This is what I do in the dark. And I do not know how to stop.