The tap drips. Three seconds. Drip. Three seconds. Drip. I have counted it since before the sky turned grey, lying on my cot with my hand held away from my body, and now the room is light enough that I can see the crack in the wall again and the drip has not stopped and neither have I.

Everyone is still asleep. Suresh's mustache moves with his breathing. Ravi's cot is empty again, folded neat, the way it was yesterday, the way it will probably be every morning now. Bhavani sleeps on her side with her hair loose over the pillow, her mouth slightly open, and I look at her mouth for longer than I mean to and then I look away.

I get up. My anklets make one small sound and I catch them with my hand before they can make another. I take my towel from the nail, my soap from the ledge, and I walk to the bathroom with my feet placed carefully on the floor so the tiles do not creak.

The bathroom door does not close properly. It has not closed properly since I came here. The latch is a small brass thing that has to be lifted and turned at the same time, and if you do not do it exactly right, it sits in the frame like it is shut, and it is not shut. I have learned this the way I have learned everything in this room — by watching, by being wrong once, by remembering.

I lift the latch. I turn it. It clicks, or it almost clicks, and I tell myself that is enough because I am tired of checking things that do not want to be checked.

The water comes out cold first, then warm. The steam climbs. The mirror fogs from the bottom up, and my face disappears in it, which is a small mercy. I stand under the water with my kurti still on because I do not have the courage this morning to be naked in a room that does not lock, and the cotton goes heavy and dark and sticks to my shoulders and my back and the tops of my thighs.

I close my eyes. The water runs over my face. And it comes back — the way it has come back all night, the way it came back in the dark while I lay there with my fingers spread — Bhavani on her knees on this same floor, the tile slick under her, her hair falling forward, the silver stud glinting, the wet shine on her chin, Arjun's hand on top of her head, gentle, the way you touch a thing you are fond of.

I do not want it. I want to put it down the way you put down a bucket that is too heavy. But my body has already decided something without asking me, the heat rising low in my belly, my nipples going tight against the wet cotton, and I hate it, I hate that I am standing in this bathroom with my clothes on and my body is answering a question I did not ask.

So I will scrub it away. Not with water. Water has not worked. I will do the other thing, the thing I have done only twice in my life, both times in the dark of my own room in the village with my hand over my mouth, both times finishing fast and then lying still and ashamed, listening for my father's footsteps.

I put my back against the wall. The tile is cool through the wet kurti. I slide down it, slowly, until I am sitting on the floor with my knees bent and my feet flat on the tile, and the water from the shower head falls past me and does not touch me, and the steam wraps around my face.

I keep the kurti on. I keep the salwar on. I do not know why this matters to me, but it does — if I am going to do this, I am going to do it as the girl who walked in here, not as someone else. I push the fabric up just enough. My hand goes under the waistband. My fingers find the wet that has nothing to do with the shower, and I close my eyes.

The first touch is almost too much. I have been holding this all night without knowing I was holding it, and now my own fingers are on my clit and my whole body folds forward an inch, my forehead nearly touching my knees, my breath coming out of me in a sound I have to swallow.

I think about the river behind my village house. I think about the water carrying things down without asking. I think about nothing. I think about Bhavani's throat moving. I think about the silver stud. I think about Arjun's hand, gentle, and I think about how it would feel if the hand were on my head instead, and the thought comes before I can stop it, and once it is here I do not push it away, because I am so tired, and because it is only me, and because no one will ever know.

My fingers move faster. The steam has made everything slick and easy. My hips lift off the tile a little, then settle back, and I can hear myself — small wet sounds under the hiss of the water, a whimper I keep trying to bite in half, the drip of the tap still keeping its three seconds underneath all of it like a clock that does not care.

I am close. I am so close. My toes curl against the cool tile and my free hand grips the edge of the bucket beside me and I am right there, right at the edge, when the door opens.

The latch was not clicked. It sat in the frame like it was shut, and it was not shut, and Suresh is standing in the doorway with his mouth open and his phone in his hand.

For one second nothing happens. The steam rolls out past him into the corridor. The water keeps falling. My hand is still between my legs, under the fabric, and my knees are still apart, and my face is turned up toward him with my mouth open, and I cannot move, I cannot make my body do anything at all.

Then the flash goes off.

White. A burst of white that blinds me for a second, and in that second I hear the shutter sound, the little click-click the phone makes, and I know exactly what has happened before my eyes can see again.

"Suresh —" My voice comes out wrong. Thin. Like it belongs to a smaller girl.

He does not answer. He looks at the screen. His thumb moves. He looks at the screen again, and his mustache lifts, and I have never seen that face on him before — the mustache boy from Salem, the one who has never kissed anyone, the one who talks about his father's provision store and his girlfriend who he has only spoken to on the phone.

"Kavitha," he says. Just my name. Slowly. Like he is tasting it.

I pull my hand out from under my kurti. I pull my knees together. The wet cotton clings to me and shows everything and there is nothing I can do about it, so I cross my arms over my chest and I look at the floor.

"Delete it," I say. "Please. Delete it."

He steps inside. He pulls the door shut behind him, and this time he does the latch properly — lift, turn, click — and the click is the loudest sound in the room. The tap drips. Three seconds. Drip.

"Why?" he says.

"Suresh, please. I will do anything. Please delete it."

He looks at the phone again. He turns it toward me so I can see. There I am on the small bright screen — my head tipped back against the tile, my mouth open, my knees apart, my hand between my legs, my eyes closed like I am somewhere far away. My own face, caught in a moment I did not know anyone could see.

"Anything," he repeats.

"Yes. Anything. Please."

He puts the phone in his pocket. He does not delete it. He puts it in his pocket, and my stomach drops all the way down to the wet tile.

"Then get up," he says.

I get up. My legs are shaking and the kurti is heavy and dripping and I stand in front of him with my arms crossed and the water still running behind me, and I do not know what he wants, and I know exactly what he wants, and I have known since the flash went off.

He unbuttons his shorts. Just the top button. He does not say anything. He just looks at me, and then he looks down at himself, and then he looks at me again, and his mustache lifts.

"No," I say. The word comes out before I can think about it. "Suresh, no. I have never — I do not know how. Please. Anything else."

He takes the phone back out of his pocket. He holds it up. He does not open it. He does not have to open it. He just holds it there between us like a small dark window with my face inside it.

"Then I will send it to everyone," he says. "Bhavani. Arjun. Lakshmi. Ravi. Everyone in the room. Everyone in the college. Your father."

My father.

The word goes through me like a wire pulled tight. My father, who does not know where I am. My father, who would come on the first bus if someone told him, and who would not ask me any questions, and who would take me home by the ear in front of everyone. My father, who would know. Everyone would know. The whole village would know. The aunties who praised my braid would know. My mother is dead and cannot be ashamed of me and that is the only mercy in this whole room and it is not enough.

I look at the phone. I look at his face. I look at the cracked tile floor, and the drip of the tap, and the steam still hanging in the air between us like something that has not decided whether to leave.

I kneel down.

The tile is cool and slick under my knees. The wet kurti spreads around me. I keep my arms crossed for one more second, and then I uncross them, and I put my hands on my own thighs, and I look up at him because I do not know what else to do with my face.

"Open your mouth," he says.

I open my mouth.

He pulls himself out. He is hard already, and I have never seen one this close in the light, and I do not know where to look, so I look at the base of it and then I look at his face and then I look back down. He is not big. He is thick and blunt and the skin is darker than the rest of him and there is a bead of something wet at the tip, and my whole body wants to stand up and walk out of this room and it does not, it stays kneeling, because the phone is in his hand and my father is two hundred kilometres away and the room is full of people who are asleep and will wake up.

"Suck it," he says.

I do not know how. I have never done this. I have seen it once, yesterday, through a door that did not close, and I watched Bhavani do it the way you watch someone do something in a language you do not speak, and now I have to speak it.

I lean forward. I put my lips on the tip of him, just the tip, and the taste hits me — salt and skin and something else, something warm and animal, and my stomach turns over. I stay there. I do not move. My lips are closed around the head of him and my eyes are open and I am looking at the wet tile beside his feet and I am thinking, this is not happening, this is not my mouth, this is not my body.

"More," he says. "Take it in."

I take it in. Too fast — I take it too fast and it hits the back of my throat and I gag and pull back with a wet sound, and a string of spit hangs between my lip and the tip of him and breaks and falls onto my chin. My eyes are watering. I wipe my chin with the back of my hand and I look up at him and he is watching me with his mouth a little open now, the mustache moving, and he is not laughing at me, he is not kind to me either, he is just looking.

"Again," he says.

I go again. Slower this time. I use my hand at the base because I do not know what else to do with it, and I move my mouth up and down along the first inch or two, and I keep my tongue flat because that is what I remember from the doorway, and the taste is still there and my stomach is still turning and I am still doing it.

He makes a sound. A small grunt, low in his chest, and his hips move forward a little, pushing himself deeper into my mouth, and I make a sound around him without meaning to — a small frightened noise — and he hears it, and he does it again. Deeper. His hand comes down and rests on the back of my head, not pushing, not yet, just resting there, and I think about Arjun's hand on Bhavani's head, gentle, the way you touch a thing you are fond of, and this is not that. This is heavier. This is a hand that knows it can push and is deciding when.

"You are good at this," he says. "For someone who has never."

I do not answer. I cannot answer. My mouth is full. I keep moving, up and down, up and down, and my jaw is starting to ache and my knees are starting to hurt against the tile and the water is still running behind me and the tap is still dripping and I am still here, on my knees, in my wet clothes, with my mouth full of a boy from Salem who has never kissed anyone.

His breathing changes. Faster. Louder. His hand on the back of my head tightens a little, and his hips start to move in small quick pushes, and I know what is coming because I have heard the boys talk in the room when they think the girls are asleep, and I try to pull back and his hand holds me there.

"Don't," he says. "Don't pull back."

I do not pull back.

He comes in my mouth. Hot and sudden and more than I expected, filling the back of my mouth and my throat, and I gag again and my eyes flood and I make a sound around him and he holds me there for one more second, two, and then he lets go and steps back.

I turn my head and spit. It hits the tile beside the drain, thick and white and mixed with my own spit, and I spit again, and again, and I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and then I wipe my hand on my wet kurti and I am shaking all over.

Suresh tucks himself back into his shorts. He buttons the button. He takes out his phone and looks at the screen — at me, on the screen, my mouth open, my knees apart — and he looks at me, kneeling on the floor in front of him, and his mustache lifts.

"You are going to do what I say," he says. "Or this goes to everyone we know."

The tap drips. Three seconds. Drip.

I look at the phone. I look at his face. My hands are shaking so hard I have to press them flat against my thighs to make them stop, and my mouth is dry, and I can still taste him at the back of my throat, and I do not say anything at all.

He opens the door. The latch — lift, turn — and the corridor light comes in, and he steps out, and the door swings shut behind him and does not click.

I stay on the floor. The water is cold now. I reach up and turn the tap off, and the hiss stops, and the only sound left is the drip, three seconds, drip, and my own breathing, and somewhere down the lane a dog barks once and then is quiet.

I cup water in my hand and rinse my mouth. I rinse it again. I rinse it a third time and I still taste him, and I sit back on my heels on the wet tile with my wet kurti stuck to my skin and I look at the drain where I spat, and the water I used to rinse is already gone down it, and there is nothing left on the tile at all.

I do not cry in the bathroom. I do not know why. I just sit there until my knees stop shaking enough to stand, and then I stand, and I wring out the bottom of my kurti over the drain, and I open the door and I walk back to the room with my towel around my shoulders like nothing has happened.

Suresh is on his cot with his back to me, pretending to sleep. Bhavani is still asleep. Ravi's cot is still empty. I lie down on my own cot with my face to the wall and I pull the sheet up to my chin and I look at the crack that looks like the river behind my village house.

I think about the water in that river, how it never stopped, how it carried everything down to the sea without ever once asking what it was carrying.

I think about the photo. I think about it sitting in his pocket, in the dark, with my face inside it. I think about my father. I think about the drain, and how fast the water went down it, and how there is nothing left on the tile at all.

And then I cry. Quietly. Into the sheet, with my mouth closed, so that no one in this room will ever know.