A Girl Like That(25)

I blew smoke out of the window. “You’re head girl,” I told Nadia. “You won’t fail a test.” Which was a lie. She’d failed the last one, I knew, and the one before.

“But I haven’t been studying for ages!”

I smashed the butt into the car ashtray. “Fine, then. I’ll take you home.”

The edge in my voice made her jump. “So soon?”

“It’s getting late.” I turned the key in the ignition, hoping she wouldn’t take the bait. “I don’t want to waste any more of your study time.”

“Farhan, wait.” She put a hand on my knee.

Blood rushed to my face. I released the steering wheel and turned to face her. “Not good enough, Nadia.”

The engine hummed in the silence. Nadia bit her plump lower lip. Cherry red stained the edges of her front teeth. Then, after one long minute, she leaned forward and put her hands on my shoulders. Slid them around my neck. Opened her mouth, maybe to say something.

I didn’t wait to hear it. I stuck in my tongue and simultaneously pushed aside the abaya and dupatta covering her chest.

She stiffened. A sound emerged from her throat—yes? no? my name?

Who cared as long as her hands remained where they were?

Cotton bra. Lace trim. There didn’t appear to be any padding, but I squeezed several times to make sure. I traced the lace with my thumbs and followed it to the back, where the hooks were located. She squeaked when I withdrew my tongue from her mouth and pushed down the bra. The fine hair on her skin gave it a velvety, apricot-like texture. She smelled like expensive perfume. Moments later, a siren sounded in the distance, followed by the honk of car horns.

“Get down,” I snapped. Blood rushed to my face.

“W-wha—?” Her scarf had somehow remarkably stayed in place, covering her hair completely, even though the rest of her clothing was in disarray.

I put a hand on her head and shoved it—as gently as I could—down toward her knees.

Red and blue lights flashed in the rearview mirror. Two police cars shot past the Hanoody warehouse—chasing some dude for speeding in a residential area, I guessed. To be safe, I waited five more minutes, my hand still holding Nadia’s head in place.

“You can sit again,” I said finally, releasing my grip. “They’re gone.”

She slid down to the edge of the seat. There, she fumbled with the rest of her clothes till she managed to put them back in place. Her bra, which she hadn’t managed to clasp properly, wrinkled at the peaks. Black mascara circled the skin around her watery eyes.

“Sorry,” I said.

She smacked my mouth with the palm of her hand. “You maniac! I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

“What are you talking about?” My lips were stinging. “I saved you from being lashed by the police!”

“Oh thank God, thank God for the police!” She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. “I thought a few kisses would appease you, but … God, if not for them, you’d have probably raped me!”

The words did not sink in at first.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you understand English?” Nadia’s lower lip curled. “In any case, I’ve made this disgusting date well worth your gasoline money.”

A muffled laugh floated to my ears from behind the broken wall. “Y-you’re kidding, r-right?” My face burned. “You were s-so … You wanted it, Nadia. You asked f-for—”

“Take me home.” She ripped a few tissues from the box in the glove compartment and wiped her mouth with slow, measured strokes. “Now.”

Abdullah had told me about such girls. NATO, he called them. No action, talk only. The ones who kissed like whores and then cried like virgins.

“I would have told her to get out of the car and driven off,” he said later. “Let her walk home by herself. But seriously, Farhan, to say ‘Y-yes, N-n-n-nadia,’ and drive her back home like she asked you to? Were you wearing bangles?”

Bilal laughed. “You looked like you’d just crapped your pants.”

Then, a month later, Abdullah forwarded me a text and a video clip on my phone.

In the text, cricket captain Ashraf Haque claimed to have set the record as the first Qala Academy boy to hit a home run with the head girl at the Hanoody warehouse a week after their very first coffee-shop date, in his secondhand Honda Civic.

No one seemed to care that the video was of poor quality or that the girl’s face was only partially visible or that her breasts weren’t as full and firm as the ones I remembered seeing on Nadia. Within a day of the clip being sent out, Haque’s reputation changed from being another perverted toilet stall masturbator to the luckiest guy in school.

It was only after Nadia left for India for further studies—still staunchly denying any involvement with “that jerk”—that Bilal revealed the secret to Haque’s success. “A single cup of coffee, my man,” he told me. “A single freaking cup. You can bet every guy she went out with wished he’d thought of the idea first.”

“He drugged her?” Abdullah looked, for the first time, disgusted and self-righteous. “That’s messed up.”

“Who cares?” My mouth still stung from the memory of Nadia’s slap. “Everyone knows what a slut Durrani is.”