Chapter 2: Loss

“I can’t believe you didn’t even spare your best friend!”, one of the girls shouts at me with disgust as soon as I reach the school.

With horror, I realise she knows! Who else knows?

I don’t have time to think, I have to meet Rupa. I run at full speed to the classroom.

There is a crowd of whispering girls surrounding Rupa who is sobbing with her head held down. I walk slowly towards her but before I reach her, one of the girls sees me.

“What do you want now?”, she asks angrily.

Suddenly everyone turns and looks at me. I don’t care about them. I focus on Rupa.

She looks up slowly. I watch as more and more of her face becomes visible. For one tiny moment, there is a hint of sadness, a sadness that she can share with me but then her face hardens to pure disgust and anger, and she looks away.

I had never seen that look on her, ever, not even towards the worst people she hated. The look is enough to break my heart and freeze me in the spot.

She whispers something to another girl.

Rupa walks and sits beside someone other than me for the first time in the school.

I have to explain. It’s not my fault. I don’t know what I did or how I could have stopped it.

Two girls block my path to my best friend. They are looking at me in disgust.

“Whore!”, one of them whispers.

I try to sit on the bench immediately behind Rupa. But there is already a school bag on the bench. I walk towards it anyway.

“That seat is taken”, some girl shouts from behind me. I turn. Every girl is sneering at me. I don’t even know who spoke.

“I don’t sit with sluts!”, the same voice declares. The owner of the voice is a cute girl who was, until today, very friendly to me.

I see only one girl on a bench behind her so I move towards her, but she blocks me from sitting.

“I don’t want to sit with whores either”, the girl says.

I look around me. Every girl is looking viciously at me. I realize I don’t have any friends anymore. I suddenly feel completely alone and I feel like I have done something horrible to all of them.

I feel like crying. I fight the urge and walk up to an empty bench in the corner at the very end of the classroom. I lower my face to the bench and start weeping silently.

I feel a hand wrap around my back and hear, “So you broke up with your girlfriend?...” in a rough guttural voice.

I look to my side, Ravi, the absolute worst person is sitting on my bench surrounded by his friends.

Ravi is the son of a powerful local politician. He is older than everyone in the class by five years because he has failed five times in yearly exams, twice in our grade. He is the tallest and fattest in the class. His face is just plain ugly, not just because it’s swollen with fat but because no one has ever seen it doing anything good. We have seen him, bullying, assaulting other boys and male teachers, and catcalling and harassing girls and female teachers.

Some young female teachers refused to take classes with him because he would sit in the back and hurl vulgar insults at them.

“Can you jiggle those tits?”, “Why are you being a bitch? Didn’t you get plowed enough?”, “Ma’am can you teach the girls how to jump on cocks like you?” and many more vile things.

Male teachers are worse off. They are in constant fear that he is going to hit them in class or outside the class.

Rupa however had drawn the line in harassing girls in our class. I had stopped her from doing anything when he started measuring girls’ skirts with tape. But I couldn’t stop her from kicking him in between his legs when he lifted a girl’s skirt to see which kind of flowers were printed on her panties. Rupa had threatened to call her father, who is a high-level cop.

No one wanted a match between a high-level cop and a big-time politician over this, so it became an unwritten rule that he cannot physically harass any girl in our class though he continued to catcall and hurl rude and lewd insults, but never to Rupa or me.

I am locked in the bench and can’t get out. I desperately look towards Rupa through the crowd of people. She has her back towards me but almost all the rest of the girls are watching with glee. Some boys are busy with their own thing and some are watching with a smile.

I feel so alone, so vulnerable, so weak. I try to think of something good but thoughts fail me. I can feel tears bubbling on my eyelids.

“ ... So how about you becoming my girlfriend now?”, Ravi says, looking at my chest with a villainous smile.

I try to push his hand away from around my back without saying anything. I know if I speak, I will cry.

“Come on, don’t be shy”, he says, coming even closer. I shove my bag in between him and me. He grabs my bag. He and his friends laugh as he empties all the contents of my bag on the floor. He throws the empty bag away.

Tears start rolling from my eyes. It is bad enough that Ravi is doing these but the worse and devastating fact is that Rupa is not coming to my defense. The girl, who Rupa defended earlier from Ravi, had spread the rumor that Rupa was a slut and she was having sex with multiple boys.

“Even my worst enemy is to be defended from that slimy fucking ass deuce”, Rupa said.

I guess now I am worse than her worst enemy.

Suddenly I have never been sadder, never felt so dark. It feels like all the happiness has been sucked out of me. I feel like I am dying. And just like that, I can’t breathe. I cover my eyes with my hands as tears leak out.

“Come on big tits, we can be a cute couple”, he says as he pulls my hands away from my face by my wrist while he and his friends laugh.

“Ravi!”, a loud sharp voice shouts from the front. I look to find our math teacher looking angrily at Ravi who is holding my struggling hands. His friends hurry back to their seats.

“Don’t worry Ma’am! She is my girlfriend”, he says with an evil smile without letting go of my hands.

“Let go of her hands or I will call your father right now “, she shouts.

Ravi throws my hands with anger. They hit the desk hard enough to make a loud bang.

“Stop being a bitch. Your limp sissy husband can’t fuck you properly, can he?”, He says looking angrily at her

The teacher looks disturbed for a moment but her face quickly goes back to show resolve.

“Now go back to your seat”, she says sharply ignoring everything he said.

“Why don’t you sit in my seat and spread your legs? If my cock gets hard...”, Ravi starts to say with a villainous smile.

“Ravi!”, the teacher shouts.

Ravi laughs. The teacher glares at him for a few seconds and Ravi keeps staring back with his villainous smile. In the end, the teacher sighs with resignation and goes back to teaching and pretending that he doesn’t exist.

Immediately after the teacher starts teaching, he places his hand on my thigh, digging his fingers into my flesh. I hurriedly push it off and look at him, shocked and horrified. No one has touched my thigh like that. I look at the teacher. She can’t do anything if I complain, the whole class will know and girls will get something more to laugh at me. The slut who broke up her best friend’s dream relationship.

Tears keep rolling down my cheeks. I place my head on the desk and go back to crying silently. Suddenly, I feel his elbow brushing my breast. Immediately I push it off.