Heroine by Tanya Rastogi (Iowa, 17)

​Ruchi held out a delicate arm. Blood trickled in wispy veins down her soft skin, dripped onto her
torn blue sari.
         "Meri jaan [my love]," she croaked. Even after two bullet wounds to the torso, her voice
rang sweet as a bird. "Jao. Mujhe...mujhe bhulna mat. [Go. Don't...don't forget me.]"
         "Nahi! Nahi... [No! No...]" Rahul dropped to his knees. He reached for her hand, but it
had already fallen, limp, to the dirt floor. For one tranquil moment, he froze, stared down at
Ruchi's trembling red lips as they let out a final breath. Then he crumpled into himself, pressed
his forehead to her limp shoulder and sobbed.
         Mournful sitar1music accompanied Rahul's cries. Each pluck of the strings intensified his
sorrow. Ruchi and her lover shrunk into the distance, revealing the abandoned shed and the
bodies strewn around it, until everything faded to a foggy white.
         Maithili fished for a tissue on her crowded desk. She wiped salty tears from her face and
blew the last two hours' worth of sniffles out her nose. Damn it, she thought, If the king hadn't
pulled the ridiculous ploy of sending his minions to capture her instead of doing it himself, Rahul
might have been in her place.
         ​She sighed and cracked her back, stretching her arms until her fingertips grazed the rough
ceiling. It was cold and damp as a block of ice, and she recoiled, rubbing her hand vigorously on
her sweatshirt. New Jersey winters really sucked. And so did Rahul. The king was way hotter.
She would watch old Indian films more often if the morally gray male lead got the girl and if the
love interests didn't look twenty years older.

                 Maithili inhaled and then let out a long sigh. "Well, that's it, I guess," she said, and lowered her laptop screen. The words stuck in her throat and came out a second late, crackly and stiff. She coughed. How long had it been since she had last spoken? "Well, that's it, then. God,
what am I doing."
        She sat up straight and surveyed her dorm. It was split sharply down the middle and looked like those sibling bedrooms in movies where the dutiful older child is neat and studious and the younger one is an unaccomplished disgrace who lives like a dog.
        "Wow. I should clean." She eased herself off the bed and stood up. Her legs had been numb for a while now, and the sudden movement made them tingle. Mummy used to call it 'bees'. You have bees in your legs. It's because you sit around for too long.
        "Hah," Maithili muttered. "Right."
        She walked back and forth in the limited space of her side. The sensation faded after a while, and she started to clean, surprising herself. It must have been the thought of Mummy–she would be distraught to know her daughter was making zero use of the skills she had been forced
to learn the summer before college. Beta, you have to learn to live on your own. Everything needs maintenance. Your health, your house-
        Maithili had cut her off, then, and said some bullshit like I can handle it, and besides it's only one room, and I can eat out. She didn't know her roommate would be a stuck-up probably-racist and that one month of eating out could exhaust half her food budget for the
semester.
        It took around an hour of useless rearrangement and sticking Clorox wipes in disgusting
places before Maithili was satisfied with the appearance of her side of the dorm. "Whew." She
stepped back and wiped her forehead like they do in movies after a cleanup montage. "God."
        She pulled off her sweatshirt, the name of which was really starting to make sense because everything under it was soaked. It smelled rank, too. "Ew." She had taken a shower last night. Two nights ago?
        The room doorknob rattled, and Maithili froze, her shirt stuck half-folded up on her bra. She swallowed. Was someone trying to sneak into the chambers of a young maiden in undress?Then she realized she was in the trashiest freshman housing and obviously it was just sorority Breanna making her rounds before she started getting wasted in the evening.
        Maithili folded it back and made herself look busy by lifting up a textbook just as thedoor swung open. Breanna walked in, her steps painfully dainty, as if her chunky sandals would
tip her to the side if she didn't lean forward on her toes. As always, she didn't speak a word. Maithili moved to the other side of the room and placed the textbook on a stand at the foot of her
bed.
        While Breanna shuffled through her closet for tonight's beer pong outfit, Maithili grabbed some clean clothes and toiletries and snuck out to the bathrooms. Once she was far down the dingy hall, she stopped. "Perfect timing," she muttered. "You'll tell your Communications sisters how rude I am, right?"
        She felt stupid after a few seconds, because her barely-passing bio grades weren't anything to be haughty about. By barely-passing she meant barely-A. Really, she could get straight Bs if she wanted and still keep her scholarship, but then she wouldn't get into Harvard Medical School. American dream, ha-ha.
        A few feet away, some girl stepped out of the shower room door, wrapped in a fluffy pink towel. There was a towel-turban on her head. Maithili wanted to tell her how bad that was for your hair, but decided against it and just walked in.

                                                                ...

                                             Thursday, January 9, 2023

Mummy: How is school?
Mummy: u eating?
2:17 p.m.

Mummy: ?
Mummy: r u ok?
3:22 p.m.

                                             Saturday, January 11, 2023

                                                                                        Me: I'm busy.
                                                                                        Me: and I am ok.
                                                                                        11:30 p.m.

Mummy: great !
11:32 p.m.

        "Girrrrllllluh." Nandi swung a heavy bangled arm over Maithili's shoulder, knocking the phone out of her hand. Her breath stank of bhang, which was technically legal but she liked to pretend it wasn't. "Youwntsumm?"
        Maithili shook her off and knelt down to grab her phone off the hardwood floor. A few new cracks had formed in the screen protector. "No, I don't. Go sit down."
        Nandi giggled and rubbed her eyes. "You look...pridday." Her eyeliner didn't smudge, but she tottered forward, leaning over a couch. "I-"
        Maithili stood up and walked away. Colorful moving lights flashed in her eyes and across her skin, out of time with the deafening Bollywood music playing from two huge speakers on opposite sides of the apartment.
        She placed a hand on her cheek, then pulled it off–her makeup wasn't set. God, her head hurt. Why was she even here? She needed to make friends, but the Rebellious AsianTM party was not it. Across the dim apartment, premeds and engineering students pretended to be drunk out of their minds as if this entire thing hadn't been strategically planned right after midterms. No stress, no studies.
        Well, Maithili wasn't any different. The few sips of bhang some guy had offered her an hour ago were beginning to kick in, threatening to pull her into a sensual haze. She had only made painful small talk the entire time, but this was the perfect environment to let loose–banging autotuned music with suggestive lyrics, a floor full of dolled-up students making fools of themselves. Why shouldn't she let herself go?
        "Hey. Lili. You good?"
        It was a male voice, high and hesitant. Definitely not drunk. Maithili turned around. Herlegs felt unsteady, and the sheer itchy tights she had decided to wear in a moment of giddy self-confidence didn't help. "Yes."
        He blinked. Maithili thought he looked familiar–he must have been, to use that nickname–but she couldn't pinpoint where she'd seen him. Her breath hitched. Was he a childhood friend she lost long ago, making his reappearance in her life to sweep her off her feet?
        She squinted just to make sure. His skin was the same sallow brownish color as most shut-in South Asians, aka most of her social circle. Well, maybe it wasn't sallow or brown. The lights made it difficult to see anything. He was wearing glasses. Was he a nerd? That meant he would make a lot of money.
        "Lili, you're swaying. Do you need help?"
        ​Maithili blinked. His lips came into focus. They were chapped, but bright red, and slicked with moisture. Blood? There was a drink in his hand, too. "You-"
        A warm weight materialized on her shoulder. "Hey, I can drive you to your dorm. It's the farthest one down, yeah?"
        Maithili wanted to say yes. "Y-y...eh." She was starting to act like Nandi. But Nandi had recognized her, and stood up. Wasn't marijuana supposed to induce hallucinations?
        The man

                                                                ...

        Maithili curled up on her bed.
        In the bathroom, she'd ripped off her stupid sweaty romper and torn tights, thrown both on the disgusting tiled floor. She scalded herself under the steaming showerhead for a straight thirty minutes until it started to get cold. That pissed her off, and so she scrubbed her skin pink and sore with a bar of rough sandalwood soap.
        That was what girls did in movies, no? Delicate, devastated girls, subjected to the Unspoken Crime, the Fate Worse Than Death. It made them want to scratch the filth off their skin, the blood and sweat of He Who Shall Not Be Named, their own rotting honor oozing out from every pore.
        Afterwards, Maithili had placed the soap into a bag with her shampoo and changed into the most comfortable pajamas she could find. Then she left her party clothes on the ground and walked out, leaving a trail of water droplets from her wet hair down the grayish carpeted dorm halls. When she reached her room, she threw the door open without trying to check if Breanna was there (she wasn't) and nestled herself in a pile of blankets on her bed.
        Actually, Maithili wanted to go home.
        She pulled the blankets tighter around her, covering her arms, her neck. The warmth was hollow. She wanted to be eight years old again. She wanted to run across her yard and roll in the grass under the sun. She wanted Mummy to wrangle her hair into pigtails with pink bows and send her off to school with chili sauce pasta and cut-up strawberries in her lunchbox. She wanted to dance in the rain, lift her face up to the sky and twirl in the streets without a care in the world.
Maithili gripped her phone and turned it over in her hand. She could feel every crack in the grimy screen protector. The ones from last night were fresh, a thin white spiderweb in the top right corner.
        She blinked. Her eyes were puffy, not because she was crying but because she had fallen unconscious in cheap makeup. She opened her Messages app. Mummy's reply to her last text was labeled unread: great ! Maithili hadn't opened it because it was too short and she wasn't planning to respond anyway. Such a shitty daughter.
        Without thinking, Maithili pressed the phone icon, right in the center of the spiderweb. She held her breath as the ringer sounded once, twice...and 'Ringing' turned to '0:00'.
        Mummy spoke first, her voice choppy through the poor connection. "Maithili? Betu, sab kuch thik chal rahe? [Betu, is everything going alright?]" There was some faint movement in the background, but it cut out after a few hurried steps. "Hmm?"
        Maithili placed a hand over her mouth. Her lower lip trembled. Mummy had assumed she was calling only because she was in trouble.
        "Betu? Batao, na? [Tell me, no?]"
        Maithili swallowed. "Ha, Mummy, I'm fine." She tried to keep her voice steady. "I am doing well."
        There was a pause. "Aap mujhe kuch bhi bata sakte ho. [You can tell me anything.] If you need money, just let me know."
        Oh god. Oh, god. That did it. A guttural sob escaped Maithili's throat. Tears clouded her
vision.
        "Maithili? What happened? A–okay?" Mummy's voice was louder, now, urgent. The sound kept cutting out. "You–happened?"
        Maithili tried to inhale, but her throat was full of phlegm and tears. Her breath was shaky. "M-Mummy, I..." She sniffed, trying to take in air. "Baad me–baad me b-bataungi. [Later–I'll t-tell you later.]"
        She pressed the green phone icon. The call disconnected. Maithili fell back onto her bed and cried.

                                                                ...

                                                Sunday, January 12, 2023

Mummy: What happened?
Mummy: why u r not responding?
        Missed call, 11:23 a.m.
Mummy: PLease answer, u ok?
        Missed call, 11:25 a.m.

                                                                        Me: I am so sorry for worrying you,
                                                                        Mummy,
                                                                        Me: I was just feeling homesick.
                                                                        Me: I'm okay. No need to worry. Don't need
                                                                        money either.
                                                                        11:26 a.m.

Mummy: u sure?

                                                                        Me: Yes.

Mummy: ok...
11:27 a.m.

        Maithili took in a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes. She couldn't tell Mummy what happened. She couldn't. Mummy was her home, her childhood. She wouldn't understand.
        So who could she tell? There was no one here for Maithili to have a meltdown session
with, no one whose ears she could whisper her secret into as they held her and swore to take it to the grave. The few friends she had made were no good. She could picture their reactions: apathy masked with frantic concern. Raw anger. 'Girl, I know, he's such a creep. I can tell just by looking'.
        Maithili buried her face in her hands. Maybe she could keep it in, confront him privately sometime. She'd seen his face in the bleary morning, been repulsed at the guilt in his features. He was in one of her classes. Would she have to see him every day? She didn't even know his name.
        Ping! Maithili jumped. That was the sound of a notification from her laptop. Which
meant...
        She flipped up the screen and jabbed in her password. On the right hand side, a popup
read: 3 assignments due today: Module 1, Chem...
        Maithili fought back the urge to throw her laptop across the room. Shashant had told her about burnout and adrenaline deadlines. "Uni," he had explained in his newly acquired
fancy-schmancy Oxford accent a few months ago, "is a mix of excitement, anxiety, and random existential thoughts."
        She had responded with some snappy remark about turning into an Englishman and
disappointing their ancestors. He'd sneered that she was already a disappointment to their
parents, then hung up.
        Maithili's lips turned up in a sardonic smile. Her brother knew about stress and weed-out classes, but he could not possibly have felt the melee of emotions running through her mind right now.
        She sighed and opened the assignment app on her laptop. A three-page document of
problems loaded in. She had that to finish, and then two more.
        Maithili leaned back against the wall and settled in. Forget. If she could just forget.

                                                                        ...

        Maithili trudged up the stairs of her lecture hall and into the main courtyard. Everything was gray–the skies, the buildings, the four-day-old snow that had formed a thick slush on all the walkways.
        She stopped and exhaled cold wisps of air that dissipated like smoke. No more
stereotype-defying beautiful days to taunt poor girls wallowing in their sorrow. Here was weather even gloomier than her.
        Steps came up behind her and stopped. "Lili."
        Maithili's heart palpitated. She tightened her grip around the strap of her messenger bag, but did not move her legs. It was him. She knew this was coming. She had searched for his face in the hall, made one moment of revolting eye-contact before focusing her broken attention on the screen for the rest of the lecture.
        "Lili, you're-"
        She turned around and faced him. His lips weren't as bloodred as they'd been at the party, and he didn't actually have glasses. She knew this, now. "What."
        He swallowed. She still didn't know his name. A blue scarf covered his chin. "Lili, about yesterday, I-"
        "Shut up. And don't call me that." Maithili spoke without thinking. Her words came out
harsher than she'd intended. A few people turned their heads to stare, and her cheeks prickled with heat.
        He sighed impatiently and dug his hands into the pocket of his black jacket. "Seriously? I–God. I know you're mad, but let's look at this from another angle. You introduced yourself. You took the cup. I can't take back what I did, but-"
        Maithili released the inside of her cheek from between her teeth. The coppery taste of
blood filled her mouth. "No. You can't. I'd-" She paused, then stared into his eyes. They were widened, somehow, in some twisted expression of innocence. "I'd love to press charges. I could ask for witnesses who were there. And if I do, you can't do anything about it."
        Her voice faltered. He opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off. "I don't
want to hear it. Go fuck yourself."
        Maithili swiveled around and marched into the dreary gray. There were tears in her eyes. She let them run down her face until her cheeks were numb from the cold.
        No, he couldn't do anything about it, but she could. She wasn't prisoner to the whims of
the people around her. What did they know? She could do whatever she wanted.
        The lonely girl walked on. Hundreds of feet behind her, the evil man faded into the foggy white.

                                                                        ...

Sitar – A string instrument from the Indian subcontinent, traditionally used in Hindu classical music.

Beta – An affectionate Hindi term typically used by parents to address their children.
Interchangeable with 'honey' and 'darling'.

Bhang – A low-potency cannabis beverage originating in India.

Betu – Alternative form of beta.

Ha – 'Yes' in Hindi.


Tanya Rastogi is a seventeen-year-old artist and writer from Bettendorf, Iowa. Her work has been published in The Adroit Journal, Oyster River Pages, and Kissing Dynamite, among others. She is the founding editor of The Seraphic Review. When she's not hunched over a screen, Tanya enjoys playing the flute and watching video essays.