The Natashas

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In the box-shaped room, there are no windows, there is no furniture. On the floor, blankets are spread one next to another like beach towels. Some are neatly arranged into rectangles. Others stay bunched like spat-out gum. One girl is sitting on her blanket in a T-shirt and underwear with her arms crossed over her knees. Natasha is her name. She is fifteen.

Another girl is standing against the wall and smoking. She exhales then blows the smoke into the wall as if there were an open window. The smoke crashes like watercolour, then floats back into her face. It seeps into her chopped blonde hair and settles down into her scalp. A fog hovers near her eyes. She is smoking and squinting. Natasha is her name. What a coincidence. She’s older than the other girl though. Almost twenty. Maybe.

Next to her, two girls are chit-chatting. This and that. The shorter one has a flat face. Her age, hard to say—either too young or too old. Some girls just turn out like that—in the evening glow she’s your angel, but in a bathroom glare, you’d ask her where her daughter went. Their names? What do you know: Natasha and Natasha.

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