The Misfortunes of Lolita

02 | when lolita laughed

THIS IS AN UNEDITED AND SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT VERSION OF THE MISFORTUNES OF LOLITA. I AM PUBLISHING IT IN FALL 2021—PLEASE FOLLOW ME ON IG @/ls.akhter and GOODREADS (L AKHTER) TO STAY UPDATED. I am so excited to share TMoL with you again.

CHAPTER 2

"The difference between being okay and being absolutely fucking crazy is that you can tell if you're okay or not. You can't tell if you're crazy."

-Lolita's writing journal

THE FIRST TIME Lolita looked at Frank, he thought about car crashes.

Lolita had eyes that could see through oceans, and when they focused on Frank, he thought about that time when he saw a car collide with another right in front of him, how the first car drove straight through the doors of the other, the screech of the wheels skidding, distorting both of them entirely. He thought about his mother, yelling, calling the police, chaos bursting every where he looked. And right now, right at this moment, he thought of the car crash.

Lolita's eyes were like a disaster--a car crash, raw, unearthing. Everything about her screamed look away.

But there was no noise, when she looked at him. When she looked at him, it was like the world had gone quiet for just a couple of seconds, and he couldn't hear anything at all. Not Robin's description of the killer scores they made in football last season, not his own heart, which was beating rather loudly. And he couldn't seem to be able to look away. Not even when her eyebrows drew down and she stared at him, muttering something to her friend.

Her friend, Akima, looked at Lolita and then at Frank, who was standing there like an idiot, frozen between getting his shit out of his locker and getting the hell out of there.

Frank forced his eyes away from Lolita's, because he knew that Robin, who was standing right beside him, would start guffawing any second -

"Bro." Robin said, right on cue. "What the fuck? Did you see that?"

"Huh?" Frank said. That had been his default response to everything in the past month and a half. He was starting to find that you could express a wide variety of emotions through huh. Confusion. Happiness. Anger. Obvious disinterest.

Robin stared at Lolita. "She was staring at you."

"Was she?" Frank said, trying to remember his locker combination. 12-34-55. That was it. He was sure that that was it. But he couldn't get his Dudley lock to open, maybe because he was thinking of eyes the colour of black coffee, and about the little wisp of feather that was unknowingly stuck to Lolita's midnight hair.

"Yeah, man," Robin guffawed. "She's fucked up. If she stares at you, fucking run."

Frank unlocked the door. Finally. 12-55-34. He glanced at Robin. "She's not that bad."

Robin laughed. "Dude. . . Dude. Don't get me started."

"Whatever, man," Frank said, pushing his jacket into his locker, closing his eyes. Car crash. You weren't supposed to stare at car crashes.

Robin had other ideas. "She was really into me, you know. So I played a little game."

Frank was contemplating punching his locker door. Or better yet, Robin's flat face. "Why?"

Robin apparently didn't hear. "Listen, listen. So, I texted her cute shit, you know? She admitted that she liked me. I wanted to play a little."

He laughed, like he'd told this story a hundred times. "And then, I told her to come meet me in the Café-" He laughed again, his head stumbling forward. "When she came, I told her, in front of everyone in the fucking school, that she was obsessed with me, and that she had to leave me alone."