When Dimple Met Rishi

by Sandhya Menon

  And it wasn’t just that he took things so seriously when it came to being a good son or following the path his parents had so carefully laid down for him. It was something inside him that felt different. Off. Like he never truly showed the world who he was except when he was making art.

  But he’d known since the beginning that being an artist was a phase. It had to be. Creative pursuits had no place in the practicalities of real life. That’s just how things worked, and Rishi was fine with it. Perhaps it was the burden of being the first son; Ashish certainly didn’t have similar compunctions about his sports. But the thing was, there was already a framework for athletes to make it. Ashish could use his skills to put himself through college, to really make a name for himself, to open more doors. He was that good. Rishi was good too, but who really took comic book art seriously? People didn’t tune in en masse to watch comic book artists sketch on TV, did they? They didn’t have Super Sketch parties. Exactly.

  Rishi looked up—and blinked. Was this some weird conjuring of his imagination? But no, up ahead was a giant banner on which someone had drawn the manga characters Madoka and Sayaka from the anime Madoka Magica as students with SFSU T-shirts and satchels. SFSU ART DEPARTMENT, it said underneath. At a table in front of the banner, students with hipster glasses and uncombed hair hung out, talking about whether Ferd Johnson was really the genius behind the 1920s comic strip Moon Mullins. Rishi blinked again. As if by some weird art law of attraction, he found his legs carrying him forward.

  The male student, reedy and tall with a healthy smattering of acne across both cheeks, looked up and smiled. “Hey, man. Interested in a degree in art or graphic design?”

  No, Rishi thought. Absolutely not. “Maybe,” he found himself saying instead. “I’m into comic book art.”

  “Cool, me too.” The reedy guy grinned in a now we can be pals way. “Hey, you should come to Little Comic Con. SFSU art students put it on, and it’s open to the public. Some of our professors will be there too, and we’re going to have a few big names.” He thrust a flyer at Rishi. “My name’s Kevin Keo. Just look for me at the manga booth.”

  Rishi raised his eyebrows. “Cool.” He looked down at the flyer. Little Comic Con was a week away. “I’ll try to be there.”

  “Great. I think you’d really enjoy it. That’s what convinced me to apply to SFSU’s art program.” Kevin smiled.

  “Thanks.” He glanced at his watch. “Crap. I gotta go.” Rishi hurried toward the Spurlock building. Argh. He was going to be late.

  Dimple was having a crisis. The good kind, if such a thing even existed.

  All around her, people sat, waiting expectantly for the man at the front of the lecture hall to begin talking. Some of them looked cocky—like that group over there, with the two boys who looked like they’d stepped out of a hipster clothing catalog, and the blond girl who wore a perpetual sneer as if she were too good for all of this. One of the guys, the Indian one, caught her eye and made a creepy-gross gesture with his tongue, then burst out laughing when she looked away, heart thumping. Others, like the group of boys in the very back, all about her height or shorter and some with their baby fat still intact, looked terrified.

  Dimple glanced over at Celia and wondered how she and Celia appeared to others. She felt electrified, ready. “Isn’t this exciting?” she said for the sixth time since they’d sat down. The instructor at the front, with a full beard and dressed in a colorful vest, was fiddling around with the mic on his podium. There must be about fifty people in here, easy.

  “Yes.” Celia smiled, a little indulgently, Dimple thought. She definitely wasn’t as fired up about all of this as Dimple was.

  Dimple had the feeling almost everything came easily to Celia. Her parents were extremely rich, so they’d paid for this without a second thought. It was just another way, like the sailing class Celia had taken already, to fill up the time until college began. “And I spy hot-teeez,” Celia added in a singsong, looking right at the group of hipster, model-beautiful people, ogling all of them, boys and girl. This time they didn’t notice Dimple looking.

  “Welcome to Insomnia Con!” the bearded man boomed from the front of the class, beaming congenially around at all of them. The hall went instantly silent. “My name is Max Framer, and I’m your instructor for Insomnia Con. Please call me Max, not Mr. Framer. It helps us old folks feel young.” A few people laughed. “I’m delighted to see another year of shiny new faces, and I’m so psyched to see what you guys come up with this year. Now, before we go on to what I know all of you really want to know”—he paused, grinning—“i.e., Insomnia Con’s grand prize, I want to go over some basic info and ground rules first. That’ll ensure you guys actually listen to the words coming out of my mouth.”

  There were groans and titters all around. Dimple was sure she’d go nuts if he didn’t spill the beans soon.

  “So, first, welcome to San Francisco to those who aren’t from our wonderful city. A couple of things of note: This may be summer, but the temperature can drop to the sixties or lower at night. You’ll also become well acquainted with Karl.” A few people like Celia chuckled, but Dimple just frowned, confused.

  “What?” she whispered to Celia. “Who’s Karl?”

  Celia whispered back, “Fog. It’s the fog that comes off the water.”

  Dimple began to nod and then shook her head. “No, that’s still confusing. You guys named a natural weather phenomenon?”

  Celia grinned. “Welcome to San Francisco.”

  At the front of the room Max was still speaking. “So, next: I’m going to pair you guys up. I don’t want you to pair with people you’re rooming with, but if you indicated a preference on your application, I’ve taken that into account.” Dimple hadn’t met Celia until after she’d already put in an application (well before Papa and Mamma had actually said yes—she had to save her spot, just in case), so they hadn’t requested each other. She wondered whom she’d be paired with. Hopefully not that frosty blond girl who looked like she ate little kids for dessert, though Celia probably wouldn’t mind, judging from the way she was still darting glances over at that group.

  “Secondly,” Max continued, “once you find out who your partner is, I want you to begin sitting together so you can start working on your concept right away. Some of you may already have a notion of what you want to do; others won’t. That’s okay. All we’ll focus on for the next two to three days is fleshing out your fledgling ideas. And then we’ll get into the fun part—actual development.”

  There was a noticeable frisson through the room. Everyone was chomping at the bit to get started. Dimple was sure most, like her, knew exactly what they wanted to do.

  “Okay,” Max said. “Now, for the part you’re all waiting for. The grand prize for this year’s Insomnia Con.” He paused, and the entire lecture hall held its breath. “Jenny Lindt will consider partnering with the winning team to make their app market ready and fund the advertising. Your app could go out into the world with the power of Meeting Space, Inc., behind it. Let that sink in.”

  The latter part of Max’s words were swallowed by the pandemonium that erupted. Dimple turned to Celia, her eyes wide. She was in shock; she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  “Well, it’s settled then,” Celia said casually. “You’re just going to have to kick some major butt.”

  Dimple shook her head. Her mouth was so dry her lips stuck to her teeth. Her head swam until she could barely see. Was this real? “I can’t even— Oh. My. God. They’ve—they’ve never done anything like this before.” This was everything. She had to win.

  “All right.” Max raised his voice, and everyone calmed down a bit, though there was a new energy in the room, buzzing, thrilling, churning through each of them. “I’m going to begin calling out the partnerships. When I say both your names, come to the front row and have a seat.”

  The door opened right into the silence. Dimple turned.

  Of course. It was Rishi.

 
CHAPTER 9

  It was clear he’d missed something vital. Everyone’s eyes were bright, their cheeks flushed. Fifty pairs of eyes took in his presence, but forty-nine pairs of them didn’t really seem to register him before they swiveled away.

  He saw Dimple instantly. Hers were the only pair of eyes that were attempting to incinerate him. He thrust his chin out and stepped forward. He had just as much right to be here as she did.

  “Oh, hey, hold on before you take a seat,” the dude with the exuberant red beard at the front of the class said. “I’m just about to call out partners, so you may as well take a seat with yours. What’s your name?”

  “Rishi Patel.”

  “P . . . Patel . . . ah, there you are. You’re with Dimple Shah.” The instructor looked up, into the sea of faces. “Dimple Shah?”

  Rishi didn’t dare look at her. Crap. He’d totally forgotten he’d requested her on his application. It had seemed a good idea at the time, and he’d fully expected her to do it too. He’d thought it’d give them more time together, see how they worked in a partnership.

  She stood, and they walked to the front row together, Dimple’s back straight, her shoulders set. Her body conveyed anger like a second language; she must have had a lot of practice. As soon as they sat down, she turned to him, eyes flashing. “You requested me, didn’t you?”

  Rishi rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks warming. “Yeah, but I thought you might request me, too. Look, I’m going to go up there at the end of class and talk to the dude about reassigning us, okay? So just chill.”

  “His name is Max. Which you’d know if you’d bothered to be here on time. You even missed the announcement of the grand prize.” She looked at him like she was accusing him of torching the redwood forests.

  “Oh yeah? What is it?”

  Rishi watched as the corners of her lips tugged upward in spite of herself. Her eyes shone behind her glasses, brilliant, fiery. “The winning partners will have a chance to pitch Jenny Lindt their idea. If she likes it, she’ll partner on marketing and development!”

  Dimple’s voice was two octaves higher than usual when she finished, so Rishi knew whatever she said must be a big deal. He racked his brain trying to remember who the heck Jenny Lindt was and came up empty. Okay. He could fake it for now and look her up later.

  “Great!” He grinned and tried to mirror her excitement. “That’s so cool!”

  Dimple leaned in closer, and Rishi caught a waft of that maddening, amazing shampoo again. “Really? You’re a Jenny Lindt fan too?” Her face was open, her eyes wide and soft in a way Rishi hadn’t seen yet.

  “Oh, totally,” he said, thinking, I will be by the end of today if it makes you look at me like that.

  Dimple laughed. “I know, she’s so great! What’s been your favorite part of her success story so far?”

  Crap. He kept the smile on his face. Okay, success stories. What did they all have in common? “How she came from nothing and became, you know, Jenny Lindt.”

  Rishi thought he’d done pretty well, but Dimple was frowning. “She didn’t exactly come from ‘nothing.’ Her parents are both lawyers; they gave her the seed money for Meeting Space. It’s in all her interviews.” Rishi felt his cheeks heat. Traitorous body.

  Dimple’s brow cleared. “You don’t know a single thing about her, do you?” she asked, leaning back and crossing her arms. “Had you even heard of her before today?”

  “You know what? I’m, uh, going to go talk to the instructor guy—Max,” he hurried to add, “about reassigning us.”

  “Yeah.” Dimple’s eyes were now flat marbles behind her glasses. She would make a good serial killer. “You go do that.”

  He had some nerve, lying to her like that. “The way she came from nothing,” Dimple muttered mockingly. What a jerk. Maybe Max would make an exception this one time and reassign her to Celia. Celia knew how important it was to Dimple to win this thing. She’d work her butt off.

  Dimple glanced over her shoulder and saw Celia deep in conversation with one of the hipster-model boys, tossing her curls and laughing throatily at a joke. Huh. Or maybe she wouldn’t want to be partners anymore.

  Dimple turned back around to see Rishi taking a seat beside her again, his cheeks still pink. “What happened? Who are we getting reassigned to?”

  “Um, well . . . nobody,” he said, wincing a little as he met her gaze. “He said it’s too late now. We’re just going to have to stick together.”

  “What? Did you tell him requesting me was a mistake?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t work.”

  Dimple stood. “Oh, it’s going to work. I’ll take care of it myself.”

  She stalked over to Max. “I’m sorry, I absolutely need to be reassigned,” she said as soon as he met her eye, feeling slightly guilty. By doing this, Dimple was effectively saying she couldn’t bear to spend a minute with Rishi. Ambition and kindness were warring inside her, and she was choosing ambition . . . again. But she wanted this so badly. So, so badly. “Rishi Patel knows absolutely nothing about Jenny Lindt. I doubt he knows much about web development.”

  Max smiled. “Well, we’re all here to learn, Dimple.”

  “Right, but he doesn’t care about it as much as I do. I need to partner with someone who wants to win just as much.”

  Max stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Or maybe you need someone who can teach you something, hmm? Maybe Rishi is the universe’s way of teaching you how to take a breath and just roll with the punches.”

  Oh dear God, he was an honest-to-goodness hippie. Curse you, San Francisco. She could tell he was going to be implacable, so Dimple forced herself to nod and smile. “Mmm. Good point. Thanks anyway.”

  When Dimple returned to her seat, she tried not to bite Rishi’s head off right away. She could tell he was side-eyeing her, trying to figure out how to ask.

  “No,” she finally bit out. “He won’t let us swap partners at this point.”

  He sighed, and sounding genuinely sympathetic, said, “That sucks. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” Dimple felt that familiar fury boiling inside her, the same one that flowed when Mamma or Papa didn’t understand why she wanted to do the things she did. “Sure. I’m sure you’re really sorry.”

  There was a pause. “Look, I don’t get why you’re so annoyed at me. We already talked about this yesterday.” She could tell Rishi was trying to tamp down his own irritation. He got this little crease between his eyebrows when he was mad, Dimple noticed. And then tried to unnotice. “I didn’t know your parents were keeping you in the dark about all of this. Heck, I thought you’d be requesting me as your partner too. I thought you were totally on board. So your anger is a little misplaced, don’t you think?”

  “Misplaced?” Dimple tried not to yell, though with the noise and activity level in the room, she doubted they could attract much attention even if they began flinging things at each other. Which definitely hadn’t crossed her mind. Definitely not. “Oh, I don’t think so. You have no idea, do you? You don’t know what this has been like. My mom and dad, they just don’t get me, okay? My mom doesn’t know why I want to do anything besides get married to the Ideal Indian Husband and settle down. She thinks college is basically just this big mating ritual. So for me to even be here is nothing short of a miracle. For me to even get this chance to follow in Jenny Lindt’s footsteps—to actually get a chance to talk to her about my idea? It’s the stuff of my wildest fantasies. But even here, where it should just be about me and my career and the things I want to do in this world, I have to contend with you. I have to remember, every single second that I have to look at you, that the only reason I’m here is because my parents expect me to finally fall in line. To become that dutiful Indian daughter they always wanted. I thought this was going to be my chance to just be me, for this whole six weeks to just be about my skills and my talent and my intellect. But it turns out the joke’s on me. And you know what? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of it and it sucks.” She stopped, ou
t of breath, and pushed her glasses back higher onto the bridge of her nose. Her heart pounded; her throat was tight with anger and unshed tears, but she was determined not to let it show how close she was to crying.

  Rishi looked . . . well, the scientific term might be “gobsmacked,” Dimple supposed. It almost made her want to snort with laughter. His eyes were wide, his face completely frozen in shock.

  Yeah, she’d unleashed the fury. But she’d needed to. Problem was, with Rishi and his utter guilelessness, she felt guilty for her ferocity, for subjecting him to an entire lifetime of pent-up rage that had little to do with him. She would never admit that out loud though. Sighing, she sat back and crossed her arms. “Well, you asked,” she mumbled.

  CHAPTER 10

  Whooooa.

  Obviously, she’d had a lot she needed to get off her chest. Rishi didn’t know quite what to say. This was all so much heavier for Dimple than it was for him. He was disappointed that she was so pointedly, decidedly, against this, yes. But mostly he felt bad for his family. All the effort and hopes they’d put into this had clearly been for nothing.

  “Hey,” he said finally, cautiously. “I can see how that would suck. I had no idea. Look, I’ll leave. I’ll go back home, and he’ll have to reassign you. Maybe you can be in a group of three with someone.”

  Dimple looked at him, slightly disbelievingly. “You’d do that. For me.”

  “Sure.” Rishi shrugged. “It means way more to you than it ever did to me. And, you know, I get it. This is your passion.”

  “You won’t get a refund,” she said sharply, and he tried not to laugh at the suspicion in her voice.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “My parents are totally cool with me going home early. I’ll just finish out the day and tell Max I have a family emergency or something.”