When Dimple Met Rishi(18)
Rishi looked at Dimple as they both got up. She looked about as pleased as he felt; her lips were pursed tight, her eyes fixed longingly on Celia’s retreating back. As he followed her out, he said, “If you want, I could bow out now.”
She slowed down so they could walk outside together, and nibbled on her bottom lip. “No,” she said finally, looking up at him. “Let’s do this thing together.”
Rishi frowned, not sure what was up with the total change of mood. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Dimple took a deep breath and looked at him. “It’s really cool of you to volunteer to bow out. Not a lot of people would do that.” And then she smiled a smile so dazzling, Rishi tripped over his own feet.
“Are you okay?” Dimple reached out to grab his arm, but Rishi steadied himself against the wall and blushed a bright and furious red.
“Yeah, fine,” he said, not meeting her eye. “Shoelaces,” he added vaguely, looping the Polaroid camera’s strap around his neck.
They walked along in relative silence, their classmates melting off onto various paths and striding over grass to go to the places where their pictures beckoned. It was cool enough, in spite of the sun, that Dimple had to pull her hoodie tighter around her.
She glanced sideways at Rishi through her curls, feeling like a jerk. She’d really unleashed a bunch of crap on him, and he’d been so . . . adult about it. So empathetic. Dimple really wished she could do this ice breaker thing with someone else, someone she’d be working with for the rest of this project, but asking him to leave right away would just be cruel. It was like saying she couldn’t stand to be around him for the length of a stupid project. And given how decent he’d been, there was no need for that. So she’d deal. It wasn’t like he was bad company, from the little she’d seen of him, anyway.
“Okay.” Dimple glanced down at the list as they meandered toward a patch of green field where a few students were tossing around a football. “Our list is: Funny, water, yellow, blur, and Buddha.” She looked up. “Where do you want to start?”
Rishi grinned. “Definitely with Buddha. Come on, check this out.” He quickened his pace, the Polaroid camera bouncing against his chest, and Dimple hurried to keep up.
“Want to tell me where we’re going?”
“Oh, you’ll see, my friend,” he said happily.
Dimple shook her head. “All right,” she said slowly. “Hey. What’s that on your T-shirt?” His jacket was unbuttoned, and the graphic on his T-shirt was only just visible. It looked like a comic drawing of a young Indian boy in an embroidered kurta, holding something—a sword?—above his head.
Rishi colored a little, but she couldn’t tell if that was from the pace they were keeping or her question. “Just a comic book character.”
Dimple rolled her eyes. “You’re pretty cryptic today, aren’t you? Obviously, I know it’s a comic book character. I meant, which one?”
Rishi glanced at her sideways. “You know comics?”
“Eh, just the major ones. Wonder Woman is sort of my girl crush.”
He smiled. “Yeah, she’s cool.” Glancing down at his shirt, he opened his jacket a bit more. Dimple could see now that the boy held a golden gada, or mace, in one hand, not a sword. “This is Aditya,” Rishi said, a smile cupping his words. “He’s a young Indian superhero who draws his power from the sun. I based him vaguely on Hanuman—hence the gada. I was a huge Hanuman fanboy growing up; my mom used to make me watch those Ramayana series with her on the Hindi channel when I was little. Aditya’s one of my earliest creations from about three years ago. I was so proud of him, I had him put on a T-shirt.” He snorted.
“Wait, wait, wait, you drew him? Like, from scratch?” Dimple ogled the drawing, the rich detail of the boy’s brocade kurta and pants, the intricate metal work on the gada. “That’s amazing. And you were what, fifteen?”
Rishi nodded. He barely met her eyes when he spoke, but there was a blooming happiness in his voice that belied how pleased he was at her compliments. “Yeah, making my own comics was the big thing back then. I had a little studio space set up in my room and everything.”
“What do you mean, ‘back then’? You don’t do it anymore?”
He shrugged as they came to a light and then began to cross the street. The air was getting mistier, heavier. Rishi’s words got muffled. “I don’t know. I guess when I have the time, which isn’t very often these days.”
Dimple pulled her hoodie up. “But . . . why? I mean, you obviously love it, and you’re good at it.” She couldn’t wrap her head around it. She lived and breathed coding; she couldn’t imagine giving it up for anything.
He laughed a little, but there was something guarded about it, like there were things he was keeping hidden away in a mental lockbox. “It’s not the most practical pursuit. Art is a nice side hobby, for when you have the time. But it’s not something you pursue for itself.” A pause and then, “Stupid fog.”
“Karl,” Dimple confirmed, distractedly. “Apparently San Franciscans name their weather patterns.” They rounded the corner, and Rishi began to slow down. “But anyway, I just don’t believe that,” Dimple said. “So what if your art’s not practical? If you love it, you should do it. What’s the point of anything otherwise?”