When Dimple Met Rishi(22)

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Dimple glanced sideways at Rishi, but he was gazing at the picture of the yellow cable car like Max was going to give them a pop quiz later.

Your spirits are already friends. What a load of hippie BS.

Except . . . maybe Max had a point. It wasn’t often that Dimple found people she could relate to easily. Her guard was always up, like Mamma was fond of telling her when she sat alone at a table during the garbha dance while the other Indian boys and girls danced together: If you always look like you’re going to bite them, beti, no boys are ever going to want to talk to you. That was kind of the point, though, which is what Mamma didn’t get.

Dimple wasn’t fishing for compliments when she told Rishi that she’d been bullied by guys like those two jerks who’d walked by earlier. She was flat chested, insisted on wearing glasses and no makeup, refused to grow out her hair, and commonly occupied spaces—like Insomnia Con—that seemed to be implicitly reserved for men. Even when she was in elementary and middle school, she always chose computers as her choice of centers while all the other more popular girls seemed to cluster together in art or reading. All of that seemed to make the boys think there was something wrong with her. For a time people had assumed she was gay. Because, you know, maybe that made it, and her, safer.

But it wasn’t like that with Rishi. It was like he’d found a chink in her armor and had squeezed through, insisting with his easy laughter and his goofy jokes that she like him. That they become friends.

And were they? Dimple wondered, darting a quick glance at him. Were they really becoming friends?

“So you want to meet up later, talk about where you want to begin with the app concept?” Rishi asked, pulling her out of her internal cogitations.

“Um, yeah, sure.” Dimple scratched the back of her neck, feeling suddenly out of sorts. If Rishi wasn’t the enemy, did that mean she had to forgive Mamma? “Let’s meet at the pizza place again, and we can outline our plan of attack.”

Rishi smiled at her, excited, his eyes shining. And Dimple was put out to realize she didn’t exactly hate the thought of spending more time with him.





CHAPTER 13




Celia was sprawled diagonally across her bed in their dorm room, texting someone on her phone. She glanced up when Dimple walked in. “Heeey. There you are. Feel like I haven’t seen you all day.”

Dimple felt her guard go up, that unbreachable wall laid with bricks of cynicism and aloofness that kept people at bay. Celia hadn’t exactly done anything. She was just becoming friends with people Dimple had spent her entire life alternately avoiding and being made fun of by.

But Celia wasn’t culpable, she reminded herself. So far, she had been nothing but unfailingly nice. She couldn’t help it if she’d been assigned to the goateed boy any more than Dimple could help being assigned to Rishi. “Hey.” She set her bag down and flopped down on her bed, sighing in contentment at just being there.

Celia set her phone facedown on the bed and sat up, crossing her legs. “Soooo,” she said, and Dimple heard the eyebrow waggle in her voice, “I saw you got paired up with Rishi.”

Dimple picked up the pillow and dropped it on her face. “Yeah,” she said in a muffled voice. “He requested me when he applied.”

Celia laughed merrily. “That’s so cute! So, how is that going? Did he ask you to marry him again? Give you any other family heirlooms?”

Dimple groaned and pulled the pillow off her face. Rolling to her side, she propped her head up with a hand. “No, thank God. We had a chat, and I think he gets that I’m just not interested. He was actually kind of cool about it. We ended up having fun on our scavenger hunt.” She held up a hand at Celia’s gleaming eyes. “As friends. We had fun as friends. So I think we’ll be okay working together.”

Celia waved a hand. “Eh, work today, bone tomorrow.”

“Gross!” Dimple threw her pillow at her, and, laughing, Celia tossed it back. “So . . . how is your partner? I saw you got paired with one of the grotties.”

Celia raised an eyebrow. “You mean ‘hotties’?”

“What did I say?” Dimple asked, feigning confusion.

Celia shook her head. “Anyway, yeah, I did. His name’s Evan. The other hottie is his friend Hari, and the girl is, like, a friend of theirs from high school who also happens to be Evan’s third cousin or something. Her name’s Isabelle. She and Hari are partners. They’ve all known each other since kindergarten.” She smiled and leaned forward, playing with the edge of her bell-sleeved peasant top. “They’re so cool. I knew people like them in high school, but it was different then, you know? I never really . . .” She made a gesture with her hands like she was putting two blocks together. “Fit in. But I feel like it’ll be different with these guys. They seem to get a lot of things about private school and growing up in Nob Hill with insane parents. And apparently Isabelle is, like, one-sixteenth Dominican or something. Which is cool, because I think I told you, right, my dad’s Dominican?”

“Yeah . . . cool,” Dimple said faintly, mostly because she didn’t know what else to say.

Celia cocked her head, buoyant curls scraping her bedspread. “That sounded less than enthusiastic.”

Dimple pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “No, they just seemed sort of . . . superficial.” She couldn’t, wouldn’t, tell Celia about the comments the boys—she supposed Evan and Hari—had made. She didn’t know her that well, and she didn’t want any pity. It was bad enough that Rishi had heard.