When Dimple Met Rishi(33)

She stood on the other side, hair somewhat damp, smiling. “Hey. Sorry I’m late. My mom called.”

Wow, she smelled good. Rishi made a concentrated effort not to inhale deeply. “No problem.” He held the door open and spread his arm out. “Come on in.”

Dimple walked in, her eyes sweeping across his room. “You don’t have a roommate? How’d you swing that?”

He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, my parents insisted on springing for a private suite.”

She looked at him, smirking, but when he raised his eyebrows in question, she just looked away, resuming her inspection of his dresser top, his bed, his desk. “Oh, khatta meetha! It’s my favorite.”

He grinned. This fact made him irrationally happy. “Awesome. Help yourself.”

“Did you bring it with you? Or did you find an Indian grocer?” she asked, stuffing a small fistful of the peanut and rice-flake mixture in her mouth.

“My mother packed it for me. But that’s a good idea—we should find an Indian grocer. Stock up on some of our favorite snacks to energize us while we write.”

Dimple nodded. “Good idea. We should find an Asian grocer too. I need some Pocky sticks. Those are, like, my go-to snacks during finals.” Apparently seeing Rishi’s confused face, she gasped and held a hand to her chest. “Do you not know what Pocky sticks are?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. No idea.”

“We have to remedy that.” She grabbed a few baadam and tossed them into her mouth, playfully side-eyeing him as she chewed on the almonds. Rishi felt his heart lift; she seemed happier than before, like she’d managed to wash off the crap laid on her by the Aberzombies over dinner. Good. They weren’t worth a millisecond of her time.

Dimple looked around for a second and then awkwardly perched on the edge of his bed, toward the foot, close to his desk. “Is it okay if I . . . uh, sit here?”

He felt his cheeks heating. “Yeah, sure. I’ll sit here.” He plonked himself down on the cheap wooden chair at the desk. In this tiny room, it was about as far away as if he’d sat right next to her on the bed, but the distinction between chair and bed somehow felt safer, less scandalous.

“So.” Rishi moved a finger across his trackpad so his laptop would come to life. “I know you told me briefly already what your idea is, and we’d decided to get into more details later. Where do you want to start?”

“I was thinking we should approach this top-down. Let’s think about the high-level functions we want—what’s the heart and soul of the app? And then we can drill down from there. What do you think?”

“Sounds good to me.” Rishi opened up a Word document. “I’ll take notes as we talk.”

“Okay, great.” Dimple hopped off the bed and began pacing, her T-shirt and pants hanging off her like she was wearing her big brother’s clothes. Rishi felt a tug of affection that he attempted to cover by scratching the back of his neck and looking away. “Let’s see . . . so I want to make sure that people know this is a serious product. You know? Like, it can be lifesaving. But that it’s also fun. Taking care of your health, taking your medication, or checking your sugar levels or whatever doesn’t have to be a drag. That’s always the main thing for Papa . . . he feels like managing diabetes is too heavy. I think he’d rather not think about it because of that. So if people could see the lighter side of it, maybe it’d help make it a little less scary.”

“Okay.” Rishi nodded and typed up the gist of what Dimple was saying. “So we want to convey health care with a twist.”

“Exactly. Serious but fun. It works, but it’s not scary to use. It makes you want to use it. You get points the more you track. And then, at the end of like, five sessions, you get to go to the store where you can buy stuff.”

“Right.” Rishi tapped a pencil against his chin. “But maybe we could tap into that compulsion loop you talked about a little more. So people can go to the store if they keep tracking the times they successfully take their meds or whatever it is, right?”

Dimple paused in her pacing and nodded.

“But what about if they don’t track? What’s the impetus for them to begin tracking regularly in the first place?”

“I guess just the points?” Dimple shrugged, frowning slightly. “But I see what you’re saying. That’s not a big enough push, is it? Not if they’re already sort of iffy about tracking that kind of thing.”

“Right. It should be our job to make it an addictive game, to make it seem not at all threatening, so they actually want to open the app.”

Dimple paused, thinking, her eyes bright and sparking as she worked. Rishi watched openly and perhaps a little too closely, intrigued. “Ooh.” She looked up at him, and he looked away, flushing, but she didn’t seem to notice, caught up as she was in her idea. “Okay, what about if it’s like something advancing on them? Like, the reward is that you get to stave off some big, bad boss guy coming for you the more you track. And if you get lazy or careless, you get killed.”

Rishi grinned. “Yes.” He grabbed a scrap piece of paper and a pencil off his desk and began to sketch. “What about something like this?”

He felt Dimple, standing behind him, observing. Instead of making him nervous like he usually felt when Ashish or Ma tried to watch him, he felt more confident. The more he sketched, the closer she leaned in, seemingly mesmerized, until she finally knelt down to be closer, the tips of her curls brushing his arm.