When Dimple Met Rishi(39)
Dimple turned to him, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You just said this guy’s your idol, right?” Something in his expression softened her. She put a hand on his arm. “What’s up?”
“I wasn’t expecting all this.” Rishi waved a hand in the general direction of Leo Tilden. “This was supposed to be small.” He pointed to the welcome banner that said LITTLE COMIC CON. “See? Little. It’s even in the name.” He smiled, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Dimple studied him for a second. “Are you afraid that you don’t belong here? Or that you do?”
He looked at her, startled. How had she so quickly, so succinctly, verbalized everything he was feeling? “What are you, some kind of mind reader?”
Dimple smiled. “Look, we’ll just go meet Leo Tilden, and then we can leave. You don’t even have to let on that you draw or anything. You can pretend your costume is from some Indian comic they haven’t heard of.” She shrugged. “What do you have to lose?”
She was right. When he looked back on this in a year, when he was at MIT, he wouldn’t remember any of these feelings. He’d remember meeting Leo Tilden. He’d always have that.
He nodded. “All right, Daria. And maybe after that we can go get some gelato or something.”
Dimple grinned. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTER 23
“Hi.” Leo Tilden’s distinctive voice, in real life. Wow.
Rishi smiled, but he wasn’t fully sure he was smiling in a socially appropriate way. Meaning, he was baring his teeth. But the tall muscular man next to Leo Tilden—his assistant, Sven, probably—looked fairly perturbed. Dimple elbowed him in the side. “Um, h-hi. I’m, I’m a big Rishi.” He heard Dimple snort. Oh my gods. Had he just said, I’m a big Rishi? “Fan,” he corrected, feeling like his entire face was about to burst into flames. “I’m a big fan. My name is—”
“Let me guess,” Leo said, grinning. “Rishi.” He held out his hand. Beside him, burly Sven relaxed. “Nice to meet you, my man.”
“You too,” Rishi said, feeling like he was in some sort of bizarre dream. He made sure to enunciate and face Leo the entire time. He knew from Leo’s YouTube videos that the artist was fitted with a cochlear implant, which allowed him to hear, but not quite at the level of a hearing person. “I read Platinum Panic when I was ten. It’s what got me into comics. I still remember finding out that you were the only deaf comic book artist to have ever made it so big. It felt . . .” He shook his head. “Momentous. Like it was okay to break the mold.”
Leo nodded. “Totally. It’s even necessary to break the mold. We need more people shaking things up. This is where I got my start, at SFSU. They’re pretty great about letting diverse voices be heard.” He pointed to Rishi’s outfit. “Who’re you dressed as?”
Rishi looked down. He’d honestly forgotten he was wearing the costume. His mouth felt like the Rajasthan desert. “Um, n-no one.”
Leo raised a bushy eyebrow. “No one?” He pointed to Rishi’s gada. “Do you regularly just carry that around with you?”
Dimple elbowed him again. He ignored her. “It’s just . . . it’s not . . .”
“It’s Aditya the Sun God/superhero. He created the character himself, a couple years ago.” Dimple darted Rishi a spiteful, triumphant look. He was going to have a Very Serious talk with her later. He tried to convey this through his gaze, but she didn’t seem to get it. Or if she did, it didn’t seem to make her very nervous.
“Really?” Leo leaned forward. “You have any panels on you?”
The messenger bag weighed heavy on Rishi’s shoulder. His sketch pad was in there. Years of work. He even had a few recent panels he’d done, all inked in and everything. They were good enough to show Leo Tilden. It wouldn’t be embarrassing or anything.
But . . . it felt weird. Like a betrayal of Ma and Pappa. They thought he was out here for Dimple, for experience before he went off to MIT. This was exactly the kind of thing they wouldn’t want him doing. Showing his sketches to a major graphic novelist felt like a step. A step he wasn’t sure he wanted to take. “Not on me, no,” he said, finally, the words like jagged pieces of glass in his mouth. It hurt. It really hurt.
Leo looked genuinely disappointed. “Oh, that’s too bad. Maybe next time.”
There will never be a next time, Rishi thought. He knew this with complete certainty. Somewhere inside him, something soft and creative and vulnerable hardened, a mockingbird turning to stone.
“Yeah, sure.” Rishi forced a smile and held out his hand again. “It was nice to meet you. I’d love to buy a signed copy of your latest.”
Sven had one at the ready.
Dimple darted glances at Rishi as they made their way to the various booths. He smiled, placid, as he observed some art student doing a live demonstration of pottery. Something had shifted in him from thirty minutes ago. Something vital. But Dimple didn’t know what.
“Are you . . . okay?” she asked as he took a proffered flyer and then put it down at the next table without looking at it.
“Yeah.” He looked down at her and smiled. It was the fire in his eyes, she realized. It had blazed when he’d first seen Leo Tilden, but it was gone now. “Why?”