And then they walked toward the doors, leaving a heavy silence behind them.
• • •
Outside, the evening had turned even colder. The stars were erased by the fog, and Dimple felt a pang. That was one thing she loved about her backyard in suburbia—she could always make out at least a few stars.
“So,” Rishi said, buttoning up his jacket. “That was interesting, no?”
Dimple snorted but remained silent, cinching her hood tight around her head.
“Come on, Dimple Shah,” he said, gently hitting her shoulder with his. “What’d you really think?”
“Were you the donor?” she asked quietly.
There was an infinitesimal pause, just one tiny breath. Then: “You must think I’m way more generous than I am. Did you see how much those Aberzombie boys ate? And they didn’t even have brains on the menu.”
“Har har,” Dimple said, thinking, You didn’t answer my question. She wondered if it should bother her more, if she should challenge him. But she realized, even if the donor had been him, she was just grateful that Mamma and Papa wouldn’t be footing the bill.
She switched tack. “Okay, so answer me this, then: Do you really believe all of what you said? About your family’s ancestral home in Gujarat? Seeing all the history? Or was that all just for their benefit?” She rubbed her arms against the chill, and Rishi, seemingly unthinkingly, scooted closer so they were touching arms. She’d protest, but the boy put off an insane amount of body heat, even through layers of fabric.
“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
Dimple laughed.
“What?”
She shook her head. “It’s just, my mom. She says the same thing. ‘No one likes a nosy girl, Dimple.’ ‘You’ll never land a boy with that mouth of yours.’ ”
“Huh.” Rishi cocked his head to the side and studied her face as she watched him in confusion. It was sort of hard to do while they walked, but they managed somehow. “I don’t know . . . I think your mouth is perfect the way it is.”
CHAPTER 17
The air between them felt suddenly charged somehow. Heat rushed to Dimple’s cheeks. Suddenly, she wasn’t so cold anymore, and she moved away from Rishi. His face went blank for a second, and then mortification overcame everything. Even his eyebrows looked embarrassed, somehow. Dimple felt a little bad for him. But not that bad, because he was the one who’d said it.
“I didn’t mean—I meant, your questions—”
Dimple waved her hand, keeping her eyes steadfastly on the sidewalk. “Anyway. Answer my question.”
“Right.” He rubbed the back of his neck, which she found strangely endearing. “Yeah, I do. I totally believe that.”
“For real.” She raised an eyebrow at him.
He chuckled. “For real. When you think about it, our families are back in India, about eight thousand miles away. And they’re still so intricately connected to us. We have their names, their rituals, their traditions. Their dreams sit behind our eyelids. I think it’s beautiful.”
Dimple was silent as they rounded the corner to the stoplight. “I don’t know. I guess I think it’s sort of stifling. All those rules. You can’t date people who aren’t Indian. You can’t date, period, until you’re thirty.” She gave him a look and said, “Unless, of course, your parents are trying to set you up with a marriage partner. Girls can’t be interested in a career more than they’re interested in marriage. Wear makeup. Grow your hair out.”
When the WALK sign beeped, they began to cross. Rishi laughed. “That does sound annoying. I guess I haven’t been through those rules, except for the first and second. But the thing is, those are tangential things. I’m talking about the big picture. The idea that we’re connected by this thread to people who live in the place where we came from. Where our parents came from. We have a blueprint for our lives. I think that makes it all seem comforting somehow. Safe.” He pushed a hand through his floppy hair before stuffing it into his pocket, like he was embarrassed for all he’d said.
“I think having a blueprint makes life boring. Maybe I don’t want to get married or have kids or any of that. Maybe I just want a career and that’s all.”
Rishi looked at her, frank and open. “And that doesn’t sound lonely to you?”
Dimple paused, considering it. She’d never thought of it that way. With her relentless pursuit of freedom, she’d never actually stopped to think about what the day-to-day of it might be like. Eventually, she shook her head. “When you’ve had a mother who does a great impersonation of a helicopter, any kind of solitude sounds like heaven.” But saying it made her think of Mamma, at home. If Dimple were home, Mamma would be bustling around, cleaning the kitchen while Dimple sat at the counter nearby and drank her tea. They’d probably be bickering about something inconsequential. Dimple would be considering taping Mamma’s mouth shut. Mamma would probably be considering putting Dimple up for adoption. But they’d be together. It was their ritual, sort of.
Dimple wondered what Mamma was up to right now. She imagined her sitting in the living room, alone, doing her crossword puzzle. Or watching the Hindi channel by herself. And it made her sad. It made her almost miss home.
Almost.
“I guess we just look at it differently,” Rishi said. They passed a man ensconced in fog and playing the guitar. Rishi tossed in what looked like a twenty-dollar note. The man tipped his head at them and kept playing, something that sounded like the saddest love song ever.
“Why aren’t you like them?” Dimple asked.
“Huh?”
“The Aberzombies. Why aren’t you more like them?”
Rishi shrugged. “I don’t know.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I guess I never really got why the kids in my private school thought they were such hot stuff. I mean, it’s our parents who did all the hard work. We were just born into it. It’s like being proud that you’re tall or have thick hair or perfectly spaced eyes. Absurd.”
Dimple laughed a little. “It’s neat that you were able to see that, though. So many people don’t. Obviously.”
Rishi grunted in response. Softly, he said, “I’m sorry if I overstepped in there. I just got really frustrated that they were talking to you like that. They’re just such little d-bags, you know?”
“I guess.” Dimple played with the zipper on her hoodie. “Don’t you . . . care that you’re making it worse? You’re not smoothing things over with them. They’re probably going to be even bigger jerks to us in class now.”
Rishi ran his hands across the leaves of some bush with brilliant blue-violet flowers as they walked, releasing that green plant smell. “I think they’re going to be like that no matter what. They’ll find a reason. If you smooth things over, it’ll be because they think you’re weak. If you don’t, it’ll be because their egos are hurt. I like to just confront it head-on.”
Dimple looked at him sidelong.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” A curl that hadn’t been contained by her hood blew into her eyes, and she pushed it away. “You surprise me, that’s all. I would’ve pegged you for a much more go with the flow kind of personality.”
“I am,” Rishi said. “Mostly. But not when it comes to people who try to step all over things that are too important.”
“Fair enough.” Dimple would never admit it, but she felt a grudging admiration for his kind of no-BS bravery.
They wound their way around the green to the dorms. Rishi held the lobby door open, and she chuckled.
“What?” he asked, looking self-conscious.
“You’re so chivalrous. Is that your desi breeding or your millionaire breeding?”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s my Patel breeding. We Patel boys are very well behaved, you know. Ma wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“So you have a brother?” Dimple asked as they strode across the chilly lobby and showed their ID s to the residence hall desk assistant, who barely looked up from the text she was furiously tapping on her phone. Dimple hadn’t really thought about Rishi having siblings. “Older or younger? Is he a lot like you?”