“Oh, sorry.” She moved away a bit, but not so far that she couldn’t see what was going on. This was fantastic. Rishi had drawn a hoard of about seven zombies, all nuanced and gross in the goofiest way. Some of their eyeballs bulged out while others were missing teeth or had wavy lines of bad smell coming off them. Others oozed slime from between their toes. They were all advancing on a tiny circular fox with huge eyes and a bushy tail curled around itself.
“See?” Rishi said. “So maybe there’s this huge gang of roving zombies, and your user gets to pick an avatar, and the zombies are going to eat the fox if they don’t track fast enough or regularly enough. You know? Kind of like ‘Plants vs. Zombies’ but with more tracking action.” He turned to look at her. “What do you think?”
Dimple nodded sagely, her heart thumping in her chest. This was good. This was very, very good. She could already see that. “I do have one serious concern.”
Rishi waited for her to continue, a small wrinkle between his brows.
“Can we make them aliens instead of zombies? Zombies are so overdone.”
“Aliens?” Rishi rolled his eyes. “You totally don’t have my artistic vision.”
Dimple punched him in the ribs, lighter than she wanted to, but he still winced. “Ow. You know, most girls just slap guys playfully on the arm or something. They don’t actually hurt them.”
“Well, maybe you need to expand your idea of how girls behave,” Dimple replied, grinning.
Rishi laughed. “Fair enough. And yes, I can totally do aliens, since they seem so important to you.”
“Awesome. Then we’re totally going to kick Insomnia Con’s butt!”
They high-fived, and Dimple grabbed the sheet of paper and sat on the bed to look at it. “You’re an amazing artist. Will you do the preliminary artwork for the concept?”
He nodded. “Of course. I don’t want anyone else coming in and stealing my vision, you know.”
Dimple snorted. “Totally. By the way, do you have any samples of your comics? Like, your old work or anything?”
Rishi immediately began to click around on his laptop screen, as if he’d discovered something of immense importance that had to be done right away. “Uh, no. Nothing like that.”
“Hmm.” Interesting, Dimple thought. I think Rishi Patel is lying . She flipped over the paper he’d drawn the zombies on; it was a flyer of some kind. “Oh, cool. Little Comic Con. Are you going to this?”
Rishi rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, I don’t know. It was just a thing I picked up on impulse.”
“The thirteenth, from six to ten,” Dimple read. “Hey, that’s this weekend.” She looked up at him. “We can go together. I mean, if you want to. Since you were nice enough to come to the Aberzombie dinner with me.”
Had Dimple Shah just asked him out on a date?
CHAPTER 20
“I mean, not like a date or anything,” Dimple rushed to put in. And then felt like a total jerk because his face fell, just the tiniest fraction of a bit. “But, you know, as a friend. Which is even better, in my opinion.”
He smiled, though she saw it wasn’t his usual vibrant, full-on sun smile. “Yeah, cool. Let’s do it.”
• • •
They put in another two hours researching the market, designing the UI , and getting started on the wireframe and storyboard. The process frequently sent a frisson of excitement up Dimple’s spine. This was her idea they were talking about implementing. In six weeks it would be an actual thing out there in the world, about halfway to completion, not just an abstract concept. Key people would be looking at it, judging it. And if it passed muster, maybe Jenny Lindt would want to work with her to finish it. It would go on to save lives.
Finally, around one a.m., Dimple stood and stretched. “I think I should head back to my room. See you in the morning?”
Rishi stifled a yawn as he closed his laptop. “Yeah, sounds good. Want me to swing by and pick you up?”
Dimple gathered her hair into a loose bun and looked down at her feet. “Might as well. We’re going to the same place, right?”
It shouldn’t have, but it made Rishi’s heart lift. When would he ever learn?
You’re setting yourself up for heartbreak, Patel, he told himself.
But no matter how true he knew that was, he couldn’t stop the grin from spreading over his face.
Dimple was so keyed up over all they’d accomplished—and, a tiny voice inside her said, from the fact that she and Rishi had a non-date that would let her see more of the comic book persona he liked to keep hidden—that she didn’t even notice Celia until she’d taken off her shoes and climbed into bed.
Celia sat on her bed, propped up against her pillows, staring at Dimple reproachfully. Her phone lay facedown on her lap.
“Oh, hey,” Dimple said, suddenly remembering in a mild panic that she hadn’t come up with any good responses.
“What the heck happened at dinner?” Celia said, and it was more a wail than an angry accusation. “I thought you guys would hit it off!”
Dimple sighed and climbed under the covers, turning on her left so she could face Celia. “That’s what I hoped too. But I think your friends and I are just too different.” She shrugged, like, c’est la vie. Celia didn’t have to know how much Dimple had been hoping for some kind of olive branch, even though Dimple wasn’t the one who’d done anything wrong.
“And Rishi was kind of rude,” Celia went on, fiddling with her phone. “What was his deal?”
Dimple thought of how Rishi had stuck up for her, over and over again. How he hadn’t been the least bit cowed by the rude remarks or digs of the night. She felt anger flash through her; she always did find it easier to stick up for people other than herself. “Sorry, Celia, but you missed about forty minutes of conversation while you and your grandma were bonding. Your friends deserved everything they got, and more. I mean, I know you think they’re cool and they get you and whatever, but let’s not try to force something that’s never going to happen.”
Celia raised her eyebrows, like, wowza. “Fine.” She picked up her phone, and there was a prickly silence in the room.
Dimple pulled the covers around her shoulders. “But I still want to be your friend. I think we should still stick together and be each other’s moral support. But maybe it’s okay if we’re not friends with each other’s friends.”
Celia continued to surf for a moment. Then she set her phone down again and looked over at Dimple. There was a smile in her eyes. “I like that idea.”
The weekend came at a breathtaking pace. Dimple and Rishi had spent every day in between fine-tuning Dimple’s initial wireframe prototype, making sure they were ready to begin working on the backend of things.
Rishi loved the way she seemed lit from the inside when she talked about her plan for the app, how much she wanted her Papa’s approval. Whether she liked to admit it or not, her parents were important to her, and Rishi respected that.
He combed his hair in the mirror, pulling his fingers through the floppy part Ashley Sternberger in eighth grade had once called “adorable.” She’d batted her baby blues at him while she said it too, so Rishi knew it wasn’t the kind of adorable you think your baby brother is.
His gaze fell on the Little Comic Con flyer on the dresser, and he felt a strange warmth come to his cheeks when he remembered Dimple asking if she could come with him. She’d asked about his comics so many times now, and each time he’d deflected. The truth was, he’d love to show her.
He’d seen the fire in her eyes when she talked about developing that app; he knew she’d understand exactly what Pappa and Ma didn’t. She’d get how it made him feel, how the characters became an extension of himself, how he could lose himself for hours as he sat there, hunched over a sheet sketching in panels, watching the characters slowly begin to blink and breathe and laugh and live.
Rishi walked to his bag, and digging behind the paperbacks he’d brought with him, he reached to the thing he’d packed at the last minute, without really letting himself think about it—his sketch pad. He felt that sense of love and attachment and warm familiarity envelop him as he pulled it out.