Rishi’s mouth twitched, but he nodded seriously. “Yes. I’m Ganesha’s Witness. Has a bit of a ring to it, don’t you think?”
They cut across the lawn and headed west, toward the building marked by a star on the Little Comic Con map Rishi was holding. In the distance someone honked.
“I can’t tell if you’re exceptionally eccentric or just really passionate about the cultural stuff,” Dimple said after they’d walked a little ways in silence.
Rishi chuckled. “My brother, Ashish, and I have had that conversation many times.” He said it lightly, but something hard and dark flickered beneath the surface. “I don’t know how I can explain it . . . it’s just this need inside me. I guess I just feel it stronger than most people our age. I feel like I need to speak out, because if no one speaks out, if no one says, This is me, this is what I believe in, and this is why I’m different, and this is why that’s okay , then what’s the point? What’s the point of living in this beautiful, great melting pot where everyone can dare to be anything they want to be?” He shrugged. “Besides, haven’t you gone to India and just stood among your relatives and listened to their stories and felt like . . . I don’t know, like you wanted to tell more people?”
Dimple fiddled with the zipper on Celia’s hoodie, avoiding Rishi’s eyes. “I don’t know. I haven’t been to India since I was twelve; the tickets are too expensive for my parents. But even when I did, the thing I remember most is feeling like I didn’t belong. I mean, I was already going through that phase at my school where I felt like my family was weird and different and I just wished they’d be like all the other parents. But then I went to Mumbai and realized that to all the people there, I was American. I was still the outsider, and still strange, and I still didn’t belong.”
She tucked a curl behind her ear, feeling that pinch of realization again, just like when she was twelve. It had really been driven home when her cousin Preeti, who was the same age, had introduced Dimple to her neighborhood friends as her cousin from America. One of the girls, hearing Dimple’s accent, had laughed and called Dimple firang , which Preeti had explained, red-faced, meant foreigner . Preeti stuck up for her, but she could see it was halfhearted. Even Preeti thought Dimple was a firang . She just didn’t belong.
“Interesting,” Rishi said, a small breeze lifting a tuft of his hair so he looked, adorably, like an Indian Dennis the Menace. “I guess I’m the opposite. I feel like an Indian American here, and when I’m in India, like just an Indian. I see them both as equal and valid for me.”
“How are you so well-adjusted?” Dimple grumbled.
Rishi snorted. “It’s taken time, I swear. I went through this whole emo phase in middle school where I played with the alias ‘Rick.’ ” He winced. “I’m just glad it didn’t stick.”
Dimple laughed. “Yeah, I like Rishi much better.”
“To be honest, even if I feel like I culturally belong, I don’t really feel like I socially belong. I mean, just like you were saying . . . I’ve never belonged with the private school crowd. I’ve never really had good friends in high school I wanted to keep in touch with. There’s no one I’ll miss.”
Dimple didn’t want to admit how much what he was saying resonated with her. Loneliness. That’s what he was describing. And she’d felt it so much it had become like a constant presence in her life, curled up against her like a sleeping cat. “I know what you mean,” she said softly. “Unfortunately.”
“I don’t think it’s unfortunate. It’s probably why we get along so well. Even if you did viciously attack me when we first met.”
Dimple laughed, and Rishi beamed at her, the way he seemed to every time she laughed. It was like he was basking in her happiness. Instead of looking away like she usually did, she smiled back.
Something flickered in his eyes. She itched her elbow and dropped her gaze. “What?”
“Nothing.” He looked away, but a small, secretive smile played at his lips.
Dimple punched him lightly in the ribs. “What , Rishi?”
“Ah . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at her sidelong. “That’s just the first time you haven’t pretended to be oblivious to the fact that you have a certain . . . effect on me when you laugh.”
Dimple felt her cheeks burning, and she looked down at her boots. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Rishi chuckled quietly. “Yeah, I think you do, but I’ll let it go, since you clearly don’t want to talk about it.”
And Dimple found herself feeling just the slightest bit disappointed.
CHAPTER 22
Little Comic Con was going to be held in the lobby of the art department main building. As they passed another quad, Rishi saw it looming on the corner. It was a huge, modern structure, and the lower floor consisted of mostly windows. Inside, Rishi could see a bustle of colorful activity: squirming clots of costumed people and booths and banners and demonstrations. He felt a pinprick of nerves along his spine—he’d had no idea it was going to be so busy. There was a massive sculpture of a fortune cookie outside, made from what looked like old clothes. As streams of people walked past, they reached out and grabbed a “fortune” from the opening.
“What is that?” Dimple asked, and she picked up the pace.
“I don’t know,” Rishi mumbled, trailing a little bit behind, wishing he’d just said he wasn’t interested when he met Kevin Keo last week. Are you interested in a degree in art? No, thank you. How hard would that have been, Patel?
As they approached the sculpture, Rishi saw a sign in front of it that said SARTORIAL FORTUNE COOKIE BY YAEL BORGER, 2017 . “The body of the cookie is constructed out of PVC pipe, over which padding is attached. Sanitized clothes from the landfill cover those. A strip of cloth, which has been printed with each viewer’s ‘fortune,’ can be pulled from the hollow center of the structure. Yael Borger is a senior in the SFSU fine arts program and hopes to raise awareness of clothing waste and its impact on the environment.”
“Cool.” Dimple whistled and reached over to pull a fortune out. She arched her eyebrow at Rishi when she saw he wasn’t. “Come on. You have to too.”
He sighed and reached into the large slit in the center of the cookie to pull out a strip of fabric. “This is just awkward.”
Dimple laughed. “Just read yours.” She unfolded her strip, a piece of sky blue denim with fraying edges, on which words had been printed in white. “Hmm. Extinction is near. ” She looked up at him. “What’s yours say?”
He turned his black-and-yellow-polka-dotted strip of fabric around. In red, it said, This will not end well.
“Wow.” Dimple laughed. “Ominous.”
Rishi crumpled up his strip and stuck it into the recycling bucket provided. “Man, Yael Borger is probably a ton of laughs. Can you just see her at a dinner party?” Putting on a cheerful voice, he said, “Hi, Yael, how are you today?” And then, in a sepulchral intonation meant to be Yael, “You will die.”
Dimple snorted. “At least she’s getting people to think and talk about the issue she wants them to think and talk about. Mission accomplished, I’d say. Isn’t that the point of art?” They wound their way around a group of students chattering in the doorway. “I mean, why do you make your comics, for instance?”
“Release,” Rishi answered, before he could really consider censoring himself. To Pappa and Ma, he was careful to always say comics were just a fun hobby, inconsequential. They were more magnanimous about them that way. “It’s like taking a giant helium balloon full of your worries and just letting it go.”
The lobby was huge, marble floored, and echoing with excited chatter from all the students and exhibitors. A giant banner, similar to the one at the table Kevin Keo had been manning the other day, hung in the center of the space and said, WELCOME TO LITTLE COMIC CON! YOU CAN TURN YOUR ART INTO A CAREER. LET US HELP!
There was a gigantic poster of Naruto Uzumaki hanging from the stair banister. Someone in the department obviously loved anime. Booths with giant banners showcasing various other famous comic characters dotted the space—Rishi saw everything from Pokémon to Harley Quinn to the Hulk. Across the floor, Rishi spotted someone at a crowded booth. His breath caught in his throat. “Oh my gods.” Heart pounding, he grabbed Dimple’s hand without thinking and then immediately let go. “It’s Leo Tilden.”