CHAPTER 27
Dimple smiled, a lantern in the night. "Really?"
Rishi nodded, and she took the sketch pad, setting it carefully on her lap. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, turned on a flashlight app, and set it on the bench between them. Then, almost reverentially, she began lifting the cover.
"Wait." Rishi put a hand on hers. She looked at him quizzically, her face and glasses tinted a silver blue from the phone. "So, these aren't finished sketches. Well, some of them are, but some aren't. More just like . . . blocking. Like, ideas."
"Okay." Dimple nodded, and he let go of her hand. She began to flip the cover open again. He put a hand on hers. She looked at him, one eyebrow raised.
"One more thing. Don't look just at what's happening; look at the nuance. Like, notice the backgrounds in each panel. That's important information; it'll tell you more about what I had planned for the story. It'll set the mood and everything."
Dimple nodded again. "Okay." Rishi let go of her hand, and she began to open the cover.
"Oh, and another th-"
"Rishi," she said, turning so she could look him in the eye. "I have no expectations. Okay? None. Whatever's in here, I'm not going to be judging. I just want to take it in."
He studied her, the honesty in her eyes, the frank openness of her face, and his shoulders relaxed. "Okay."
Dimple opened the sketch pad, and as she studied each panel, each sketch, each line he'd made, Rishi studied her. She smiled quietly at some sketches, others seemed to arrest her. Her gaze would travel over each line, over and over, and sometimes she'd pull the book closer. One she stopped and squinted at, the most curious mixture of disbelief, amusement, and wonder on her face. Rishi leaned in to see what she was looking at.
It was a panel he'd done around two years ago, of a boy of about ten or eleven making paper flowers out of a heap of crumpled pages while rain poured outside his window.
Rishi chuckled, the sound slow and deep in his head. "Paper flowers. I used to make those when I was that age. I don't know why, but I was obsessed with them for a while. That panel was more like an exercise. I was feeling sluggish and empty that day." It wasn't nearly his best; he didn't know why Dimple seemed so enthralled with it.
She turned to look at him, that same strange expression still on her face. Her entire body was frozen, still. "You made paper flowers. Out of magazines."
He nodded, surprised. "How'd you know I did them out of magazine pages?"
"Don't you remember?" Dimple shook her head, her eyes wide as she studied him. "Keep it. Remember me. And don't tattle."
And just like that, the memory slammed into him.
He'd been dragged along by Pappa and Ma to some Indian acquaintance's wedding in San Diego. It was hot, and the wedding was outside. Ashish was being a baby, whining about being hungry, and his parents were bickering about something, and there were absolutely no activities for the kids to do, so Rishi told his parents he had to go to the bathroom and wandered off. His kurta had been a thick gold brocade, he remembered, and itchy as heck. His plan was to get inside the big hotel where it was cool and air-conditioned and find a T-shirt or something to wear. Maybe he'd steal it from an open room-that always seemed to work in the movies.
But when he got inside, Rishi saw the guests had commandeered the interior lobby too. There was no way to get past them and to the upstairs-there were caterers and waiters and nosy aunties and uncles everywhere. So he'd ducked into a room with a sign that said CONFERENCE ROOM A , whatever that was, and sat down on a chair in the semidark (just one lamp in the corner of the big room was on), grateful for the cool and quiet. There was a pile of magazines on the table in front of him, and Rishi began methodically ripping out pages as he sat, folding and turning them into flowers that he set in a line in front of him.
He'd gotten into the habit just months ago, having seen some special on TV . Rishi first tried it with one of Ma's Bollywood magazines and found it weirdly compelling, not even minding that his fingers were constantly covered in paper cuts. Now he made roses and mums and lilies, the repetitive, familiar motion soothing.
He was on his third rose when he heard someone clear their throat. Startled, Rishi looked up at a small girl with wild hair. She sat on a high-backed armchair he hadn't noticed in the corner of the room. A copy of A Wrinkle in Time was facedown in her lap, and her feet, sticking out from underneath her bright blue lehenga , didn't touch the floor. She was staring at him through glasses that were too big for her narrow face. "Why are you ripping up those magazines? They're not yours." Her voice was high-pitched. It reminded him of Tinker Bell, a cartoon Ashish loved to watch, though he didn't like to be teased about it. Rishi had learned that the hard way. He still had the bruise on his shin.