“Shut up,” Dimple replied. “It’s just so he wouldn’t puke on me.”
“Yeah, right. I expect you to be making soup from scratch next, with organic vegetables you grew in your garden out in the country.” Celia flashed a mischievous grin at Dimple. “If you don’t watch out, he’s going to turn you totally domestic.”
Domestic.
The word echoed in Dimple’s head. Was Celia right? She was turning domestic, wasn’t she? She was becoming everything she’d said she didn’t want to be. She had a boyfriend—a pretty serious one—going into freshman year. Everything the voice had said that night in Rios? It was all true, wasn’t it?
And gods, he was so traditional. So trustworthy and practical and stable. He was a savings account. Dimple was eighteen. She didn’t need a savings account. She needed adventure and spontaneity and travel. She needed to make a few bad decisions and have a few boys break her heart. Wasn’t that what she was after? Living life on her terms? So how had she gotten mired in the same pit of domesticity as her parents?
Dimple pushed open Rishi’s door feeling hot and cold, the paper towels like wet lead in her hands. When she looked at Rishi, her heart didn’t bloom like it usually did. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure what she felt, what she was supposed to feel. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
But Rishi didn’t seem to notice her inner war. He was sitting up in bed, his phone in his hands. “Just got a text,” he said, looking up at her. “The judges are done. They’ve picked the winner of Insomnia Con.”
Celia gasped as Dimple rushed to her phone; she’d left it on Rishi’s nightstand. Max’s text simply said Announcement time.
? ? ?
Everyone sat in their usual places, even though there really wasn’t any reason to anymore. (Except for Celia. She was waiting in their room with Ashish, who was finally finished with the campus tour some guy on the basketball team had given him.)
Dimple found a comfort in her old seat, her arm pressed up against Rishi’s, everything like it had been for the last six weeks. For the moment she forgot all the thoughts that had been tumbling through her head back in the dorm. The judges had come to a decision early. What did that mean? Something good? Something terrible? She’d never heard of this happening before.
There was a preternatural hush all around the room. Even the Aberzombies in the back were uncharacteristically quiet. It felt like the walls were holding their breath, like they’d inhaled but hadn’t exhaled yet. Dimple felt the pressure on the top of her head and along her spine. Rishi squeezed her hand, his own cool and dry. He looked like he was feeling better, though he still clutched his water bottle in his other hand.
“Where is Max? And the judges?” she mumbled, more to herself than anything, her leg jittering up and down. “Shouldn’t they be here by now?”
As if he’d just been waiting for her to ask, Max walked onstage. He’d dressed in a sports jacket for the occasion, his hair somewhat neatly combed. He was followed by a man and a woman who looked to be in their midsixties, fragile and birdlike in their movements. The woman wore huge diamonds at her neck and ears—they blinked and flashed even from this distance—and the man wore boat shoes and cuff links that winked under the recessed lighting. Dimple wondered if they were related or just came from the same factory that manufactured indecently rich people.
Max stepped behind the podium. “Thank you all for coming so quickly. I know this is earlier than we’d said, but the judges both agreed on the winners so quickly. Before we go into it, I’d like to take the time to both introduce and thank them.” He half turned and smiled at the couple. The woman was Anita Perkins and the man was Leonard Williams, and they both had fancy pedigrees and degrees and obviously tons of connections everywhere. That was about the gist that Dimple got. She felt her fingers squeezing Rishi’s tighter and tighter as Max kept talking, until finally he leaned toward her and whispered, “That’s my drawing hand, you know,” so she let go and forced herself to take a few deep breaths.
“And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. . . .” Max paused dramatically. “I’m going to let Leonard and Anita do the honors.”
There was groaning from around the lecture hall, and Max laughed as he stepped back and Anita took his spot.
“This was a very hard decision to make,” she said in a slightly quavering voice. Dimple wondered if she was nervous, and why. It was the students who had the most to lose. Or gain. “As you all know, this year’s prize includes a chance to work with Jenny Lindt, one of our talented past winners, which makes it even more exciting.” It sounded like she was reading from a prefabricated script. A bad one. “This year’s prototypes were all top-notch. However, only one winner can emerge, and this year, Leonard and I have had the great honor of bestowing that title upon Hari Mehta, Evan Grant, and Isabelle Ryland for their prototype, Drunk Zombies!”
There was thunderous applause—or Dimple’s ears were roaring. Rishi was saying something to her, but she didn’t hear. She saw the male Aberzombies lurching down the aisles, ironically zombielike, to collect their trophy. Isabelle glanced at Dimple and Rishi as she walked silently by. Her eyes were dark and hooded, her mouth unsmiling. She shook her head slightly—to apologize? To say she thought this was total BS? Dimple didn’t know. She found herself standing, and on legs that felt weirdly like rubber mallets, transporting herself up the other aisle and out the doors.
It was quieter in the hallway. Dimple sank onto a bench a dozen feet away, by the water fountain. “It’s over,” she made herself say. She forced herself to really hear the words. “You tried, but you didn’t win. It’s over.” But some small part of her insisted on asking why she hadn’t won. Why did she find herself here now, after all the passion, all the hard work, she’d put in? Was it Rishi? Had he somehow diffused her energy, the energy that was meant to go into this project? Had she had so much passion, so much energy, for him that she’d sidelined the main thing in her life, the one thing she wanted more than anything else? Had she done exactly what she’d been afraid she was going to do and let herself get distracted by a boy? Her chest was tight with remorse; her mouth was full of a chalky, bitter regret. Domestic, she heard Celia say. Domestic.