Love at First Fight

by Sandhya Menon

  “That’s interesting,” Sweetie said.

  Pinky and Samir turned to see that she, Ashish, Dimple, and Rishi had all migrated over to their area of the room once again. “Are you guys done?” Pinky asked, glancing at the clock.

  “Yeah,” Dimple said, a little apologetically. “We’ve been done. So we thought we’d come over to see if you guys could use any help.”

  “Yep, we’ve been done too! So I guess you guys are the losers.” Ashish laughed uproariously.

  Pinky glared at Ashish until his laughter petered out. He wasn’t the best at reading the room. “We just found a clue. Now, if you’ll please shut up, we can solve it.”

  “Well, we solved our clue, but we don’t know what to do with the answer.” Dimple frowned and adjusted her glasses.

  “Oceanic voyages,” Samir muttered, turning back to his and Pinky’s clue. “One ghost, one mortal…”

  “Door to the future.” Pinky caught Samir’s eye as she said the words.

  “No idea,” Rishi said to them. “None of that means any—”

  “Garrett and Tiva!” Samir and Pinky shouted together as the epiphany hit them like a tsunami. “From the webcomic Tear Me Asunder!”

  They stopped shouting and stared at each other. Pinky felt her cheeks grow hot. “You know Tear Me Asunder?”

  “Yeah.” Samir looked equally shocked. “I was with them from the beginning to the end. You were one of their thirty-three followers?”

  “Wow.” Rishi looked impressed. “I’m the king of obscure webcomics, and I don’t even know that one.”

  Ashish began laughing again, looking from Pinky to Samir as if he were having the best time. “It’s like one mind, Pin-mir!”

  Pinky and Samir both glared at him this time, and he held his hands up in surrender.

  Pinky turned her attention to the other things on the shelves, clearing her throat briskly. She didn’t want to think about what it meant that Samir was also a Tear Me Asunder fan. A fan of one of the greatest webcomics of all time, a webcomic that had inspired her love of rebellion and protest, thanks to the main character Tiva. “So what do we do with that?”

  “None of these other, ah, things on the shelves seem like they’ll lead to more clues,” Samir said after studying the trinkets for a few moments. “So weird.”

  “Ours was like that too,” Dimple said again. “We have the answer—Emily Brontë—but nowhere to put it.”

  “And we have this”—Sweetie held up a little plastic piece—“but no idea what to do with it. Ooh. Maybe our clues work together somehow?”

  Rishi was nodding. “Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking. Maybe it’s time to put these things together.” He glanced at his watch. “We have ten minutes left in here.”

  Samir snapped his fingers. “The padlock.” He rushed over to the padlocked chest, the others following behind him. “I thought there was something weird about it.” He knelt, looking at the lock closely, then up at the group. “There’s no keyhole.”

  Pinky knelt beside him and tugged on it. It was firmly locked. “Wait, what’s this?” Her fingers tripped over a minuscule bump on the side of the lock. When she pressed it, the face of the lock sprang open to reveal an electronic touch-screen keypad inside. The keypad had six empty squares waiting to be filled. “So the code can’t be Garrett, Tiva, or Tear Me Asunder,” Pinky mused.

  “Try ‘Brontë’!” Dimple looked excited for the first time that day.

  Pinky tapped one square, and it asked her if she wanted to input a number or a letter. She chose letter, tapped to B, and went on to the next square. When she’d spelled out “Brontë,” she sat back and waited. The lock sprang open, and everyone cheered.

  Samir grinned at her before realizing what he was doing and looking away. Pinky felt a pinch of guilt. She hadn’t meant to ruin his fun with what she’d said earlier. “Let’s see what we have here.” He lifted the lid and reached inside, pulling out a small square velvet box. When he opened it, he frowned. “Huh.”

  Samir took whatever was in the box and held it out to Pinky on his palm, as if hoping she could decipher it. But she was just as confused as he was. It looked like a small plastic heart with a hole on the pointy end.

  “Oh, I bet I know what that is!” Ashish took the heart from Samir and slipped the plastic piece Sweetie had held up into it. “It’s a key.”

  “A key to what?” Dimple asked, and then, as if they’d all realized it at the same time, their gazes swung to the nondescript door at the far side of the room, across from the one they’d entered.

  “The ‘door to the future’!” Samir exclaimed.

  They all speed walked over to it, aware of the dwindling time.

  Rishi quirked his mouth as they studied the door. “There’s no keyhole.”

  “This isn’t a regular key.” They looked over at Ashish, who was examining the key with the heart-shaped top. “Look, there are no jagged parts. It’s all smooth. Besides, it’s plastic.”

  They all examined the key and then stepped back to look at the door again. He was right; there was no way it was going to work.

  Pinky sighed. She was very tired of this escape room. It had done nothing but confuse and frustrate her, and she wasn’t just talking about the clues. Her eyes darted over to Samir and then away, remembering what Dimple had said. Sometimes those make the greatest love stories. Ugh, no way. No way were she and Samir anything at all like Dimple and Rishi. She leaned against the wall next to the door, hoping to wait out the rest of the time, when she felt something click.

  Turning slowly, she realized she’d opened a camouflaged panel on the wall. “Um, guys?” She opened the panel door fully. Inside was a hollow rectangular slot with a heart shape on one end. “I think we found where the heart-shaped key goes.”

  There was a collective intake of breath, and then, very carefully, Ashish handed the key to Samir, who handed it to Pinky. “You found the panel,” he said, his eyes serious, holding hers. “I think you should be the one to put the key in.”

  She took the key. Their fingers brushed lightly, but even though her heart sped up and began to freak out, Pinky forced it to quiet down. She inserted the key into the slot and waited. There was a loud click, and the door in front of them popped open.

  “Congratulations!” Amy the guide was on the other side, her smile as wide and beamy as ever. “You’ve managed to escape and have therefore reunited Armand and Guinevere!” She broke into applause, and after a pause, the group joined in—all of them except Pinky and Samir, who were catching each other’s eyes and laughing.

  Ashish

  Amy led them to an area of the facility that was reserved for winners, according to her. The way she said it, with a flourish, it was pretty obvious to Ashish that she thought they should all feel a thrill of accomplishment at her words. All he really felt was amusement.

  Along one wall was a bright-pink heart–filled photo backdrop that said LOVERS REUNITED.

  “Okay, what I’d like you all to do is pose in front of that,” Amy said to them, her cell phone at the ready. “It’s for our wall of fame out in the lobby. One couple at a time, please.”

  Ashish led Sweetie to the backdrop and dipped her down just as Amy took the picture. Sweetie was laughing so hard, her eyes were completely closed in the picture.

  Dimple and Rishi went next, and Rishi, not one to be outdone by his little brother, picked Dimple up while Amy took the picture. Dimple actually looked like she enjoyed it, squealing and laughing in a way that made Ashish’s jaw drop.

  Pinky and Samir were next. They trudged to the backdrop like they were being led to the gallows and stood there like wooden pegs, about thirty feet apart.

  Amy’s ever-present smile faded. “Um. Could you guys squeeze in a bit? I can’t fit you both in the same picture.”

  Ashish snorted but made sure to feign innocence when Pinky gave him a look.

  Pinky and Samir moved infinitesimally closer. Amy held up her phone and then lowered it slow
ly. “Um, could you guys smile? You won!”

  Her enthusiasm infected neither Pinky nor Samir. “Can you just take it?” Samir said. “It really doesn’t matter. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be up here with me any longer.”

  Pinky looked at him, her expression undecipherable. “You know what, Amy?” she said, still looking at Samir. “Take a picture of this.” And then she wrapped her arms around Samir’s neck and pulled him to her. Before any of them could process what was happening, Pinky planted a giant kiss on his cheek. Samir’s eyes bugged out as if they were on stalks.

  And Amy, who apparently had great timing, took the picture right at that moment.

  * * *

  “One for a keepsake!” Amy singsonged, handing each couple a copy of the picture she’d taken of them. She’d hurried to the back to print them all out, and no one had had the heart to tell her not to bother.

  Rishi looked at his and Dimple’s picture as they filed out of the facility into the cool early-evening air. “This is actually cute. I’m gonna frame it in my dorm.”

  “I think I’ll do the same. Frame it in my room, I mean,” Sweetie said, looking shyly up at Ashish. The plaza was still bustling, and a group of teens walked by, laughing at something. “Unless you want it?”

  “No.” He kissed the top of her head as a breeze curled around them. “I’ll just have to come visit you a whole lot if I want to see it.”

  Her eyes shone. “Deal.”

  Pinky and Samir were in front, with Pinky lugging her ridiculously oversize poster board through the plaza. Samir had taken the photo from Amy since Pinky didn’t have any hands free. Ashish heard Pinky say, over her shoulder, “So you’ll toss that, right?”

  “Yep.” Samir looked down at the picture in his hands as they passed a trash can. And then, very casually, he slipped the photo into his pocket.

  Ashish grinned. No one else had noticed; Dimple and Rishi were deep in a conversation of their own, and Sweetie was looking up at him. “I knew it,” Ashish said, chuckling.

  “Knew what?” Sweetie furrowed her brow.

  He gestured with his chin toward Pinky and Samir. “I think there’s more to come on that front.”

  Sweetie turned to look at Pinky and Samir, shaking her head a little. “You might be right, Ashish Patel. There’s definitely more to them than meets the eye. I always get a vibe around those two.”

  “It was love at first fight.” Ashish laughed. “They just don’t know it yet.”

  He put his arm around Sweetie, and they walked together into the fading light.

  More from the Author

  10 Things I Hate about Pinky

  Of Curses and Kisses

  Hungry Hearts

  There's Something about Sweetie

  As Kismet Would Have It

  Our Stories, Our Voices

  Keep reading for a preview of

  10 Things I Hate about Pinky

  by

  Sandhya Menon

  Pinky

  The dead body was an especially nice touch.

  Pinky Kumar grinned at her friend Ashish’s prone figure. “This is amazing,” she said, touching Ash’s face. It looked waxy and pale, and his lips were the exact right color of death. Well, what death probably looked like, anyway. “You said Sweetie did this?”

  “Yeah, she took a stage-makeup class last year,” Ash said, cracking open one translucent eyelid. “Does the hair look okay, though? I did that myself.”

  “The hair’s poppin’,” Pinky said, lifting up a few strands of the purple wig he wore, the thick locks falling past his shoulders. “You look like you could start shredding on a guitar any minute.”

  They were in Pinky’s living room, where they’d lit a dozen LED candles all over the furniture and floor and drawn the shades for extra ambience. Ashish was lying on the couch, his arms crossed on his chest, barely breathing. Of their friend group, he was the only one who’d been able to help her out on short notice; everyone else had already flitted off to various holiday destinations. Ash himself was leaving for Hawaii later today.

  “Okay, do you have what you need now?” Ash said, shifting a bit on the couch. “This wig’s pretty itchy.”

  “Almost.” Pinky stepped back and took a couple of pictures with her phone. “Let me get a wider angle.…”

  “What charity’s this for, again?” Ash asked, peeking at her through the fringe of his wig.

  “Don’t you ever listen when I talk?” Pinky asked, huffing a bit.

  Ash laughed. “Seriously? This is, what, like, charity number thirty-two you’re helping this week?”

  He had a point. “Fine, fine. It’s for the GoFundMe page of that nonprofit Super Metal Death,” Pinky said, taking another picture. “They used to be just Metal Death, but they really amped up their community-outreach efforts last year.”

  Ash raised a thick eyebrow but kept his eyes closed. “Right, of course, Super Metal De—”

  Pinky peeked out the big bay window. “Oh, crap.”

  A white Porsche Cayenne had just pulled up, and a moment later, her mother stepped out, eyes hidden by her sunglasses, Hermès pant-suit still perfect after an eleven-hour workday. She speed walked to the house, her thin face wearing that same harried, pinched expression it always did.

  For just a moment, Pinky felt a surge of panic. Her mom was, at the best of times, an extremely formidable adversary. But when she’d had a busy day at work and just wanted to unwind with her Sudoku book and was instead confronted by yet another one of Pinky’s special projects? Picture that girl from The Exorcist, with her head spinning, only instead of green vomit, Pinky’s mom wore pantsuits and spewed straight-up acid.

  “What?” Ash said, cracking open one eyelid. He itched his scalp, and his fingers moved his wig so it was now half covering his face. “What’s wrong?”

  But before Pinky could answer, her mom had opened the front door and was clip-clopping her way to the living room. Pinky stood there, frozen in indecision, and then it was too late. Her mom’s shadow came first, and then her mom herself emerged into the living room, her sunglasses pushed up on the top of her head.

  As she took in the transformation her once-perfect living room had gone through, her face went from pinched to blank to confused to—

  “Priyanka! What the hell!” Her mother rushed to the couch, frowning. “Is that a doll?”

  Pinky opened her mouth to tell her the truth, but then a tiny pinprick of gleeful defiance bloomed in her chest. Why did her mom insist on calling her “Priyanka” when she was mad, when she knew perfectly well Pinky despised her full name? Also, why was her mom so quick to judge all the time? Why couldn’t she approach this situation with a joyful curiosity instead of freaking out? “No, it’s not a doll. It’s… a dead body.”

  Her mother stopped short, her face going sallow. “No, it’s not,” she said, but there was a thread of uncertainty in her voice as she took in the candles and the dark room and thought about all the things she likely did not know about her delinquent daughter.

  Pinky stared at her mom without smiling—and then grinned. “You totally believed me, didn’t you?”

  Ash sat up, grinning too, and Pinky’s mother shrieked and jumped backward.

  “It’s just Ashish, Mom,” Pinky said, giving him a fist bump. “Pretty sick beat face, right?”

  “Pretty what?” her mother said, blinking at the big dude on her couch. “Ashish? Is that really you?”

  “Hey, Ms. K,” Ash said, waving and pulling off his wig.

  Her mom looked at the wig for a long moment and then back at Ashish. “Why are you… corpsing… on my couch?”

  “It’s for Super Metal Death,” Pinky explained. “I’m raising money for them. They’re crowdfunding to bring hot meals to band members from defunct bands. Did you know that eighty-two percent of formerly famous band members now live in homeless shelters?” She took a seat beside Ashish, her fishnets digging into her thigh a bit.

  Her mother frow
ned. “There’s no way that statistic is right.”

  Adjusting her position, Pinky swung her black military-style boots onto the couch. “Sure it is. People don’t realize how brutal the music industry can be.”

  But her mother was glaring at her, no longer listening. “Get your shoes off the couch.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Pinky said. “We’re going to get them cleaned soon anyway.”

  There was a tense silence, and then her mother smiled a little at Ashish. “It was very nice seeing you, Ashish,” she said. “Please tell your parents I send my regards.” Turning to her own flesh-and-blood daughter, she added in a barely controlled voice, “Can I please speak with you… alone?”

  Ash stood, looking nervous under the cadaverous makeup. “Ah, I better be going. See ya, P. Have a good summer vacay, Ms. Kumar.”

  “You too, Ashish.” Her mother was doing one of those scary, plasticky smiles that made her look like a mannequin. Actually, she’ d make a pretty good corpse.

  Pinky flipped Ashish the peace sign even though her nerves were jangling at the prospect of the argument she knew was coming. “See you when I get back, Ash. Have fun in Hawaii. And tell Sweetie I said thanks for lending her makeup skills to a great cause.”

  Once the front door had closed behind him, Pinky leaned back against the couch, her arms crossed. The clock on the wall ticked. The air hummed.

  Her mom said, in a super-calm voice, “Where’s your father?”

  Pinky shrugged. “I guess he’s still at that meeting in Menlo Park.”

  “So you invited a boy here when you’re home alone. That’s against the rules, as you well know. Four days into summer break and you’re already—” Her mom broke off and rubbed a hand over her forehead.

  “Already what?” Pinky said, her heart starting to trot. When her mom remained silent, she changed tack. “Anyway, it wasn’t a boy. It was just Ashish.”