Every night the two of them ate together while Omar told Francisco the things he had learned—that the earth was 2.2 billion years old, that butterflies used their feet to taste, that the earliest poems were carved into clay—all the things he hoped to pass along to his students and in the meantime passed along to Francisco. They talked and debated and disagreed and laughed. It was always Francisco’s favorite part of the day, with the world at his back, to paddle across the bay toward the shore and go home.
