Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe #1)

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.

There were certain towel rules that existed in my mother’s world that I just didn’t get. But the rules didn’t stop at towels.

She looked at my T-shirt. I knew a look of disapproval when I saw one.

I wasn’t sorry. Yeah, well, I had a temper. I admit it.

And the best part of the whole thing was that I’d made the discovery all on my own.

All on my own. I was in love with that phrase. I wasn’t very good at asking for help, a bad habit I inherited from my father.

See, the thing about guys is that I didn’t really care to be around them. I mean, guys really made me uncomfortable. I don’t know why, not exactly. I just, I don’t know, I just didn’t belong.

I think it embarrassed the hell out of me that I was a guy.

And it really depressed me that there was the distinct possibility that I was going to grow up and b...

A girl is like a tree? Yeah, and a guy is about as smart as a piece of dead wood...

I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself. That sucked. I had serious problems.

It was better to be alone and miserable. It was better to drown.

I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else.

I didn’t understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you. How could a guy live without some meanness?

I had this idea that Dante read because he liked to read. Me, I read because I didn’t have anything else to do.

That sucked. Why did I have to be a good boy just because I had a bad-boy brother? I hated the way my mom and dad did family math.

wiseass,

It made me smile, the way they got along, the easy and affectionate way they talked to each other as if love between a father and a son was simple and uncomplicated.

inscrutable.”

I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get—and never would get.

Until Dante, being with other people was the hardest thing in the world for me. But Dante made talking and living and feeling seem like all those things were perfectly natural. Not in my world, they weren’t.

“inscrutable.” It meant something that could not easily be understood.

That afternoon, I learned two new words. “Inscrutable.” And “friend.” Words were different when they lived inside of you.

“So is Soledad.” “No, not really. How would you like to be named Solitude?” “It can also mean lonely,” I said. “See? What a sad name.”

And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and—I don’t know—it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.

“Because when you do something, you have to know exactly what you’re doing.”

“No one knows exactly what they’re doing,” I said.

“That’s because people are lazy and u...

Dante was crying again. And I felt mean because I didn’t feel like crying. I didn’t really feel anything for the bird.

I felt alone, but not in a bad way. I really liked being alone. Maybe I liked it too much.

and I thought for a moment that the world had never wanted me and now it was taking the opportunity to get rid of me.

“Ari, I just want you to be happy.”

I wanted to tell her that happy was hard for me. But I think she already knew that.

“Well,” I said, “I’m at that phase where I’m supposed...

Being sick made me feel fragile, like I might break. I didn’t like feeling like that.

I wondered how that felt, to really like yourself. And I wondered why some people didn’t like themselves and others did. Maybe that’s just the way it was.

I didn’t want to live in my parents’ world and I didn’t have a world of my own.

Maybe it was because Dante seemed to make himself fit everywhere he went. And me, I always felt that I didn’t belong anywhere. I didn’t even belong in my own body—especially in my own body. I was changing into someone I didn’t know. The change hurt but I didn’t know why it hurt. And nothing about my own emotions made any sense.

Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn’t give.

I thought it might be a great thing to be the air. I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.

I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be.

-I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for this keep changing.

But Mr. Quintana was brave. He didn’t care if the whole world knew he was kind. Dante was just like him.

It was good to laugh. I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until I laughed myself into becoming someone else. The really great thing about laughing was that it made me forget about the strange and awful feeling in my legs. Even if it was only for a minute.

My mother and father held hands. I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.

And I hated myself for hating them. So there it was, my own vicious cycle. My own private universe of hate.

Sometimes, all you have to do is tell people the truth. They won’t believe you. After that, they’ll leave you alone.

I sometimes think that I don’t let myself know what I’m really thinking about. That doesn’t make much sense but it makes sense to me.

Sometimes, I think everyone is like the people in that painting, everyone lost in their own private universes of pain or sorrow or guilt, everyone remote and unknowable.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT DEAD skin looks like when they take off a cast? That was my life, all that dead skin.