More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
June 6 - June 21, 2025
Different boys lived by different rules.
I felt alone, but not in a bad way. I really liked being alone. Maybe I liked it too much. Maybe my father was like that too.
“Not always. But Ari, I don’t always have to understand the people I love.”
Someday, I would understand my father. Someday he would tell me who he was. Someday. I hated that word.
I knew so little about her. About what she’d been through—about what it felt like to be her. I’d never cared, not really. I was starting to care, starting to wonder. Starting to wonder about everything.
I didn’t know what to do with that piece of information. So I just kept it inside. That’s what I did with everything. Kept it inside.
“You think you and Dad are the only ones who can keep things on the inside? Dad keeps a whole war inside of him. I can keep things on the inside too.”
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.
Me and my crutches walked back into my room and took out my journal. I’d been avoiding writing in it. I think I was afraid all my anger would spill out on the pages. And I just didn’t want to look at all that rage. It was a different kind of pain. A pain I couldn’t stand. I tried not to think.
do, don’t be upset. I’m not doing it to upset you, okay? This is my problem. I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I’m not so sure I want to return the favor.
Maybe my life isn’t all that interesting but at least I’m busy. Busy doesn’t mean happy. I know that. But at least I’m not bored. Being bored is the worst.
But he never asked me any questions about my life. Unlike my mom, he left me to my private world. My dad and I, we were like that Edward Hopper painting.
But, you know, I was experimenting. You know, discovering the secrets of the universe. Not that I thought I’d find the secrets of the universe in a Budweiser.
The weather had changed and winter was coming. Summer hadn’t brought me what I wanted. I didn’t think winter would do me any better. Why did the seasons exist anyway? The cycle of life. Winter, spring, summer, fall. And then it began again.
I wasn’t big on family gatherings. Too many intimate strangers. I smiled a lot, but really I never knew what to say.
“Do you think, Ari, that love has anything to do with the secrets of the universe?”
“I’m an educated woman. That doesn’t un-Mexicanize me, Ari.”
She sounded a little angry. I loved her anger and wished I had more of it. Her anger was different than mine or my father’s. Her anger didn’t paralyze her.
When I got to the park, I let Legs off the leash, even though I wasn’t supposed to. I loved watching her run around. I was in love with the innocence of dogs, the purity of their affection. They didn’t know enough to hide their feelings. They existed. A dog was a dog. There was such a simple elegance about being a dog that I envied.
But I had learned how to hide what I felt. No, that’s not true. There was no learning involved. I had been born knowing how to hide what I felt.
Mrs. Quintana looked different. I don’t know, it was like she was holding the sun inside her. I had never seen a woman look more beautiful.
It was the most beautiful thing an adult who wasn’t my mom or dad had ever said to me. And I knew that there was something about me that Mrs. Quintana saw and loved. And even though I felt it was a beautiful thing, I also felt it was a weight. Not that she meant it to be a weight. But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.
“My mom struggles with that too, you know? She doesn’t naturally display her feelings. That’s why she married my dad. That’s what I think. He drags it out of her, all those feelings she has.”
I imagined my argument: Obsession, Dad? You know what I’ve learned from you and Mom? I’ve learned not to talk. I’ve learned how to keep everything I feel buried deep inside of me. And I hate you for it.
One of the secrets of the universe was that our instincts were sometimes stronger than our minds.
Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer morning could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I said. “It’s just that sometimes I have things running around inside me, these feelings. I don’t always know what to do with them. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”
That smell—cigarette—it always made me think of him.
I left him alone for a while. But then, I decided I wanted to be with him. I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.
Maybe kissing was part of the human condition. Maybe I wasn’t human. Maybe I wasn’t part of the natural order of things.
Maybe dogs were one of the secrets of the universe.
The bruises would heal on their own. At least the ones on the outside.
High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you—but when you graduated, you got to write yourself.
Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed.
Had I been hurt? Had I healed? Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing. Like my father. I think that’s where he lived. In that in-between space. In that ecotone.
