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October 7 - October 9, 2025
ONE SUMMER NIGHT I FELL asleep, hoping the world would be different when I woke.
Feeling sorry for myself was an art. I think a part of me liked doing that.
“Your name is Angel Aristotle?” “Yeah. That’s my real name.”
Dante was a very precise teacher. He was a real swimmer, understood everything about the movements of arms and legs and breathing, understood how a body functioned while it was in the water.
I had this idea that Dante read because he liked to read. Me, I read because I didn’t have anything else to do. He analyzed things. I just read them. I have a feeling I had to look up more words in the dictionary than he did.
Then I got this idea. “Let’s ride the bus and see what’s out there.” Dante smiled. We both fell in love with riding the bus. Sometimes we rode around on the bus all afternoon. I told Dante, “Rich people don’t ride the bus.”
Being around guys made me feel stupid and inadequate. It was like they were all a part of this club and I wasn’t a member.
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.
That afternoon, I learned two new words. “Inscrutable.” And “friend.” Words were different when they lived inside of you.
As Dante was watching me search the sky through the lens of a telescope, he whispered, “Someday, I’m going to discover all the secrets of the universe.”
“What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?” “I’ll know what to do with them,” he said. “Maybe change the world.” I believed him.
When he came to my house, Dante would place his shoes on the front porch before he came inside. “The Japanese do that,” he said. “They don’t bring the dirt of the world into another person’s house.”
“Birds exist to teach us things about the sky.”
And why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.
And then there was this whole thing with my name. Angel Aristotle Mendoza. I hated the name Angel and I’d never let anybody call me that. Every guy I knew who was named Angel was a real asshole. I didn’t care for Aristotle either. And even though I knew I was named after my grandfather, I also knew I had inherited the name of the world’s most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn’t give.
“I’m just a regular guy.” “Yeah, that’s how you see yourself. But, you pushed your friend out of the way of an oncoming car. You did that, Ari, and you didn’t think about yourself or what would happen to you. You did that because that’s who you are. I’d think about that if I were you.”
I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.
I was never going to out-stubborn Dante Quintana.
I asked my dad to put Fidel in the basement so I wouldn’t have to look at that stupid wheelchair ever again.
“Swimming and you, Ari. Those are the things I love the most.”
So, instead of asking him about the war, I asked him if he ever dreamed about Bernardo. My brother. “Sometimes.” That’s all he said.
