Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante, #2)

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Or maybe, or maybe, or maybe. I just couldn’t stop thinking about things. I wondered if there would ever come a time when I would stop thinking about things.

My love for him is silent. There are a thousand things living in that silence.”

Ideas won’t kill you.

“Yup,” I said, “and you can bet your ass that, somewhere down the road, we won’t be gay enough.”

My father. My father, my father, my father.

I didn’t want to be ashamed. And yet, the word “shame” was still a word loitering in my body. It was a word that clung to me, a word that didn’t leave easily.

“Oh, Ari, let your sisters love you. Let yourself be loved. For all you know, there’s a long line of people wanting you to let them in.”

And the thought entered my head that my love for Dante was holy, not because I was holy but because what I felt for him was pure.

“What’s so funny?” Dante, he was always studying me as if it was somehow possible to learn everything about me. Unknowable me.

One minute the sea was calm. And then there was a storm. And the problem, with me, anyway, was that the storm lived inside me.

Or maybe because running wasn’t always bad. You could run and run—so long as you came back home again.

And what was it about human beings that wanted to measure love as if it were something that could be measured?

“Oh, Ari, don’t be so hard on yourself. You didn’t say anything wrong.” She kissed me on the cheek. “You’re as thoughtful as your mother.”

If we’re lucky. If we’re very lucky, the universe will send us the people we need to survive.

I think that because my mother was a teacher, I was a better student. Or maybe that wasn’t true. But I do know that because my mother was a teacher, I looked at my teachers with a different perspective. I saw them as people. And I don’t know if a lot of my classmates saw them that way.

My mom says we live our lives one day at a time, one moment at a time. Now is the only thing that’s real. Tomorrow is just an idea. My mom’s voice forever in my head.

But, for me, to love was one thing. To let yourself be loved, well, that was the most difficult thing of all.

I knew I would never take off this silver chain with a cross hanging on it. I would wear it always.

I hadn’t seen my brother since I was six years old. Eleven years had passed, and he had become nothing more than a memory. But he was more than that. Of course, he was much more than that. People aren’t memories.

DAD SAID THAT THE ONLY thing you leave on this earth after you die that’s worth anything at all is your name. I wanted my father to live forever. But that wasn’t going to happen. And every time I entered a library, I was going to grab a book and write his name in it. So I could keep his name in this world.

“Don’t ever let the hate rob you of the life you’ve been given.”

And I felt cheated. Just when my father had learned to be my father and I had learned to be his son, he left this world.

My father had taught me how to do that, too. I was surrounded by him, my father.

The living were connected to the dead. And the dead were connected to the living. And the living and the dead were all connected to the universe.

We must tame our wild hearts—or we will never understand the spark of the universe that lives within us all. To live and never to understand the strange and beautiful mysteries of the human heart is to make a tragedy of our lives.

“But the pain is mine, Dante. And you can’t have it. If you took it away, I would miss it.”

Sometimes I loved them so much. There was something about girls that guys didn’t have—and would never have.

Maybe all we were meant to do on this earth was to keep on telling stories. Our stories—and the stories of the people we loved.

He kissed me. Let the plants of the desert see. Let the desert willows, let the distant mountains, let the lizards and the snakes and the desert birds and roadrunners see. I kissed him back. Let the sands of the desert see. Let the night come—and let the stars see two young men kissing.

Teachers mattered. They could make you feel like you belonged in school, like you could learn, like you could succeed in life—or they could make you feel like you were wasting your time.

I leaned into Cassandra’s shoulder and wept. I heard her voice whispering, “ ‘Those who sow in tears shall reap rejoicing.’ ”

But at that moment, I wanted to run and find Cassandra and hug her and tell her how brilliant she was and that she deserved it and that I was glad we’d stopped hating each other and that the fact that she was in my life meant something. She mattered to me.

I was thanking him. I knew that he was thanking me. I understood that he loved me in that way that teachers loved their students.

My mother was standing next to me. “How does it feel to be someone’s muse?” “It feels okay.” My mom just laughed.

“Dante has many fine qualities, but he’s not selfless. And you are, Ari. I know that you wanted to spend the summer with him as much as he did. He sees how much he loves you, but he forgets to see how much you love him. He fails to understand how much you care about him because you care in such different ways.”