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

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“You taste like the rain,” he said. “I love the rain more than anything.” “I know. I want to be the rain.” “You are the rain, Dante.”

“Mom, why didn’t anybody tell me that love hurts so much?” “If I had told you, would it have changed anything?”

My hobby was thinking about Dante. My hobby was feeling my whole body tremble when I thought of him.

Millions of boys in the world would want to kill me, would kill me if they knew what lived inside me. Knowing how to fight—that was no hobby. It was a gift I just might need to survive.

“So, if we’re screwed, do you think that sometime, we could, like, screw?”

kissing. I wondered what that was like, to be able to kiss someone you liked any time you wanted. In front of everybody. I would never know what that would be like. Not ever.

I wondered what he saw, who he was making up when he looked at me.

“Michelangelo.” “That’s nuts!” “This from a boy named Aristotle.”

To feel necessary, that was—wow—something I’d never thought of before.