DANTE AND I WENT SWIMMING later that day. We got into a splashing war, and I thought that the only reason we did that was because we got to accidentally touch each other. On the short walk back to his house, Dante made a face.
“What was that?” I said.
“I was thinking about school. And that bullshit of looking up at your teachers as if you really believe they’re smarter than you are is a little bit annoying.”
“Annoying?” I laughed. “Annoying” was definitely a Dante word.
“Is that funny?”
“No. You like to say the word ‘annoying.’ ”
“What? It’s not a word you know?”
“It’s not that—it’s just that it’s not a word I use.”
“Well, what do you say when something annoys you?”
“I say it pisses me off.”
All of a sudden Dante got this great look on his face. “That’s awesome,” he said. “That’s fucking awesome.” He leaned into me and nudged me with his shoulder.
“You’re interesting, Dante. You love words like ‘interminable,’ as in ‘I’m interminably bored,’ and words like ‘liminal’—”
“Did you look the word up?”
“I did. I can even use it in a sentence: Aristotle and Dante reside in a liminal space.”
“Fucking awesome.”
“See, that’s why you’re interesting. You’re a walking dictionary and you love to cuss.”
“That’s what makes me interesting?”
“Yes.”
“Is it better to be interesting or it to be handsome?”
“Are you fishing for a compliment, Dante?”
He smiled.
“Being interesting and being handsome aren’t mutually exclusive.” I looked at him, looked straight into his big, clear brown eyes and grinned. “Mutually exclusive. God, I’m starting to talk like you.”
“Talking like you have a brain isn’t such a bad thing.”
“No, it isn’t. But using your vocabulary as a tool to remind everybody that you’re a superior being is—”
“You’re starting to piss me off.”
“And now you’re talking like me.” I laughed. He didn’t. “You are a superior being,” I said. “And you’re interesting and you’re handsome, and…” I rolled my eyes. “And you’re charming.” And then we both cracked up laughing, because “charming” was his mother’s word. Every time he got into trouble, his mother would say, “Dante Quintana, you’re not nearly as charming as you think you are.” But he was that word “charming.” I was thinking that Dante could charm the pants right off of me. And my underwear, too.
God, I had a dirty mind. I was going straight to hell.
Twenty-Three
Dear Dante,
When I was helping you clean your room, I got to wondering why you like to be so messy when everything in your mind seems to be so organized. The sketch of the vinyl records you did and of the record player is amazing. When you took it out from under your bed and showed it to me, I couldn’t even talk. I saw that you had tons of sketches under your bed. Someday I’d like to sneak into your room and take them all out and run my hand over every sketch. It would be like touching you.
I live in a confusion called love. I see you take a perfect dive and I think of how perfect you are. And then you get angry with me because I don’t want to spend all my time with you. But a part of me does want to spend all my time with you. And I know that’s not possible—and it isn’t even a good idea. It isn’t logical to think that I don’t love you just because I think it’s not a good idea to go to the same school. And then you want me to talk more and then suddenly you tell me not to talk. You’re so not logical. You’re not logical at all. I guess that’s part of the reason I love you. But it’s also the reason that you make me crazy.
I had a dream last night about my brother again. It’s the same dream. I don’t really understand my dreams and why they’re inside me and what they do. He’s always standing on the other side of the river. I’m in the United States. He’s in Mexico. I mean, we live in different countries—I guess that’s true enough. But I want so much to talk to him. He might be a nicer guy than people give him credit for—yeah, fucked-up and stuff, but maybe not completely corrupt. No one is completely corrupt. Am I right about that? Or maybe he’s just a miserable fucking asshole and his life is a complete fucking tragedy. Either way, I’d like to know. So that I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life wondering about a brother whose vague memory resides inside me like a splinter in your hand that can’t be removed. That’s how it feels. Dante, if your mom has a boy—if you get that brother you’ve always wanted—love him. Be good to him. So when he grows up, he won’t be haunted by bad dreams.
My mother walked into the room as I was writing in my journal. “I think that’s a great idea,” she said, “to keep a journal.” And then she noticed the journal I was writing in. “Ophelia gave that to you, didn’t she?”
I nodded. I thought she was going to cry. She started to say something—then changed her mind. But then she said, “Why don’t you and Dante go camping for a few days before school starts? You used to love to go camping.”
Now it was me who was going to cry. But I didn’t. I didn’t. I wanted to hug her. I wanted to hug her and hug her.
We just sort of smiled at each other—and I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, but I just couldn’t. I just, I don’t know. Sometimes I had beautiful words living inside of me and I just couldn’t push those words out so that other people could see they were there.
“So, what do you think about the camping idea?”
I didn’t want to show her how damned excited I was, so I very calmly said, “Mom, I think you’re brilliant.” She knew. She knew how to read that grin I was wearing.
“I just made your day, didn’t I?”
I looked at her with that wiseass look on my face that said I’m not going to go there.
And she looked back at me with that kind of sweet but self-satisfied look that said, I did. I did make your day. And then she laughed. I liked the way we could sometimes talk to each other without using words.
And then she dropped this bomb: “Oh, by the way, I almost forgot. Your sisters want to take you to lunch.”
“Lunch? Mom…”
“You know, you’re not such a boy anymore—and when you get close to being an adult, you start doing what adults do—go to lunch with family, with friends.”
“You told them, didn’t you?”
“I did tell them, Ari.”
“Shit! Mom, I—”
“They’re your sisters, Ari, and they love you. They want to be supportive. What’s so bad about that?”
“But did you have to tell them?”
“Well, you weren’t going to tell them. And they shouldn’t be the last to know; they’d be hurt.”
“Well, I’m hurt that you told them without my permission.”