“You’re right about that. Is heterophobia a bad thing?”
“There’s no such thing as heterophobia, Ari. And besides that, we’re not heterophobic.”
“Guess not. But I bet your mom and dad are happy. Dante Quintana, valedictorian.”
“Sounds important, doesn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Yup. My mom and dad are over-the-moon happy.”
“That’s the only thing that matters.”
* * *
I was lying in bed in the dark. I couldn’t sleep. I remembered a conversation Dante and I had at the beginning of the semester. There was a fellowship for promising young artists at some institute in Paris that had a summer program. He’d told me he was thinking of applying. I told him I thought he should. But he’d dropped the subject and never mentioned it again. I wondered if he’d applied. I wondered if he’d heard from them. I wasn’t going to ask. If he wanted to tell me, he’d tell me.
Thirty-Five
ON THE LAST DAY OF school when the final bell rang I headed for Mr. Blocker’s room. He was sitting there leaning against his chair, and he had a calm and pensive look on his face. He noticed me standing at the doorway.
“Ari, come in. Did you need something?”
“I just came—you were, well, when I think of learning, I’ll think of you.”
“That’s a very thoughtful thing to say.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
We both just kept nodding.
“I just came to bring you something. It’s a gift. I know we’re not really supposed to give our teachers gifts—no bribing for a grade. But even though you’re not really my teacher anymore—and even though you’ll always be my teacher—ah hell, I’m screwing this up. I wanted to give you this.” I handed him a little box I’d wrapped myself. Which was a big deal because I hated wrapping gifts.
“May I open it?”
I nodded.
He unwrapped it carefully and opened the box. He kept nodding. He took out a small pair of boxing gloves. He held them up and laughed. And laughed. “You’re hanging up your gloves.”
“Yup, I’m hanging up my gloves.”
I think both of us wanted to say something, but really there was nothing to say. Not everything was said with words. 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. Some of them, anyway. He knew I knew. I looked at him. A look that said, Thank you—and good-bye.
Thirty-Six
THERE WE WERE, ALL OF us lined up to march in. I stared at my maroon stole—top 5 percent of my class. There must have been a lot of students sleeping in class for me to have made that list. No negative self-talk. Now I had Cassandra’s voice in my head too. I heard Dante’s actual voice. “Ari!” He was all smiles. He hugged me. “I found you!” Yeah, I wanted to say, you found me in a swimming pool one day and changed my life.
“Dad and I are here. We’re sitting with your mom and Mrs. Ortega. Mom was sad because she couldn’t come. She sends love, and so does Sophocles.” And then he disappeared into the crowd.
There were so many people, and I hated crowds. Still, I was happy, and I had butterflies in my stomach—but I didn’t know why. I was just going to get a diploma handed to me. I was supposed to take that baton and begin my race toward wherever the hell I was going.
* * *
It was all a blur, sort of. I always halfway shut down around a lot of people. Gina was sitting in the same row—but still, too far away. The girl sitting next to me was talking and talking to the girl sitting next to her. And then she said to me, “You beat my brother up.”
“He must be a real nice guy.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then why’d you bring it up?”
“Because.”
Well, she’d really learned how to think.
“I’m going to be nice to you because it’s graduation.”
“I’ll be nice to you too. I’m Ari.”
“I know who you are. I’m Sarah.”
“Congratulations, Sarah. You did it.”
“Don’t try to sweet-talk me.”
So much for being nice. If there was one thing about the past, it didn’t leave you alone. It liked to stalk you.
Mr. Robertson had been saying a few words as Sarah and I were having our whispered conversation—if that’s what it was. He introduced the faculty as a group, and he had them stand. And we gave our teachers a standing ovation. They deserved it. They more than deserved it.
And then he introduced Cassandra. He ended by saying, “In every possible way, she has been a brilliant and extraordinary student. It’s my distinct honor to introduce this year’s valedictorian, Cassandra Ortega.” As she walked toward the podium, the applause was polite—but it was hardly enthusiastic. I felt bad.
“The only reason,” she began, “that I was selected to be this year’s valedictorian was that the student body didn’t get a vote.”
And everybody laughed. I mean, everybody laughed. Brilliant. She had us in the palm of her hand.
Cassandra talked about how she’d always been hungry to learn.
“But not everything we need to learn can be found in a book. Or rather, I’ve learned that people are books too. And there are a lot of wise things that are contained in those books. I have friends. Yes, who knew? Cassandra Ortega has friends.”
The laughs came. And they were friendly laughs.
“I have friends that have taught me—you know, good friends are also teachers—that you cannot consider yourself an educated person if you fail to treat others with respect. While my grades were excellent, I was often a failure when it came to recognizing the dignity of others—and that is something I regret. There is nothing we can do about the past, but all of us can change what we do and who we are in the future. The future begins tonight. Right now.
“My older brother, whom I loved, died of AIDS last year. AIDS is not something we discuss in our classes. Nor, many of us, at home. I think we hope it will just go away. Or maybe we don’t care because most people who’ve died in that pandemic are gay men. And we don’t care about gay men because we think horrible things about them, and we think they’re getting what they deserve. We don’t look upon the men who died or are dying of AIDS as real men, or as real people. But they are real men. And all of them are human beings. And they have brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers who mourn them or hate them or love them.
“It’s easy to hate someone when we don’t see them as being real people. But ignoring our differences isn’t the answer, either. I don’t think women are treated equally in this country, but in order to be treated equally, I don’t want men to ignore the fact that I’m a woman. I like being a woman. And men like being men far too much.”
She was interrupted by laughter and some clapping. I think the guys were doing the laughing and the women were doing the clapping.
“I have a friend. He belongs to the other gender. I don’t need to reveal his name—but before we were friends, I hated him. I felt justified in hating him because he hated me right back. He wasn’t a person to me. And then one day we got into an argument and that argument turned into a conversation—and I found that he was listening to me and I was listening to him too. And he has become one of the closest friends I’ve ever had. I learned to see him. I learned of his troubles, of his journey, of his hurts, and I learned of his capacity to love. And I learned about my own capacity to love.