“No. I’m being Ari. I’m celebrating in the quiet. Look up at the stars, Dante. Even in the pollution of the lights, you can still see them.”
He took my hand. He pulled me to the corner of the yard, where we could hide behind the large bush. He kissed me.
“I never dreamed a valedictorian would ever kiss me.”
Dante smiled. “I never dreamed Cassandra’s muse would kiss me back.”
“Maybe life is made of the things we never dreamed of.”
* * *
I wondered if I would spend my life hiding behind a bush and kissing men. I wondered if I would ever learn to stop raining on my own parade.
Thirty-Eight
THE PARTY WAS STILL GOING. But we decided to ditch it. “Let’s go to our place,” Cassandra said. Dante hopped in my truck. Cassandra and Gina hopped in Gina’s car. Susie hopped in Cricket’s car. And we’d invited Hector and Elena and Julio, and they followed us to the desert, to that place that belonged to me and Dante and that we now shared with the people we called friends.
Cassandra brought a boom box and she found a good radio station and we listened to music and we were dancing. I introduced Elena to Susie. “You’ll like each other. You can both spell ‘feminism.’ ”
“Yeah, Ari, but can you?” Elena, she could give you some serious looks that could shut you down in a nanosecond.
“You see, Susie? A woman after your own heart.”
And we outed Cricket to Elena and Hector and Julio.
Elena was ecstatic. “You’re the cricket guy? You’re our hero.”
Cricket was a modest man. “I’m not anybody’s hero.”
“You don’t get a say in this,” Elena said.
And we started a chant: “We love Cricket! We love Cricket!” I don’t think anybody had ever really celebrated his life. Everybody needed to be celebrated.
There was a slow love song on the radio. Dante and I danced, unafraid in the company of friends. And Dante, being Dante, asked Julio, “Have you ever danced with another guy?”
And Julio shook his head. “Well, you’re about to.” And he danced with him. And if anybody had ever worn a million-dollar smile, it was Julio.
We danced. We all danced in the desert. We danced in the desert that I loved. We danced until sunrise. And that dawn, the sun was shining on the faces of the people I loved. All of them, they were setting the world on fire.
Commencement. It meant something was beginning. The engines of the race were roaring in our ears. On your marks, get set…
Thirty-Nine
DANTE AND I WENT SWIMMING every day after school ended. It was just me and him for a week. We hung out at Memorial Park, across the street from his house. He was teaching me how to dive. “Just watch me, you’ll get the hang of it.” I didn’t care if I got the hang of it. I was trying to memorize every move he made, so I’d always remember.
After our swim, we were lying on the grass at Memorial Park. Under what we called our tree. “Remember that summer art fellowship in Paris?”
“I was wondering about that the other day.”
“Well, I got one. I got one of the fellowships. To the Paris School of Fine Arts.”
I jumped up in the air with a fist. “Yessss!” I hugged him. “Oh, Dante! I’m so damned proud of you. Wow! That’s amazing! Wow, Dante! That’s fucking amazing!”
But it seemed that Dante was hardly ecstatic. “I’m going to turn it down.”
“What?”
“I’m going to turn it down.”
“But you can’t.”
“Yes, I can.”
He got up from where he was lying on the grass and headed for his house. I went after him. “Dante?”
I followed him to his room.
“Dante, you get this special fellowship to study at an international program at the Paris School of Fine Arts and you’re not going to go? Are you crazy?”
“Of course I’m not going to go. We’re going to spend the summer together before I go away in September.”
“And what do your parents say?”
“They say I’m throwing away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and that it will give me a chance to develop my art and give me a leg up if I really want to make a go of it as an artist.”
“And I agree with them.”
“What about us?”
“Us? We’re still us. We’re still Ari and Dante. What will this change?”
“You won’t miss me?”
“Of course I’ll miss you. Don’t be stupid. But you can’t say no to this—not because of me. I won’t let you.”
“So you don’t care about spending our last summer together?”
“Who says I don’t care? And who says it’s our last summer together?”
“You’d rather me be in Paris than me be here with you?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. Don’t say it like that. I want you to go because I love you. This is going to help you become what you’ve always wanted to be—a great artist. And I’m not going to stand in the way of that.”
“So you want me to go.”
“Yes, I want you to go.”
I’d never seen that kind of disappointment and hurt on his face. “I thought you wanted to spend the summer with me. With me, Ari.”
“I do, Dante.”
“Do you?”
“Dante—”
The look on his face—he was so wounded. I looked into his eyes. He didn’t say a word. He turned away from me and walked into his house.
I walked down the stairs and out the door. I felt lost—and then I told myself, He’ll calm down. He always does.
Forty
I TRIED CALLING DANTE EVERY day for a week. Every day, I called. “He won’t talk to you,” Mrs. Q said.
“I understand.”
“Ari—” She started to say something, then sighed. “Sam and I miss you. I just wanted to say that.”
I nodded into the receiver of the telephone—but I couldn’t say anything.
I stopped calling. A week went by. Then another.
He didn’t call.
Forty-One
MY MOTHER WAS STANDING IN the doorway to my bedroom. “You have company,” she said.
I looked at her blankly.
“Dante. He’s sitting on the front porch. He wants to talk to you.”
* * *
I sat next to him and Legs on the front steps. “Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said.
And then there was this long quiet.
“I didn’t mean to overreact that way, Ari. I didn’t. And I’m sorry I didn’t return your phone calls. I’ve been pretty lost without you. But I’ve been thinking that this time apart is a good thing. We really won’t be a part of each other’s lives in the same way when we start college—and maybe it’s good that we get used to the being-apart thing. I mean, by the time we start the new semester, we’ll be used to living our own lives. Don’t you think?”