Benjamin Alire Sáenz

So I renamed myself Ari.

If I switched the letter, my name was Air.

I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.

I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.

I liked hearing him laugh. It made things seem normal. A part of me thought things would never be normal again.

“Your smile is back.” That’s what Dante said.

“Smiles are like that. They come and go.”

ONE SUMMER NIGHT I FELL ASLEEP, HOPING THE WORLD would be different when I woke. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, the world was the same. I threw off the sheets and lay there as the heat poured in through my open window

A girl is like a tree? Yeah, and a guy is about as smart as a piece of dead wood infested with termites

I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself. That sucked. I had serious problems.

I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty much lived by that rule. Maybe that’s why I didn’t have any friends.

Dante was a very precise teacher. He was a real swimmer, understood everything about the movements of arms and legs and breathing, understood how a body functioned while it was in the water. Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

He was funny and focused and fierce. I mean the guy could be fierce. And there wasn’t anything mean about him. I didn’t understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you. How could a guy live without some meanness?

Dante became one more mystery in a universe full of mysteries.

I was darker than he was. And I’m not just talking about our skin coloring. He told me I had a tragic vision of life. “That’s why you like Spider-Man.”

“I’m just more Mexican,” I said. “Mexicans are a tragic people.”

“Maybe so,” he said.

“You’re the optimistic American.”

“Is that an insult?”

“It might be,” I said.

We laughed. We always laughed.