Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz Page A

No more, okay?”
    “Are you rolling your eyes?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay, no more.”
    That afternoon, he took the bus and came to visit me. He looked, well, not so good. He tried to pretend it didn’t hurt him to look at me but he could never hide anything that he felt. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” I said. “The doctor said I was going to heal very nicely.”
    “Very nicely?”
    “That’s exactly what he said. So give me eight to ten or twelve weeks, and I’m going to be myself again. Not that being myself is such a great thing.”
    Dante laughed. Then he looked at me. “Are you going to initiate a no-laughing rule?”
    “Laughing is always good. Laughing works.”
    “Good,” he said. He sat down and took out some books from hisbackpack. “I brought you reading material. The Grapes of Wrath and War and Peace .”
    “Great,” I said.
    He gave me a look. “I could have brought you more flowers.”
    “I hate flowers.”
    “Somehow I guessed that.” He grinned at me.
    I stared at the books. “They’re fucking long,” I said.
    “That’s the point.”
    “Guess I have time.”
    “Exactly.”
    “You’ve read them?”
    “’Course I have.”
    “’Course you have.”
    He slid the books onto the stand next to my bed.
    I shook my head. Yeah. Time. Shit.
    He took out his sketch pad.
    “You going to sketch me in my casts?”
    “Nope. I just thought that maybe you’d want to look at some of my sketches.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “Don’t get too excited.”
    “It’s not that. The pain comes and goes.”
    “Does it hurt right now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you taking anything?’
    “I’m trying not to. I hate the way whatever the hell they give me makes me feel.” I pushed the button on the bed, so I could sit up. Iwanted to say “I hate this” but I didn’t. I wanted to scream.
    Dante handed me the sketch pad.
    I started to open it.
    “You can look at it after I leave.”
    I guess I was holding a question on my face.
    “You have rules. I have rules too.”
    It was good to laugh. I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until I laughed myself into becoming someone else. The really great thing about laughing was that it made me forget about the strange and awful feeling in my legs. Even if it was only for a minute.
    “Tell me about the people on the bus,” I said.
    He smiled. “There was a man on the bus who told me about the aliens in Roswell. He said that . . .” I don’t know that I really listened to the story. I guess it was enough just to hear the sound of Dante’s voice. It was like listening to a song. I kept thinking about the bird with the broken wing. Nobody told me what happened to the bird. And I couldn’t even ask because I would be breaking my own rule about not talking about the accident. Dante kept telling the story about the man on the bus and the aliens in Roswell and how some had escaped to El Paso and were planning on taking over the transportation system.
    As I watched him, the thought came into my head that I hated him.
    He read me some poems. They were nice I guess. I wasn’t in the mood.
    When he finally left, I stared at his sketch pad. He’d never let anybody look at his sketches. And now he was showing them to me. To me. Ari.
    I knew he was only letting me see his work because he was grateful.
    I hated all that gratitude.
    Dante felt he owed me something. I didn’t want that. Not that.
    I took his sketch pad in my hands and flung it across the room.

Four
    IT WAS JUST MY LUCK THAT MY MOTHER WAS WALKING into the room as Dante’s sketch pad hit the wall.
    “You want to tell me what that was about?”
    I shook my head.
    My mother picked up the sketch pad. She sat down. She was going to open it.
    “Don’t do that,” I said
    “What?”
    “Don’t look at it.”
    “Why?”
    “Dante doesn’t like people to look at his sketches.”
    “Only you?”
    “I guess so.”
    “Then why’d you throw it across the room?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I know you don’t