Read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
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This book is a piece of work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sáenz, Benjamin Alire.
Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe/
Benjamin Alire Sáenz.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Fifteen-yr-old Ari Mendoza is an aroused loner with a blood brother in prison, simply when he meets Dante and they get friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
ISBN 978-ane-4424-0892-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-i-4424-0894-four (eBook)
[one. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Families—Fiction.
3. Mexican-Americans—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction.
5. Homosexuality—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S1273Ar 2012
[Fic]—dc22
2010033649
To all the boys who've had to learn to play by different rules
Contents
The Different Rules of Summer
Affiliate One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter V
Chapter Half-dozen
Affiliate Seven
Chapter 8
Chapter Ix
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Sparrows Falling from the Sky
Chapter One
Chapter 2
Chapter Iii
Chapter Four
Affiliate Five
Chapter Six
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter Nine
Affiliate 10
Affiliate 11
Chapter Twelve
The End of Summertime
Chapter One
Chapter Ii
Chapter Iii
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Half dozen
Affiliate Seven
Chapter Viii
Chapter Nine
Chapter 10
Affiliate Eleven
Letters on a Page
Affiliate Ane
Chapter Two
Chapter 3
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter 6
Chapter Seven
Affiliate 8
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter 14
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Affiliate Xix
Chapter Xx
Chapter 20-One
Chapter Twenty-Ii
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Affiliate Xx-5
Chapter Twenty-Vi
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-8
Chapter Xx-Nine
Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty-One
Think the Pelting
Chapter One
Affiliate Two
Chapter Iii
Chapter Four
Chapter 5
Chapter Half-dozen
Chapter Seven
Affiliate Eight
Affiliate Nine
Chapter Ten
Affiliate Xi
Affiliate Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter 16
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
All the Secrets of the Universe
Affiliate 1
Chapter Two
Affiliate Three
Affiliate Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Half-dozen
Chapter Seven
Chapter Viii
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Xi
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter 14
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Affiliate 18
Chapter 19
Chapter Twenty
Chapter 20-1
Acknowledgments
WHY Do We SMILE? WHY Exercise Nosotros LAUGH? WHY Do we experience alone? Why are nosotros deplorable and dislocated? Why practice nosotros read poetry? Why exercise we cry when we see a painting? Why is in that location a riot in the middle when we love? Why practise we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach chosen want?
The Dissimilar Rules of Summer
The problem with my life was that it was someone else'due south idea.
One
I SUMMER NIGHT I FELL ASLEEP, HOPING THE Globe would exist different when I woke. In the morning time, when I opened my eyes, the world was the same. I threw off the sheets and lay there equally the heat poured in through my open window.
My hand reached for the punch on the radio. "Lone" was playing. Crap, "Alone," a song past a group chosen Heart. Non my favorite song. Non my favorite grouping. Not my favorite topic. "You don't know how long . . ."
I was fifteen.
I was bored.
I was miserable.
Every bit far as I was concerned, the lord's day could have melted the blueish correct off the sky. Then the heaven could be equally miserable equally I was.
The DJ was saying annoying, obvious things like, "It'due south summer! It's hot out there!" And then he put on that retro Solitary Ranger tune, something he liked to play every morning considering he idea it was a hip fashion to wake upwardly the world. "Hello-yo, Argent!" Who hired this guy? He was killing me. I call up that every bit we listened to the William Tell Overture, nosotros were supposed to exist imagining the Lonely Ranger and Tonto riding their horses through the desert. Maybe someone should have told that guy that we all weren't ten-twelvemonth-olds anymore. "Howdy-yo, Silver!" Crap. The DJ's voice was on the airwaves again: "Wake up, El Paso! Information technology's Monday, June fifteenth, 1987! 1987! Tin can you believe it? And a large 'Happy Birthday' goes out to Waylon Jennings, who's 50 years sometime today!" Waylon Jennings? This was a rock station, dammit! But then he said something that hinted at the fact that he might have a encephalon. He told the story almost how Waylon Jennings had survived the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and Richie Valens. On that notation, he put on the remake of "La Bamba" by Los Lobos.
"La Bamba." I could cope with that.
I tapped my bare feet on the woods flooring. Equally I nodded my head to the shell, I started wondering what had gone through Richie Valens's caput before the aeroplane crashed into the unforgiving ground. Hey, Buddy!
The music's over.
For the music to be over so before long. For the music to be over when it had but begun. That was really deplorable.
2
I WALKED INTO THE KITCHEN. MY MOM WAS PREPARING lunch for a meeting with her Catholic-Church building-lady friends. I poured myself a glass of orange juice.
My mom smiled at me. "Are you lot going to say good morning?"
"I'grand thinking almost it," I said.
"Well, at to the lowest degree y'all dragged yourself out of bed."
"I had to think about it for a long time."
"What is it most boys and sleep?"
"Nosotros're good at it." That made her express joy. "Anyway, I wasn't sleeping. I was listening to 'La Bamba.'"
"Richie Valens," she said, almost whispering. "So sad."
"Just like your Patsy Cline."
She nodded. Sometimes I defenseless her singing that vocal, "Crazy," and I'd smile. And she'd grin. It was like we shared a secret. My mom, she had a nice voice. "Aeroplane crashes," my female parent whispered. I remember she was talking more to herself than to me.
"Maybe Richie Valens died immature—simply he did something. I mean, he actually did something. Me? What have I done?"
"You take time," she said. "There'due south plenty of time." The eternal optimist.
"Well, you have to become a person beginning," I said.
She gave me a funny look.
"I'm fifteen."
"I know how quondam you are."
"Xv-twelvemonth-olds don't qualify as people."
My mom laughed. She was a high school teacher. I knew she half agreed with me.
"So what's the big meeting about?"
"We're reorganizing the food banking company."
"Food depository financial institution?"
"Everyone should eat."
My mom had a matter for the poor. She'd been at that place. She knew things about hunger that I'd never know.
"Yes," I said. "I guess so."
"Maybe you can assist us out?"
"Sure," I said. I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.
"What are you going to exercise today?" It sounded like a challenge.
"I'm going to join a gang."
"That'southward not funny."
"I'chiliad Mexican. Isn't that what nosotros do?"
"Non funny."
"Non funny," I said. Okay, non funny.
I had the urge to go out the business firm. Not that I had anywhere to go.
When my mom had her Catholic-Church building-lady friends over, I felt like I was suffocating. Information technology wasn't then much that all her friends were over fifty—that wasn't it. And it wasn't even all the comments about how I was turning into a man right before their eyes. I mean, I knew bullshit when I heard it. And equally bullshit went, it was the nice, harmless, affectionate kind. I could handle them grabbing me by the shoulders and saying, "Allow me wait at y'all. Dejame ver. Ay que muchacho tan guapo. Te pareces a tu papa." Not that at that place was anything to expect at. It was just me. And yes, yeah, I looked similar my dad. I didn't remember that was such a nifty thing.
But what really bugged the living crap out of me was that my mother had more friends than I did. How sad was that?
I decided to go pond at the Memorial Park pool. It was a small idea. Only at to the lowest degree the idea was mine.
Every bit I was walking out the door, my mom took the onetime towel I'd slung over my shoulder and exchanged information technology for a better ane. At that place were certain towel rules that existed in my mother's world that I just didn't go. But the rules didn't stop at towels.
She looked at my T-shirt.
I knew a look of disapproval when I saw i. Before she made me change, I gave her 1 of my own looks. "Information technology'south my favorite T-shirt," I said.
"Didn't you wear that yesterday?"
"Yes," I said. "Information technology'south Carlos Santana."
"I know who it is," she said.
"Dad gave it to me on my birthday."
"As I think y'all didn't seem all that thrilled when you opened your father's souvenir."
"I was hoping for something else."
"Something else?"
"I don't know. Something else. A T-shirt for my birthday?" I looked at my Mom. "I estimate I only don't understand him."
"He'due south non that complicated, Ari."
"He doesn't talk."
"Sometimes when people talk, they don't always tell the truth."
"Guess so," I said. "Anyhow, I'm actually into this T-shirt now."
"I can see that." She was grinning.
I was smiling too. "Dad got it at his first concert."
"I was there. I retrieve. It's one-time and ratty."
"I'm sentimental."
"Sure you are."
"Mom, it'due south summer."
"Yeah," she said, "information technology is summertime."
"Different rules," I said.
"Different rules," she repeated.
I loved the different rules of summer. My mother endured them.
She reached over and combed my pilus with her fingers. "Promise me you won't wear it tomorrow."
"Okay," I said. "I promise. Merely only if you lot promise not to put it in the dryer."
"Peradventure I'll let you wash it yourself." She smiled at me. "Don't drown."
I smiled dorsum. "If I do, don't give my dog away."
The dog thing was a joke. We didn't have 1.
Mom, she got my sense of humor. I got hers. Nosotros were good that manner. Not that she wasn't something of a mystery. One thing that I completely got—I got why my father fell in love with her. Why she fell in love with my father was something I still couldn't wrap my head around. Once, when I was about six or seven, I was really mad at my father considering I wanted him to play with me and he only seemed and then far away. It was like I wasn't even in that location. I asked my mom with all my adolescence acrimony, "How could you have married that guy?"
She smiled and combed my hair with her fingers. That was ever her thing. She looked direct into my eyes and said calmly, "Your father was beautiful." She didn't even hesitate.
I wanted to ask her what happened to all that beauty.
3
WHEN I WALKED INTO THE HEAT OF THE Twenty-four hour period, Even THE lizards knew better than to exist crawling around. Even the birds were laying low. The tarred patches on the cracks of the street were melting. The blue of the sky was pale and it occurred to me that maybe everybody had fled the metropolis and its rut. Or maybe everyone had died like in one of those sci-fi flicks, and I was the last boy on world. Simply just equally that thought ran through my head, a pack of guys who lived in the neighborhood passed me on their bikes, making me wish I was the last boy on earth. They were laughing and messing around and they seemed like they were having a adept time. 1 of the guys yelled at me, "Hey, Mendoza! Hanging out with all your friends?"
I waved, pretending to be a good sport, ha ha ha. And then I flipped them the bird.
Ane of the guys stopped, turned around and started circling me on his bike. "You desire to do that again?" he said.
I gave him the bird again.
He stopped his bike right in front of me and tried to stare me down.
Information technology wasn't working. I knew who he was. His brother, Javier, had tried to mess with me once. I'd punched the guy. Enemies for life. I wasn't sorry. Yeah, well, I had a temper. I admit information technology.
He put on his mean phonation. Similar it scared me. "Don't screw with me, Mendoza."
I gave him the bird over again and pointed it at his face up just like it was a gun. He just took off on his bike. There were a lot of things I was afraid of—simply not guys like him.
Nigh guys didn't screw with me. Not even guys who ran effectually in packs. They all passed me on their bikes once more, yelling stuff. They were all xiii and fourteen and messing with guys like me was simply a game for them. As their voices faded, I started feeling pitiful for myself.
Feeling deplorable
for myself was an fine art. I think a office of me liked doing that. Maybe it had something to do with my nativity order. You lot know, I remember that was function of it. I didn't like the fact that I was a pseudo but kid. I didn't know how else to think of myself. I was an only kid without really being 1. That sucked.
My twin sisters were twelve years older. Twelve years was a lifetime. I swear it was. And they'd e'er fabricated me feel like a baby or a toy or a project or a pet. I'm really into dogs, but sometimes I got the feeling I was zero more than than the family mascot. That's the Spanish word for a domestic dog who's the family unit pet. Mascoto. Mascot. Swell. Ari, the family mascot.
And my blood brother, he was eleven years older. He was even less accessible to me than my sisters. I couldn't even mention his name. Who the hell likes to talk about older brothers who are in prison? Non my mom and dad, that was for sure. Not my sisters either. Maybe all that silence near my brother did something to me. I retrieve it did. Non talking can make a guy pretty lonely.
My parents were young and struggling when my sisters and brother were born. "Struggling" is my parents' favorite word. Sometime after three children and trying to finish college, my father joined the Marines. Then he went off to war.
The war changed him.
I was built-in when he came dwelling house.
Sometimes I remember my father has all these scars. On his heart. In his caput. All over. It'due south not such an piece of cake thing to exist the son of a man who's been to war. When I was eight, I overheard my mother talking to my Aunt Ophelia on the telephone. "I don't remember that the war will ever be over for him." Later I asked my Aunt Ophelia if that was true. "Yes," she said, "it's truthful."
"But why won't the war leave my dad lone?"
"Because your father has a conscience," she said.
"What happened to him in the war?"
"No one knows."
"Why won't he tell?"
"Considering he can't."
So that's the way it was. When I was 8, I didn't know anything most war. I didn't fifty-fifty know what a censor was. All I knew is that sometimes my father was sad. I hated that he was distressing. Information technology fabricated me sad besides. I didn't like sorry.
So I was the son of a human being who had Vietnam living inside him. Yeah, I had all kinds of tragic reasons for feeling sad for myself. Being fifteen didn't help. Sometimes I thought that existence fifteen was the worst tragedy of all.
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