“Because when you do something, you have to know exactly what you're doing.”

“No one knows exactly what they’re doing,” I said.

“That’s because people are lazy and undisciplined.”

“Did anybody ever tell you that sometimes you talk like a lunatic who speaks perfect English?”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe.

And then we were quiet again. I hated the quiet. Finally I just asked a stupid question, “Why do birds exist, anyway?”

He looked at me. “You don’t know?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“Birds exist to teach us things about the sky.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe.

The quiet over the phone was strange. “Do you think it will always be this way?”

“What?”

“I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?”

I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. “I don’t know,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe.

“Do you understand him?”

“Not always. But Ari, I don’t always have to understand the people I love.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe.

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

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristote and Dante discover the secrets of the universe

I read that book of poems by a poet named William Carlos Williams. I’d never heard of him, but I’d never heard of anybody. And I actually understood some of it. Not all of it—but some. And I didn’t hate it. That surprised me. It was interesting, not stupid or silly or sappy or overly intellectual—not any of those things that I thought poetry was. Some poems were easier than others. Some were inscrutable. I was thinking that maybe I did know the meaning of that word.

I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get—and never would get.

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe

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.

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe.

“You do,” I said. “You belong everywhere you go. That’s just how you are.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer morning could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe.

As Dante was watching me search the sky through the lens of a telescope, he whispered, “Someday, I’m going to discover all the secrets of the universe.”

That made me smile. “What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?”

‘l'll know what to do with them,” he said. “Maybe change the world.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the Universe.

I saw the look on my dad’s face and I knew he was worried. And I was sad that I had made him worry. I wondered if he had really held me and I wanted to tell him that I didn’t hate him, it was just that I didn’t understand him, didn’t understand who he was and I wanted to, I wanted so much to understand.

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe

"I returned to the book of poems. I read a line and tried to understand it: “from what we cannot hold the stars are made.” It was a beautiful thing to say, but I didn’t know what it meant. I fell asleep thinking what the line might mean."

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe.

My mother and father held hands. I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe.

“Dante’s my friend.” I wanted to tell them that I’d never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren’t meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn’t have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. “Dante’s my friend.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe.

“Take off your shoes, Ari. Live a little.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe.

But Dante made talking and living and feeling seem like all those things were perfectly natural. Not in my world, they weren't.

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe.

“Poetry,” he said. “It won’t kill you.”

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe.