MRS. QUINTANA WAS SITTING ON THE front steps when I walked up the sidewalk. “Hi,” I said.
“Hi, Ari,” she said.
“No work today?”
“I took the day off,” she said. “I have an appointment with the doctor.”
“Everything okay?”
“Prenatal care.”
I nodded.
“Here,” she said, “help me up.” It was strange and beautiful to feel her hand grasp mine and help pull her onto her feet. It made me feel strong and necessary. To feel necessary, that was—wow—something I’d never thought of before.
“Let’s take a walk,” she said. “I need to walk.”
We walked across the street—and as soon as we reached the park, the green grass beneath us, she took off her shoes.
“Now I know where Dante gets that shoeless thing from.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like to go barefoot. It’s just that my feet get swollen. It’s the pregnancy.”
“You and Dante spend a lot of time in this park, don’t you?”
It was strange to be walking through a park with an adult. Not an ordinary occurrence in my life. I asked a question I didn’t really want to ask—especially because I knew the answer already. “Do you think Dante and I will change? I mean. You know what I mean.” God, I was really stupid.
“No, Ari, I don’t think you will. That’s not a problem for me or for Sam or for your parents. But there is this problem—I don’t think most people understand boys like you and Dante. And they don’t want to understand.”
“I’m glad you’re not like most people.”
She smiled at me. “Me too, Ari. I don’t want to be like most people.”
I smiled back at her. “I used to think Dante was more like Mr. Quintana than he was like you. I think maybe I was wrong.”
“You really are a sweet kid.”
“I don’t know you well enough to argue with you.”
“You really are a smart aleck.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“I suppose you’re wondering if there was something I wanted to talk to you about?”
I nodded.
“When we came back from Chicago, that first day, when you came over. You looked at me and it was as if something passed between us. It seemed to me that it was something very intimate—and I don’t mean that there was anything inappropriate about it. But you noticed something about me.”
“I did,” I said.
“Did you know I was going to have a baby?”
“Maybe. I mean, yes. I thought about it, and, well, yes. Yes, I did know. There was something different about you.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Like you glowed. I know that sounds stupid. But it was like there was so much life—I don’t know how to explain it. It’s not as if I have ESP—nothing like that. Stupid, really.”
“Stupid? Is that your favorite word?”
“I guess today it is.”
She grinned. “It doesn’t sound stupid, Ari, that you noticed something about me that day. You don’t have to have ESP to have a very acute sense of perception. You read people. It’s a gift. And I just wanted you to know that there’s a lot more going on with you than the fact that you like boys.”
We stopped under the shade of an old tree.
“I love this tree,” she said.
I smiled. “So does Dante.”
“I don’t know why, but that doesn’t surprise me.” She touched the tree and whispered his name.
We started walking back toward her house. And suddenly, she took one of her shoes, which had been dangling from her left hand, and threw it as hard as she could. She laughed, and then took the other shoe and it landed right next to the first. “It’s not such a bad game that Dante invented.”
All I could do was smile.
Everything was so new. It felt as if I had just been born. This life that I was living now, it was like diving into an ocean when all I had known was a swimming pool. There were no storms in a swimming pool. Storms, they were born in the oceans of the world.
And then there was that cartographer thing. Mapping out a new world was complicated—because the map wasn’t just for me. It had to include people like Mrs. Quintana. And Mr. Quintana too. And my mom and dad, and Dante.
Dante.