ONE NIGHT, WHEN THERE WAS NO MOON IN THE NIGHT sky,
Dante’s mom and dad took us out into the desert so we could use his new telescope. On the drive out, Dante and his dad sang along with the Beatles
—not that either of them had good singing voices. Not that they cared.
They touched a lot. A family of touchers and kissers. Every time Dante entered the house, he kissed his mom and dad on the cheek—or they kissed him—as if all that kissing was perfectly normal.
I wondered what my father would do if I ever went up to him and kissed him on the cheek. Not that he would yell at me. But—I don’t know.
It took us a while to drive out into the desert. Mr. Quintana seemed to know a good place where we could watch the stars.
Somewhere away from the lights of the city.
Light pollution. That’s what Dante called it. Dante seemed to know a great deal about light pollution.
Mr. Quintana and Dante set up the telescope. I watched them and listened to the radio.
Mrs. Quintana offered me a Coke. I took it, even though I didn’t like Cokes.
“Dante says you’re very smart.”
Compliments made me nervous. “I’m not as smart as Dante.”
Then I heard Dante’s voice interrupting our conversation. “I thought we talked about this, Ari.”
“What?” his mother said.
“Nothing. It’s just that most smart people are perfect shits.” “Dante!” his mother said.
“Yeah, Mom, I know, the language.”
“Why is it you like to cuss so much, Dante?” “It’s fun,” he said.
Mr. Quintana laughed. “It is fun,” he said. But then he said, “That kind of fun needs to happen when your mother isn’t around.”
Mrs. Quintana didn’t like Mr. Quintana’s advice. “What kind of lesson are you teaching him, Sam?”
“Soledad, I think—” But the whole discussion was killed by Dante, who was looking into his telescope. “Wow, Dad! Look at that! Look!”
For a long time, no one said anything.
We all wanted to see what Dante was seeing.
We stood silently around Dante’s telescope in the middle of the desert as we waited for our turn to see all the contents of the sky. When I looked through the telescope, Dante began explaining what I was looking at. I didn’t hear a word. Something happened inside me as I looked out into the vast universe. Through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than I’d ever imagined. And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and—I don’t know—it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.
As Dante watched me peering through the telescope, he murmured, “One day, I’m going to uncover all the secrets of the universe.”
That made me smile. “What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?”
“I’ll know what to do with them,” he replied confidently. “Maybe change the world.” I believed him.
Dante Quintana was the only person I’d ever met who could make such a statement with such certainty. I knew he’d never grow up to spout clichés like, “A girl is like a tree.”
That night, we camped out in his backyard.
We could hear his parents talking in the kitchen through the open window. His mother spoke in Spanish, and his father answered in English.
“They do that,” he said.
“Mine do too,” I replied.
We didn’t say much after that. We just lay there, staring up at the stars.
“Too much light pollution,” he noted.
“Too much light pollution,” I agreed.
