ONE AFTERNOON, AFTER WE’D FINISHED SWIMMING, we were

hanging out on his front porch.

Dante was staring at his feet. That made me smile.

He wanted to know what I was smiling at. “I was just smiling,” I said. “Can’t a guy smile?”

“You’re not telling me the truth,” he said. He had this thing about telling the truth. He was as bad as my dad. Except my dad kept the truth to himself. And Dante believed you had to tell the truth in words. Out loud. Tell someone.

I wasn’t like Dante. I was more like my dad.

“Okay,” I said. “I was smiling because you were looking at your feet.” “That’s a funny thing to smile about,” he said.

“It’s weird,” I said. “Who does that—look at their feet? Except you?” “It’s not a bad thing to study your own body,” he said.

“That’s a really weird thing to say, too,” I said. In our house, we just didn’t talk about our own bodies. That’s just not what we did in our house.

“Whatever,” he said. “Whatever,” I said.

“Do you like dogs, Ari?” “I love dogs.”

“Me too. They don’t have to wear shoes.”

I laughed. I got to thinking that one of my jobs in the world was to laugh at Dante’s jokes. Only Dante didn’t really say things to be funny. He was just being himself.

“I’m going to ask my dad if he’ll get me a dog.” He had this look on his face—a kind of fire. And I wondered about that fire.

“What kind of dog do you want?”

“I don’t know, Ari. One that comes from the shelter. You know, one of those dogs that someone’s thrown away.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But how will you know which one to pick? There’s a lot of dogs at the shelter. And they all want to be saved.”

“It’s because people are so mean. They throw dogs away like they’re trash. I hate that.”

As we sat there talking, we heard a noise, boys yelling across the street. Three of them, maybe a little younger than us. Two of them had BB guns and they were pointing at a bird they’d just shot. “We got one! We got one!” One of them was pointing his gun at a tree.

“Hey!” Dante yelled, “Stop that!” He was halfway across the street before I realized what was happening. I ran after him.

“Stop that! What the hell’s wrong with you!” Dante’s hand was out, signaling for them to stop. “Give me that gun.”

“My ass if I’m gonna give you my BB gun.”

“It’s against the law,” Dante said. He looked crazed. Really crazed. “Second amendment,” the guy said.

“Yeah, second amendment,” the other guy said. He held on tight to his little rifle.

“The second amendment doesn’t apply to BB guns, you jerk. And anyway, guns aren’t allowed on city property.”

“What are you planning on doing about it, you piece of shit?” “I’m going to make you stop,” he said.

“How?”

“By kicking your skinny little asses all the way to the Mexican border,” I said. I guess I was just afraid these guys were going to hurt Dante. I just said what I felt I had to say. They weren’t big guys and they weren’t smart either. They were mean and stupid boys and I’d seen what mean and stupid boys could do. Maybe Dante wasn’t mean enough for a fight. But I was. And I’d never felt bad for punching out a guy who needed punching out.

We stood there for a while, sizing each other up. I could tell Dante didn’t know what he was going to do next.

One of the guys looked like he was about to point his BB gun at me.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you little piece of dog shit.” And just like that, I reached over and took his gun away. It happened fast and he hadn’t expected it. One thing I’d learned about getting into fights. Move fast, take the guy by surprise. It always worked. It was the first rule of fighting. And there I was with his BB gun in my hands. “You’re lucky I don’t shove this up your ass.”

I threw the gun on the ground. I didn’t even have to tell them to get the hell out of there. They just left, mumbling obscenities under their breaths.

Dante and I looked at each other.

“I didn’t know you liked to fight,” Dante said.

“I don’t really. Not really,” I said.

“Yeah,” Dante said. “You like to fight.”

“Maybe I do.” I said. “And I didn’t know you were a pacifist.”

“Maybe I’m not a pacifist. Maybe I just think you need a good reason to go around killing birds.” He searched my face. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to find there. “You’re good at tossing around bad words too.”

“Yeah, well, Dante, let’s not tell your mom.” “We won’t tell yours either.”

I looked at him. “I have a theory about why moms are so strict.” Dante almost smiled. “It’s because they love us, Ari.”

“That’s part of it. The other part of it is that they want us to stay boys forever.”

“Yeah, I think that would make my mom happy—if I was a boy forever.” Dante looked down at the dead bird. A few minutes ago, he’d been mad as hell. Now, he looked like he was going to cry.

“I’ve never seen you that mad,” I said. “I’ve never seen you that mad, either.”

We both knew that we were mad for different reasons.

For a moment, we just stood there looking down at the dead bird. “It’s just a little sparrow,” he said. And then he started to cry.

I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there and watched him.

We walked back across the street and sat on his front porch. He tossed his tennis shoes across the street with all his might and anger. He wiped the tears from his face.

“Were you scared?” he asked. “No.”

“I was.”

“So?”

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.”

I wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn’t matter. But I knew it did matter. It mattered to Dante.

And, anyway, it didn’t do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. That’s the way he was.

And then he finally stopped. He took a deep breath and looked at me. “Will you help me bury the bird?”

“Sure.”

We got a shovel from his father’s garage and walked to the park where the dead bird was lying on the grass. I picked up the bird with the shovel and carried it across the street, into Dante’s backyard. I dug a hole underneath a big oleander.

We put the bird in the hole and buried it. Neither of us said a word.

Dante was crying again. And I felt mean because I didn’t feel like crying. I didn’t really feel anything for the bird. It was a bird. Maybe the bird didn’t deserve to get shot by some stupid kid whose idea of fun was shooting at things. But it was still just a bird.

I was harder than Dante. I think I’d tried to hide that hardness from him because I’d wanted him to like me. But now he knew. That I was hard. And maybe that was okay. Maybe he could like the fact that I was hard just as I liked the fact that he wasn’t hard.

We both stared at the bird’s grave. “Thanks,” he said. “Sure,” I said.

I knew he wanted to be alone.

“Hey,” I whispered, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” “We’ll go swimming,” he said.

“Yeah, we’ll go swimming.”

There was a tear running down his cheek. It seemed like a river in the light of the setting sun.

I wondered what it was like, to be the kind of guy that cried over the death of a bird.

I waved bye. He waved bye back.

As I walked home, I thought about birds and the meaning of their existence. Dante had an answer. I didn’t. I didn’t have any idea as to why birds existed. I’d never even asked myself the question.

Dante’s answer made sense to me. If we studied birds, maybe we could learn to be free. I think that’s what he was saying. I had a philosopher’s name. What was my answer? Why didn’t I have an answer?

And why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.

When I got home, I sat on my front porch. I watched the sun set.

I felt alone, but not in a bad way. I really liked being alone. Maybe I liked it too much. Maybe my father was like that too.

I thought of Dante and wondered about him.

And it seemed to me that Dante’s face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.

Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?