IT WAS A RAINY SUMMER. EVERY AFTERNOON, THE clouds

would gather like a flock of crows, and it would rain. I fell in love with the thunder. I finished reading the Grapes of Wrath. Then I finished reading War and Peace. I decided I wanted to read all the books by Ernest Hemingway. My father decided he would read everything that I read. Maybe that was our way of talking.

Dante came over every day.

Mostly Dante would talk and I would listen. He decided that he should read The Sun Also Rises to me aloud. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I was never going to out-stubborn Dante Quintana. So every day he would read a chapter of the book. And then we would talk about it.

“It’s a sad book,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s why you like it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly right.”

He never asked me anything about what I thought of his sketches. I was glad about that. I had placed his sketchbook under my bed and refused to look at it. I think I was punishing Dante. He had given me a piece of himself that he had never given to another human being. And I hadn’t even bothered to look at it. Why was I doing that?

One day he blurted out that he’d finally gone to see a counselor.

I was hoping he wouldn’t tell me anything about his counseling session. He didn’t. I was glad about that. And then I was sort of mad he didn’t. Okay, so I was moody. And inconsistent. Yeah, that’s what I was.

Dante kept looking at me. “What?”

“Are you going to go?” “Where?”

“To see a counselor, you idiot.” “No.”

“No?”

I looked at my legs.

I could see he wanted to say “I’m sorry” again. But he didn’t.

“It helped,” he said. “Going to the counselor. It wasn’t so bad. It really did help.”

“Are you going back?” “Maybe.”

I nodded. “Talking doesn’t help everybody.” Dante smiled. “Not that you’d know.”

I smiled back. “Yeah. Not that I’d know.”