I’m not old. At least, I don’t think so. My face doesn’t bend or flap or fold in etches and layers of wrinkles. My fingers do not curl as slowly as ten cats’ tails. And no one thinks that I will splinter into a million shards of glass at a single touch. I can’t say that I’m old.

But for some reason, everyone seems to think so. All I ever seem to hear is, “Christine, you’re too old for this,” or “Christine, you’ve outgrown doing that.” I’m only sixteen. I didn’t think there was an age limit on watching Disney Channel or smashing snowmen made of Play-Doh. Dante is eighteen, but he’s made the habit of calling me his grandmother. I hate him and he hates me right back.

We’re best friends. Two peas in a pod.

Dante doesn’t tell me everything. He doesn’t tell me things that make him sad or worried or afraid. Not the way I do. He keeps secrets from me. I know this because I accidentally heard him argue with my father once.

I didn’t hear everything, but I did hear that it had something to do with church. I think. I didn’t ask because I was afraid they’d be upset that I was listening.

Church is how I met Dante, actually. He was seven, I was five. His father used to be a youth pastor, I remember. But out of nowhere, Dante’s father just left. Not just the church, the whole town. On the day I found out he was gone, I remember walking into the church hall to see all the brothers and sisters gathered together in a big circle, just chanting, “Jesus, rid us of our sins, the Lord is testing our faith!” And not long after that day, Dante decided to stop going to church, too.

I’ve asked both my mother and father what happened to Dante’s father once, but when I did, my father just shook his head and my mother rubbed my back and kissed my forehead and told me it was best that I never bring up the subject ever again, especially in front of Dante. Grandma Erin, who is not really my grandma, once told me that Satan possessed Dante and if I wanted to stay a good girl, I’d stay away from him because “Mother Mary herself blessed me with the gifts of innocence, naivety and chastity,” and “I didn’t need to become a Jezebel and carry no devil spawn.”

I want to stay a good girl. I do. But Dante is my friend. So I still go to his house to play Old Maid with him while he teaches me to dance to Nina Simone and Otis Redding. I wish he would teach me how to dance like Etta James, but when I asked him to, he threatened to twist my arm until I’d cry if I asked again.

I don’t see what’s so bad about Dante, other than the fact that he’s clearly too comfortable with beating me up.

Today, my mother told me to never tell a boy I love him because I’m still very young and I don’t know what love is yet exactly, and boys take advantage of that. And never have I ever told a boy I love him yet. And as embarrassing as it is to say, I’ve never even had a boyfriend, to be honest.

But I know what love is. I love God. I love my mother. I love my father. I love my friends from church. I love my friends from school. And I love Dante, too. He’s my friend. I love the way our fingers look like little snakes when he holds my hand. I love the way he knows how to pull the peel perfectly off of an orange without squishing the top. I love the way he can turn a sheet and two chairs into a dragon-infested castle. But most of all, I love how he has never explicitly told me he loves me, but goes out and does things to show me how much he loves me.

Dante is a good person. I’ve never met a person as noble as him, and if there is such a thing as Heaven, then Dante will definitely go up there when he dies. He deserves to. But anyone with eyes can tell everyone at church hates Dante. It doesn’t matter that he’s never sinned in his entire life. They simply hate him. Dante knows this. And as much as I’d rather not believe it, I know in my heart they hate him, too.

But that’s okay.

Everyone at church can hate him as much as they want, because he’s done so many good things in his life that it doesn’t matter. And above all, he has his mother’s love. He has his older brother’s love. And he has my love.



***



I was reading a passage from the Bible to a younger girl this Sunday. I thought of Dante:

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8

Today, it makes me think that maybe someday, when I’m older, I’ll tell Dante I love him. But of course, I’m in no hurry to grow up.