It Starts Here / 𝗯𝘅𝗯 (✓)

2: Notebooks and aquariums

CHAPTER TWO
Nine-years-old

Third grade is almost over and Ares Sanchez has decided that he hates math, soccer and the boy Julian in his class. He has also decided that he loves rain and mist, the month October (because of the rain and the mist), going to church with his mother and writing stories that he reads aloud for Felix when they're together.

"I don't understand why you like it," Felix says one of their last days of third grade. He still has to stretch his legs and kick the ground to start swinging. "I only write when Mr. Wen tells us to."

Because Ares thinks Felix will tell him that he thinks he's weird for it, he just shrugs.

"But you're good at it, too." Ares looks at Felix. He's smiling. "You're really good at spelling. And I like it when you read them to me. I hate reading them myself, but when you do it, I like it. They're good."

Ares grins. "I'll do it the rest of our lives."

He sees Felix smile. "Okay."

"And you will be the first I read them to," he continues. This makes Felix smile even more. "Then you can give me feedback. See if they're ready for others."

Felix turns his head. When he speaks, Ares can hear that he's still smiling. "Okay."

The summer vacation between third grade and fourth grade is spent like the last one: with Felix. 

Sometimes—when his mother is at work and his father is the only one there to take him to Felix's place—his father lets Ares walk to Felix's house on his own as long as he promises to be careful. It makes Ares feel like an adult and he always likes the way Felix gapes when he tells him that he walked there without a parent.

It's cool to be treated like an adult, Ares thinks, but if his father lets him sit in his lap and roll him over there on his wheelchair, then that's even better.

"You're ready?" his father will say and Ares will laugh even before he lifts his feet off the ground and curls up on his dad's lap. He will nod as seriously as possibly and then instantly laugh again when they start moving. 

Felix is always looking through the living room's window, watching them roll down the road as he waves through the glass. Ares remembers having been afraid of what Felix would say the first time this happened, but when Felix ran through the front door, he had been bouncing on his feet, asking if he could try, too. Ares likes that Felix likes his father. 

Then the summer vacation is over and it's the start of fourth grade. Felix doesn't convince Ares to like soccer, but he does convince him that Julian isn't as bad as he thought. Yes, he yells a lot in class for no apparent reason and he doesn't take the reading breaks seriously, but he's also good at telling jokes and he doesn't make fun of Ares when he tells him that he likes to write stories even when Mr. Wen doesn't force them to. He even looks impressed when Ares tells him he once wrote a three-hundred word long story about a cat and three birds becoming friends.

"Can you write a story about dinosaurs?" Felix asks him after school. 

They're both waiting for their mothers to pick them up. Julian is also sitting with them, but he's playing a game on his phone, so Ares doesn't know if he's listening or not. 

"Sure." Ares doesn't tell him that he already planned this for Felix's next birthday. "What do you want it to be about?"

"Dinosaurs."

Julian rolls his eyes, but Ares laughs. "What else?"

Felix huffs. "Aren't you supposed to figure that out? You're the writer."