My heart was beat, beat, beating. No one, except my mother, had ever looked at me or spoken to me like this. “You are the most sensitive and beautifu… - Victor Villaseñor

Suddenly, I wondered what the hell was going on. Ramón had been the smartest and most capable guy in our whole grade in “thinking” and “figuring” out things, and he’d been considered dumb, too. And now Gus, he was also the smartest guy of all of us during recess and he just said that he’d been flunked before. This didn’t make any damn—I mean, blessed—sense to me at all! The smartest kids I knew were all considered stupid.

"Yes," he said. "You see, I, too, have been seeing a lot of things, now that I've been spending so much time at the hospital." He took a deep breath. "One night I got up and went down the hallway to see this woman who was crying. She was an elderly woman and the doctors didn't know what to do for her. She was dying. I held her hand and stroked her forehead like she was a child. She immediately calmed down and was able to pass over in her sleep so peacefully. "The night nurse was furious, and the next morning she told the doctors what I'd done. They, too, became upset, telling me I didn't have the authority to visit other patients. That poor nurse and the doctors, they just weren't prepared to accept the simple truth that they aren't in control. No one is in control, Mundo. We're all just God's guests for a short time." I don't know why, but I now asked, "Joseph, are you dying?" He looked at me straight in the eyes. "Yes, Mundo," he said, "I'm dying."

Sex and love were driving the whole world and me crazyloco! I just couldn’t stand it anymore! I was going to have to kill myself.