was two years older than him, with chocolate brown eyes and ringlets down

to her shoulders.  One day at the edge of the playground she told him that if

he took off his shirt and climbed to the top of a tree, she'd let him kiss her when

he came down.  His face lit up, and within seconds his shirt was off and he was

climbing up, up, up.  At the top, he yelled:

"Look Gabriela, look!"

He heard her faint laughter, saw her flip him the finger.  She yelled:

"You idiot!"

Gabriela threw his shirt into some thorny bushes.  Miguel gripped the branch in

his hands so hard his knuckles turned white.  He'd climbed so high he wasn't

even sure he could get down so he carefully sat on a wide branch beneath him. 

He thought how surely real men were beyond loneliness, how he would have to

become one of those men if he ever wanted to get anywhere.