Do you think you would like to test it with me?” Pete…

““Do you think you would like to test it with me?” Pete asked. He held out his hand, and Beatriz thought for a moment before taking it. Together they climbed onto the amber-brown dance stage and walked across the boards into the very center. They stopped and faced each other. “I don’t know how to dance,” Beatriz admitted. “I don’t either,” Pete said. “I guess we’ll figure it out.” Beatriz took his free hand and put it on her waist. “It’s cold,” Beatriz said. “It is,” Pete said. He stood a little closer to her so that they were warm together. “There’s no music,” Beatriz said. “We need the radio.” But the station had long since gone quiet, and Diablo Diablo had long since turned back into Joaquin. Pete put his voice right by Beatriz’s ear so that his breath warmed her skin, and he began to sing. It was nothing extravagant, just Patsy Cline sung in his low and uneven voice, and they began to dance. It was very quiet. No one else would have seen if not for the desert. But when the desert heard Pete Wyatt singing a love song, it took notice. The desert loved him, after all, and wanted him happy. So when it heard Pete singing, it rose a wind around them until the breeze sang gently like strings, and when it heard Pete singing, it provoked the air to heat and cool around every stone and plant so that each of these things sounded in harmony with his voice, and when it heard Pete singing, it roused Colorado’s grasshoppers to action and they rubbed their legs together like a soft horn section, and when it heard Pete singing, it shifted the very ground beneath Bicho Raro so that the sand and the dirt pounded a beat that matched the sound of the incomplete heart that lived in Pete Wyatt. The sound of this roused the Sorias from their sleep. Francisco looked out of his greenhouse and saw Pete and Beatriz dancing, and he missed Antonia. Antonia looked out the window of her house and saw Pete and Beatriz dancing, and she missed Francisco. Luis the one-handed took out his future love’s box of gloves from beside his bed and counted them. Nana reached for the photograph of her long-dead husband. Michael had been sleeping rolled up in his own lengthy beard, but he woke up and returned to sleep rolled up with Rosa instead. Judith looked out her window and wept with happiness to see her sister happy, and Eduardo wept, too, because he always liked to dress to match his wife when he could.””

— Maggie Stiefvater