Every summer Santo Domingo slaps the Diaspora engine into reverse, yanks back as many of its expelled children as it can; airports choke with the overdressed; necks and luggage carousels groan under the accumulated weight of that year's cadenas and paquetes [chains and packages], and pilots fear for their planes—overburdened beyond belief—and for themselves; restaurants, bars, clubs, theaters, malecones [piers], beaches, resorts, hotels, moteles [motels], extra rooms, barrios, colonias [colonies], campos [fields], ingenios [mills] swarm with quisqueyanos [someone from Quisqueya] from the world over. Like someone had sounded a general reverse evacuation order: Back home, everyone! Back home! (2.6.2.4)

And there were pictures of Oscar's mom and dad. Young. Taken in the two years of their relationship.

You loved him, [Oscar] said to her.

[Beli] laughed. Don't talk about what you know nothing about. (2.6.1.14-2.6.1.16)

So, after Lola flew back to the States (Take good care of yourself, Mister) and the terror and joy of his return had subsided, after he settled down in Abuela's [grandmother's] house, the house that Diaspora had built, and tried to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his summer now that Lola was gone, after his fantasy of an Island girlfriend seemed like a distant joke – Who the f*** had he been kidding? He couldn't dance, he didn't have loot, he didn't dress, he wasn't confident, he wasn't handsome, he wasn't from Europe, he wasn't f***ing no Island girls – after he spent one week writing and (ironically enough) turned down his male cousins' offer to take him to a whorehouse like fifty times, Oscar fell in love with a semiretired puta [whore]. (2.6.5.2)

Oh, [Oscar and Ybón] got close all right, but we have to ask the hard questions again: Did they ever kiss in her Pathfinder? [...]. Did they ever f***?

Of course not. Miracles only go so far. He watched her for the signs, signs that would tell him she loved him. He began to suspect that it might not happen this summer, but already he had plans to come back for Thanksgiving, and then for Christmas. When he told her, she looked at him strangely and said only his name, Oscar, a little sadly. (2.6.11.1-2.6.11.2)

One night after the condom-foil incident Oscar woke up in his overly air-conditioned room and realized with unusual clarity that he was heading down that road again. The road where he became so nuts over a girl he stopped thinking. The road where very bad things happened. You should stop right now, he told himself. But he knew, with lapidary clarity, that he wasn't going to stop. He loved Ybón. (And love, for this kid, was a geas, something that could not be shaken or denied.) (2.6.12.4)

After his initial homecoming week, after he'd been taken to a bunch of sights by his cousins, after he'd gotten somewhat used to the scorching weather and the surprise of waking up to the roosters and being called Huáscar by everybody (that was his Dominican name, something else he'd forgotten), after he refused to succumb to that whisper that all long-term immigrants carry inside themselves, the whisper that says You do not belong [...]. (2.6.5.1)

Had Don Bosco, since we last visited, been miraculously transformed by the spirit of Christian brotherhood? Had the eternal benevolence of the Lord cleansed the students of their vile? Negro, please. Certainly the school struck Oscar as smaller now, and the older brothers all seemed to have acquired the Innsmouth "look" in the past five years, and there were a grip more kids of color—but some things (like white supremacy and people-of-color hate) never change: the same charge of gleeful sadism that he remembered from his youth still electrified the halls. (2.6.1.3)

The first feel of a woman's body pressing against yours – who among us can ever forget that? And that first kiss – well, to be honest, I've forgotten both of these firsts, but Oscar never would. For a second, he was in disbelief. This is it, this is really it! Her [Ybón] lips plush and pliant, and her tongue pushing into his mouth. And then there were lights all around them and he thought I'm going to transcend! Transcendence is miiine! (2.6.14.6)

I know what Negroes are going to say. Look, he's writing Suburban Tropical now. A puta [prostitute] and she's not an underage snort-addicted mess? […]. Would it be more believable if I turned Ybón into this other puta I know, Jahyra, a friend and a neighbor in Villa Juana, who still lives in one of those old-style pink wooden houses with the zinc roof? […]

But then I'd be lying. I know I've thrown a lot of fantasy and sci-fi in the mix but this is supposed to be a true account of the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (2.6.7.1-2.6.7.2)