The Sun is Also a Star: Chapter 35 Summary & Analysis

Natasha admits to the reader that Daniel was smart to use science against her, and she observes that he's too optimistic, earnest, and good at making her laugh. He asks their first question: if and how she'd like to be famous. Natasha asks Daniel to go first, and he says he'd be a famous "poet in chief." His job would be to offer wise and poetic counsel to world leaders. Natasha is skeptical, especially when Daniel insists that poetry can save lives.

Natasha says that she'd be a benevolent dictator. She recognizes she won't be able to please all her subjects, so she suggests that Daniel could comfort the losers with poetry. Natasha checks her phone and thinks of all the other multiverses out there, and how those might've played out. Daniel interrupts her reverie to ask her secret hunch about how she'll die. Natasha says that black women in the US are most likely to die of heart disease at age 78.

Daniel tugs Natasha back from the curb, and she thinks it feels familiar. Daniel believes he'll die by gunshot at a gas station or liquor store, trying to do something heroic. They laugh, and Natasha turns them towards Eighth Avenue. Daniel stops to take off his jacket, which Natasha thinks seems weirdly intimate. He asks to put it in her backpack, which seems even more intimate. Natasha notices how broad his chest is and thinks that his eyes are kind of beautiful. She wonders what he wears normally and then wonders what Jamaican boys wear. She feels suddenly sad at the thought of adjusting to a new culture.

Natasha informs Daniel that Asian American men are most likely to die of cancer. He asks if Natasha truly believes she's going to die of something boring, and she insists that dead is dead. Finally, Natasha admits that she's afraid of drowning in the deep end of a hotel pool. Daniel is floored; he doesn't see how someone born in Jamaica doesn't know how to swim. He offers to teach her and teases her about her dislike of chlorinated pools. She laughs and tries not to wish that he could actually teach her to swim.