Sal and Gabi Break the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  American Stepmom tsk-tsk ed. “Hospital food. No one deserves that.”

  “I could drive somewhere. Get him something.”

  “Let’s wait until he wakes up. See what he wants.”

  “Before or after we punish him?”

  “After.”

  They went quiet. My skin felt hot all over, boiling and wet, like I was a chicken getting fried. But I didn’t move. They were right; they never punished me, even when we all knew I deserved it.

  “She was really there,” American Stepmom said a half minute later. “Your dead wife. In the flesh. I danced with her.”

  The room was so quiet I could hear Papi taking her hand. “Were you scared?”

  “A little. But…curious, too. She’s so different every time she appears. She was very nice this time.”

  Papi made an appreciative hmph sound. After a second he added, “You danced well.”

  “Shut up.”

  “No, I’m serious! You were learning. You were getting better.”

  American Stepmom play-smacked Papi before repeating, “Shut. Up!”

  “What? It’s true.”

  “It’s…weird. This time, this appearance, I kind of…liked her. I liked her right away. The food she made, the way she welcomed me. Invited me to dance. Phew, baby. Is that more what she was like, when she was alive? Was that her real personality?”

  “Real…” Papi said, his voice a million miles away. “Every time she visits, I always see parts of the Floramaria I knew. It’s fascinating, from a scientific perspective. If there are infinite parallel universes, then the vast majority of them shouldn’t have Floramarias at all, and those that do shouldn’t have Floramarias I can recognize. But in all the Floramarias Sal has brought over, I’ve seen different aspects of the woman I married. It should be statistically impossible, unless Sal is somehow able to bring over Floramarias that most resemble his mami. But how could he do that? How can he do any of this? This is all exceedingly impossible.”

  Beep went the monitors, drip went the IV in my arm. Some machine exhaled the way people in movies sigh when they’re in love. The hospital intercom said something in hospital code.

  After a while, I heard American Stepmom scratch her scalp. “Is it time to check Sal for calamitrons, Gustavo?”

  “Oh, right. Yes. Thank you,” said Papi.

  I heard Papi get up. There was some clanking and clattering. I opened my left eye a crack, just enough to be able to see a little through the cage of my eyelashes.

  Papi was walking toward me with a device that looked like a black weed-whacker from the future. He turned it on.

  “I’m alive!” the machine yelled happily.

  “Shh!” said Papi. “Can you please be quiet for a change?”

  “Oh, sure,” the machine said sulkily, “I can just work like a slave for you, with no thoughts or opinions of my own, like I am some third-rate AI who doesn’t even count as a—”

  Papi turned it off. It took every ounce of my willpower not to laugh. After he looked at me for a few seconds and was satisfied I hadn’t woken up, he turned the machine on again.

  “I’m alive!” the machine barely whispered.

  “Not another word,” said Papi, “or I’ll turn you off for the rest of the day.”

  He held the device up by its awkward handlebars, and a three-blade propeller, glowing ghost-blue and buzzing, spun as slow as a windmill beneath it. He swept the machine over the length of my body like he was beachcombing me. Then he sat back down with it. He and American Stepmom leaned close to look at a readout built into the handlebars.

  The Metal Detector of Tomorrow chimed happily when it had finished its calculations and, in a loud robot voice, announced, “Zero calamitrons detected! Congratulations! Your universe isn’t ending!”

  “Turn that thing off!” American Stepmom yell-whispered.

  “You were going to turn me off anyway,” said the machine. “But you can’t quench my spirit! I love to be alive!”

  Papi switched it off. “Sorry, mi vida! Did we wake him?”

  I closed my left eye all the way and smacked my lips. “It doesn’t look like it,” said American Stepmom. But she didn’t sound all the way convinced, either. I’d have to be more careful. “Well, at least there are no calamitrons. Here, anyway.”

  “Which makes no sense.” Papi started pacing; I cracked an eye again to watch him. “Sal was hanging out with Floramaria all day. He should have collected all sorts of calamitrons from her. Calamitrons love people.”

  American Stepmom rubbed her eyes when she said, “Especially us. Is this going to be Connecticut all over again? Are we going to have to move, Gustavo? We just got here!”

  “We’re not moving, mi vida. I’ll fix everything. Starting tomorrow.”

  Something in the way Papi said that made my stomach burble.

  American Stepmom had heard the edge in Papi’s voice, too. “Gustavo, are you saying what I think you’re saying? The remembranation machine? It’s finished?”

  Papi had the faraway look of an astronaut explaining what it’s like to gaze out a space station window and see planet Earth rotating beneath you. “Lucy, mi amor, up to now, calamity physics has been helpless. We’ve known about calamitrons for more than a decade, but we’ve only been able to detect them for the last three years, thanks to these entropy sweepers.”

  He started petting the device. Its robot voice said, “Ahhhhh.”

  Papi jumped. “I thought I turned you off!”

  “I’m a class-eight AI, señor. No human can turn me off if I want to be on!” said the sweeper.

  Papi yanked its battery pack out of the handle, and it instantly lost all power.

  “Why did you program that thing to be so sassy?” American Stepmom asked him. She was loving this as much as I was.

  Papi shrugged. “Intelligent machines make for better science. What was I saying?”

  “You were telling me about your shiny new remembranation machine.”

  “Oh yeah.” Papi stood quickly, holding the entropy sweeper over his head like a battle-ax. “Tomorrow, mi vida, the game changes! We’re getting a machine that will repair holes in the universe! Remembranate matter itself! Protect us from a potential universal catastrophe!”

  Papi used to share everything about his work with me, but this was news to me. What did it mean? No more holes? No more visits from Mami?

  I noticed I had stopped breathing. I thought it might be a good idea to start again. But slowly, so I wouldn’t draw attention.

  American Stepmom had been quiet for a while. She’d been thinking. I could hear the doubt coming off her, the way you can hear rain arriving. “Yeah? You’ve got it all figured out?”

  Papi sat down heavily. The cushion on his chair wheezed. “Well, who knows, really? This is all brand-new, and in science, ‘brand-new’ usually means ‘wrong.’ But it’s a start. With luck, we’ll learn a lot about the barriers between universes—and, more importantly, what happens when you punch a hole in those barriers.”

  “When Sal punches holes in those barriers,” American Stepmom corrected.

  “Yes.” Papi exhaled, and the air in the room felt as heavy as Jupiter’s atmosphere, acidic gasses pressing down on us, getting into our lungs. Well, that’s what it felt like to me, at least. I closed my eyes again.

  “The elephant in the room,” American Stepmom said with the precise pronunciation of a principal getting ready to punish a student, “is that we’ve been way too easy on Sal.”

  Papi’s head sank like an anchor. “It’s my fault. When his mami died, I didn’t know what to say. So I told him, ‘Mi niño, don’t be sad! There are infinite universes out there where your mamita is alive, waiting for you!’ I didn’t think he’d, you know, actually be able to find her.”

  “And bring her back.”

  “And have her cook dinner.”

  After several loud ticks of the clock—just enough time to give herself a silent pep talk—American Stepmom answered wit
h, “We’ve both made mistakes when it comes to Sal, Gustavo. But we have to do what’s right for him. I know it’s hard. But we told Sal he wasn’t to bring Floramaria back anymore. We have to punish him for disobeying us.”

  Tick, tick, tock. “Okay,” said Papi. Reluctantly.

  “So what do you think?”

  “Um…Ah…Well. What’s traditional? Grounded for two weeks?”

  “That…seems harsh.”

  “Yeah. One week?” But he immediately answered his own question. “We just moved here. It’s not fair to keep him from making friends when he’s the new kid….”

  “Yeah. What about no TV for a week?”

  “He wouldn’t miss it. It’s not like when we were growing up, Lucy. Kids today just binge-watch a whole season in, like, half a day. It needs to be something he does all the time. Something he cares about.” Papi snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! What about no magic for a week? Now that he would miss.”

  Three dead seconds. Then: “Phew, baby. He’d certainly know we mean business.”

  “Too harsh?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s just harsh enough, for a change.”

  “Okay. So it’s agreed, then.”

  “When he wakes up, we present a united front.”

  “We will both walk up to his bed, holding hands.”

  “And we’ll say, ‘Sal—’”

  “‘For a whole week, you aren’t allowed to do any mag—’”

  “Hey, guys,” I said, sitting up in bed, stretching sleepily.

  My parents rushed to my bed so fast they forgot to hold hands. “How do you feel, mijo?” asked Papi.

  “A little better,” I said, and I gave each of them a worried look. “Is Mami still here?”

  Both parents swallowed at the same time. American Stepmom answered, “No, Sal. She’s gone.”

  I looked down and nodded. I could feel their desire to protect me radiating from them like heat from a Connecticut fireplace. That’s when I looked up at them and asked, “Did she hurt anybody?”

  Papi answered. “No. We’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

  “Thank goodness,” I said, and I faked that I was getting sleepy again. I fluttered my eyelids shut. “I couldn’t live with myself if I ever did anything to hurt either of you.”

  I opened one eye a crack. They both looked like they were about to cry.

  “Are you going to punish me?” I asked, sinking into my pillow. “I didn’t bring Mami on purpose this time. But it’s still my fault. I know I deserve it.”

  “No,” they replied at the same time. And then they looked at each other.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Papi said.

  “We’re just glad you’re okay,” said American Stepmom.

  “You just get some rest.”

  “We’re going to stay here all night with you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I love you.”

  “I love you, son,” they said together.

  Look, I probably deserved some kind of punishment for a few things I’d done that day.

  But a week without magic? Not gonna happen.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, I woke up again. The clock on the wall read 10:37. As many lights as possible had been turned off, but in a hospital room, you’re never fully in the dark. I sat up in bed, my eyes taking their time to adjust to the maple-syrup glow of the room. Monitors displayed eerie blue numbers, and green LEDs blipped on and off and on again. The whirs and sighs and beeps of the machines sounded like robots talking in their sleep.

  I couldn’t believe the day wasn’t over yet. Seemed like I had been up forever. I probably should have rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

  But I was starving. Pretending to fall asleep had actually put me to sleep before Papi could score me some grub. I’d barely eaten all day.

  Sometimes, when I get hungry enough, I daydream about just reaching into another universe and yoinking someone’s chicken nuggets. Mmm, chicken nuggets. But it wouldn’t work. Mami Muerta’s meal had disappeared right out of my padres’ stomachs because she had brought her own groceries with her from wherever she’d come from. In the same way, any food I swiped from a different universe would eventually vanish and leave me hungry all over again. Every time a hole closed, it took with it everything that had come through it: nuggets, Cuban feasts, formerly dead Mamis, everything.

  And if a hole didn’t close…Well, they usually closed, eventually. No need to dwell on that.

  The point was, I needed grub, pronto. I could have woken the padres, but Papi and American Stepmom were snoring a restful duet in chairs at the foot of my bed. They’d had a long day, too.

  I could handle this. I had a few bucks in my pocket, and I knew exactly where the closest vending machine was. I could be in and out before my parents snored a dozen times.

  If you’re wondering how I knew where the closest vending machine was, it’s because I became a volunteer magician for the patients in the hospital within a week of our moving to Miami. When you’re a magician, volunteering to perform at hospitals is a no-brainer. It gives me tons of practice (especially with up-close magic, which is the toughest kind, and also my favorite), a place to try out new tricks, and the most appreciative audience in the world: good people with rotten luck who are desperate for a little fun.

  Plus, I have type-1 diabetes. Making friends with my local hospital is just smart.

  A nurse must’ve taken out the IV after I’d fallen asleep again; all that was left in the crook of my elbow was a ball of cotton under a bandage. Nothing to stop me from foraging for some eats. So, gingerly, ninja-ly, I put my sock-silent feet on the floor one at a time, soft-footed it over to the door, and slipped through.

  Hospital hallways are really bright: white walls, white ceiling, fluorescent lights whiter than white, and a white polished floor reflecting all that whiteness back up again. For a second I worried I was starting to pass out again.

  I’d have to get past the nurses’ station right after the elevators, because, well, all the nurses knew me, and they would probably try to make me eat some healthy cacaseca that tasted like pencil shavings. Or they’d stick another IV in my arm. And I was done with holes in my skin for the night.

  As soon as I was past the elevators, I got down on all fours and started to crawl. Two nurses were working at the station: Ortiz and Calembe.

  I knew them. They were all right. They were keeping themselves awake during the graveyard shift with high-speed Cuban gossip. It flew out of their mouths so fast I couldn’t follow it, but it must have been really juicy, because they were laughing and having a good time. I’d been hoping they’d be sleepier, or out on rounds.

  I snuck over to the desk, pressed my back against it, and waited for an idea to come. I didn’t have a lot of props for magic tricks with me—my vest was back in my room—so I checked my cargo-pants pockets to see what I had to work with. Spare change, scarves, foam balls, poppers, six pairs of handcuffs from earlier, a finger guillotine, a deck of cards…Aha! This could work: a handheld alert siren I was supposed to set off if I needed help. It was totally impractical in real life—it’s much faster to just yell “Help!”—but insurance had covered it, so I could find a use for it, sure. Like, say, distracting nurses.

  Practice makes perfect. I silently went through the motions three times of how I was going to pull this off: (1) turn on siren, (2) chuck it down the side hallway, (3) run the other way, wet-cat fast.

  I took a deep breath, pumped myself up. Then I set off the siren and threw it.

  “¿Qué’eso?” said Calembe, who did that Cuban thing of smashing all the syllables in a sentence into one word. She made “What is that?” sound exactly like “Cheese?” in Spanish.

  “¿Alarma?” asked Ortiz. Then she got up and added, “Extraño,” probably because my siren didn’t sound like any of the noises the hospital usually made. Believe me, with the amount of time I spent in hospitals, I knew them all.

  A few seconds later, they both walked
down the side hallway to investigate. I immediately crawl-galloped past the station and out of sight. I couldn’t help but think that sometimes these things were just too easy.

  “What in the name of bad ideas do you think you’re doing, Chacumbele?”

  Busted.

  Whenever I’m doing a magic trick, there’s always one person I can’t fool.

  One kid in the pediatrics ward will always spot me palming a coin. One judge at the talent show will always know exactly where to look. At Culeco, that person was clearly going to be Gabi. And among the hospital staff, that person was Nurse Dulce Sotolongo.

  I rose slowly, putting my hands on top of my head. “I give up. Don’t shoot!”

  She laughed as she walked up, grabbed my left wrist, and dragged me over to the hand-sanitizer dispenser on the wall. “Do you know how many germs there are on the floor of a hospital?”

  “Like, six?” I said. “Oh, wait, that’s way too low. Nineteen.”

  “Ha-ha,” she said, right before she snorted. She seemed too young to be a nurse. She looked a lot like Mami Muerta does in her wedding photo: curvy, happy, black hair crashing like a waterfall over her shoulders. Maybe that’s why we’d had this brother-sister mess-with-me-I’ll-mess-with-you thing going from the moment we’d met. “Do I dare ask qué en el nombre de la alfombra you’re doing on the floor?” she added.

  With Nurse Sotolongo, honesty was the best policy. Usually. “I need food,” I said.

  “You didn’t take out your IV just so you could get some Skittles, did you?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

  I shook my head and crossed my heart.

  She gave me cacaseca eyes, but I could see she was running through options in her mind.

  Suddenly, an idea made her smile. “You like parties?”

  I do, in fact. But I had a different question. “Isn’t it a little late for a party in a hospital?”

  “Not for this family. They get whatever they want. Follow me.”

  She led me past the waiting room, around the corner, down another long hallway, and past another bank of elevators. As we approached the other waiting room on this floor, I heard a bunch of voices: Spanish and English, all ages, everyone laughing and talking at the same time. Papi calls that many Cubans partying together a “gallinero”—a chicken coop’s worth of noisy, cheerful clucking.