Sal and Gabi Break the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  “How can I take it if Iggy—?” But she didn’t finish. Instead, her face was lit from within by an idea. “Oh!” said Gabi, her hands dropping to her side. “This is how it happened.”

  I bunched my eyebrows. “How what happened?”

  “How you broke the universe.” I was about to complain, but she corrected herself. “No, not broke. Broke through. To other universes. To see your mami again.”

  I nodded. “And now I can’t seem to stop.”

  The machines suddenly came alive, singing a choir song of bleep-blep-bop. We looked all around, scared something bad was happening. But the machines went back to their normal conversations in a few seconds, and Nurse Sotolongo didn’t come charging in. Everything was okay for now.

  Gabi stared hard at Iggy. Her fingers clawed at the top of the incubator. “I mean, what if you don’t need to stop? What if you just have to learn the right way to do it?”

  I thought of Other Gladis’s Sal. “Maybe?” And then I added, “Today I snorted a calamitron.”

  “What?”

  I laughed and then gave her a fifteen-minute lesson on calamity physics, which, trust me, covered pretty much everything anyone knows about it. Ask Papi if you don’t believe me.

  I could see why teachers liked Gabi. The longer I calamity-splained, the more excited she became. At the end of my lecture, Gabi gripped my arms. “Do you know what this means, Sal?”

  I looked at each of her hands until, one by one, she let go. “No. But I am sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “It means you can fix the universe!” She did a skip-twirl-dance around the incubator. Then, collecting herself, she stopped, and, putting both hands on the incubator and peering in, she became suddenly thoughtful. “We need to conduct more experiments immediately.”

  “I can show you on Monday, before first period.” I suddenly remembered the entropy sweeper. I’d been so distracted by my conversation with Principal Torres that I’d forgotten all about it. I should probably try to get it from school before Papi missed it. “Or maybe sooner?”

  “Maybe?!” Gabi said, the fighter jets in her hair scrambling wildly. “Are you kidding? We’re going now! Right now! This very second!”

  GABI HAD A WAY of making me feel like a seven-year-old.

  I mean, I didn’t have a MagicCarp.et app that I could use to call for a car anytime I wanted. I couldn’t, because you need a credit card to make that app work, and the padres’ response to my request for a credit card had gone pretty much like this:

  SAL ASKS HIS PADRES FOR A CREDIT CARD

  A Tragedy

  Scene: Sal, a perfect son, asks his parents for a credit card.

  AMERICAN STEPMOM: [snorts]

  PAPI: No.

  AMERICAN STEPMOM: [snorts]

  FIN.

  But it’s also the way Gabi talked to her parents. We went back to the waiting room to ask if we could leave for a while. “Hey, adulting types,” said Gabi. “Sal and I need to go back to Culeco for a few minutes.”

  “Back to Culeco?” American Stepmom started. “At this hour?”

  “At all hours!” said Ms. Reál. “Gabi practically lives there. She’s a very hands-on student council president.”

  “Oh,” said American Stepmom. “But the school will be closed, won’t it?”

  “Principal Torres gave her keys so she can come and go as she pleases,” said Lightning Dad. “Gabi practically runs that school.”

  “Gave her keys? Really?!” I don’t know if the others got this, but American Stepmom, who was herself an assistant principal, had I would never in a million years give keys to the school to one of my students! written all over her face.

  Cari-Dad smiled and sighed. “Kids today. They’re so much more involved and active in their schools! Don’t kids today seem smarter than we were?”

  Grizzly Dad’ums nodded. “All I did was play soccer and video games back then.”

  “I got into lots of trouble when I was first being programmed,” said Dad: The Final Frontier. She blinked as she remembered good times. “Oh, the humans I annihilated.” When she saw everybody’s face in the room, she added quickly, “What? Too soon?”

  Ms. Reál looked dreamily at the ceiling. “All I did was fantasize about dating everybody,” she said. “And I mean everybody.” She turned to Papi. “And what about you, Gustavo? What were you like as a child?”

  “I was like Sal,” said Papi. “A little too smart for my own good.”

  American Stepmom was looking around impatiently. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to let the kids go to Culeco this late.”

  Ms. Reál laughed. She immediately regretted it and then, recovering fast, cleared her throat and put on a face that was six times more serious than it needed to be. “And why do you think that, Lucy?”

  “Well,” American Stepmom said carefully, “because it’s nighttime. I don’t think kids should be walking the streets of Miami at all hours.”

  Gabi raised her hand eagerly, waving it around like she was shipwrecked on an island and a ship was passing by.

  American Stepmom, confused, wasn’t sure what do to. She looked around, and all the Gabi dads signaled with their heads that she should call on Gabi. So she did. “Yes, Gabi?”

  Gabi straightened her clothes and, as formally as if making a speech in English class, said, “We will not be walking the streets, as I will summon a car to convey us to and from our destination. I will pay for the car using my own money, so Sal need not ask you for any kind of bus fare or what have you. I promise that our business at Culeco will be completed by nine p.m., and that, barring any accident of fate, we will return to the hospital by nine-thirty. If any mishap occurs, I will send a group text to apprise you all of our situation and our new ETA. I hope you find these terms acceptable, and I remain open to discussing and negotiating any additional terms that would increase the comfort of all parties involved. Thank you very much for your time and consideration in this matter.”

  When Gabi finished, Reina and the Gabi dads burst into applause.

  “Very convincing!” said Dada-ist.

  “Who could say no to that?” asked Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman!

  Then everybody in the room turned to American Stepmom to see if she actually would say no.

  “Um, well,” said American Stepmom, “that’s very thorough. I guess that’s okay.”

  The room exploded into applause again.

  “Thank you!” said Gabi, running up to American Stepmom and hugging her. American Stepmom hugged her back sincerely. I could see it happening in her face. She was falling under Gabi’s spell now, too.

  “Just one question,” Papi added. “What are you actually going to be doing at school? You never told us.”

  I am so glad everyone was looking at Gabi and not me. I could feel my face start to glow with guilt. But Gabi? She had her answer ready.

  “Science!”

  More specifically, Gabi told Papi we were doing a science experiment, that it had to be done at Culeco, before Monday, and that the equipment we needed was at school.

  “All true,” Gabi added as she took out her Culeco keycard and unlocked the front doors to our school. Her fighter-jet barrettes caught moonbeams and turned to smears of blue-white light in her hair. She had also changed her shirt before we left. This one read: “WHEN I’M GOOD, I’M VERY GOOD, BUT WHEN I’M BAD, I’M BETTER.”—MAE WEST.

  “Totally,” I agreed. “Those are the best kind of lies.”

  She turned around, her hand still on the door handle. “What? I didn’t lie. Everything I said was the truth.”

  “Haven’t your padres ever yelled at you for ‘lies of omission’?”

  “My parents don’t yell at me,” she sniffed.

  “Yeah, well, if my papi finds out what we’re really doing here, we’re both gonna get yelled at.”

  Gabi, slightly offended, I think, stood as straight as she could. “We are about to conduct a scientific experiment, just like your dad does. Science is g
ood, right? Plus, we’re doing it for the best possible reason. We’re trying to save the universe here, Sal! We are good people for doing this!”

  “Don’t have to convince me.” I cut in front of her to grab the door handle and open the door for her. “After you, m’lady.”

  Gabi’s British accent was terrible. “M’yes, a-thank you!” She started to walk in—

  —when I thought of something. I grabbed her arm. “The cameras!”

  Gabi looked at my hand like I’d just wiped all the slobber from a Saint Bernard’s mouth on her sleeve. I let go.

  Still using her really bad British accent, she said, “M’thar’s nothing for you to be worried about, Sal. The cameras aren’t on.”

  Blink. Blink. And one more blink. “What do you mean they’re not on?”

  She smiled proudly. “I, with the help of the student council, thought the cameras created an atmosphere of mistrust and unduly infringed on students’ rights to privacy. We voted to have the cameras deactivated at the end of last year, and Principal Torres agreed to turn them off. She’s a very reasonable woman, you know.”

  I quickly reviewed all the trouble those nonoperational cameras had caused me over my first week of school and, using yet another of my meditation techniques, popped the anger each memory brought with it like a balloon. Then, after a big juicy sigh, I said, “Great. No cameras. Makes our lives easier. After you, m’lady?” I bowed and gestured for her to go in already.

  She started to, but then she took a step backward and, really seeing it for the first time, asked, “Why are you wearing that stupid hat, Sal?”

  She was talking about my rainbow LED hat. I turned it on and tipped it toward her. “The better to see you with. And where we’re going.” And then, deciding that Gabi could hold her own door, I charged past her and went inside.

  She followed right behind, trying hard not to giggle when she said, “You look like a unicorn and a Christmas tree had a baby.” But she could barely finish without cracking herself up again.

  Loudly. “Do you mind?” I shushed. “We’re trying to carry out a secret operation here?”

  “Sorry,” she said, and capped her mouth with her hand. Which only made her start laughing again. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s not like anyone else is here.”

  Thanks to my hat, which was an excellent tool and a very smart investment, we didn’t need to flip any light switches. I glowed like a god through those hallways, thank you very much. We took the stairs up a floor and prowled over to Mrs. Waked’s classroom. Gabi used her keycard to get us inside. I really needed to get me one of those.

  Well, at least now it was my turn to surprise her. I pulled the entropy sweeper out from its hiding place in the costume rack.

  As soon as it felt my hand on it, it cycled through colors like a baseball scoreboard. “I’m alive!” it proclaimed. “I’m alive!”

  “Whoa!” said Gabi. “Are you really alive?”

  “No,” the sweeper said sadly. “I’m only a class-eight AI. That means I always want to cry at weddings, but I can’t.”

  “Because you don’t have human emotions?”

  “No. Because I don’t have a face.” And it displayed an unhappy-face emoji on its handlebars.

  I tried to tell Gabi that laughing at the sweeper’s jokes would only encourage it, but did she listen?

  After introductions—the entropy sweeper seemed to be half in love with Gabi already and insisted she be the one to carry it—we walked up another flight of stairs and down the hall to our target: Yasmany’s locker. Zip-zip-zip and I opened it.

  “I think the hole’s a little smaller,” said Gabi. “I mean, I think it is. Is it?”

  I turned my head sideways. “Maybe a little? I can’t really tell.”

  “I can! It’s smaller!” said the entropy sweeper. “The dismembranation index of this space-time rupture was thirty-seven when I measured it this morning. Now it’s thirty-six.”

  “Good machine!” said Gabi, petting the sweeper.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhh,” said the sweeper. Needy little thing.

  “Thirty-six,” I repeated. It took me a second to remember why that number was important. “That’s how many calamitrons you said were left in the hallway today.”

  “Um, yeah,” said the sweeper. “And thirty-six is less than thirty-seven. Very good, Sal.” And then, whispering loudly, it added, “Geez, Gabi. This Sal kid isn’t the sharpest cheddar in the dairy aisle, is he?”

  I ignored it. “So all I have to do is snort up the rest of them, and the hole will close, right?”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” said the sweeper. All the sarcasm was gone from its voice. Now it sounded a heck of a lot like Papi. “We don’t know what calamitrons will do to human tissue. They could act like radiation and make you sick, or worse.”

  “Or maybe they’ll give me superpowers!”

  “Dude,” Gabi cacaseca’ed, “you can steal stuff from other universes. You’re good on superpowers.”

  “The point is, we don’t know what will happen. We have to be smart or brave. But which is the right one right now? To snort, or not to snort?”

  Neither Gabi nor the entropy sweeper had a response to that. And neither of them thought my ingesting calamitrons was a good idea. The way they buzzed, changed colors, and slowly spun their propellers told me how worried they were for me. Well, that was mostly the entropy sweeper, but Gabi looked worried, too.

  But I was the one who kept breaking the universe. I had to be the one to fix it. “Here goes nothing,” I said. And then I sucked air with all my might.

  “Thirty-five!” said the entropy sweeper.

  “The hole’s smaller!” said Gabi, peering into the locker. “I can definitely tell this time.”

  I inhaled again, bigly. “Thirty-three!” said the sweeper. “You got two that time!”

  “It’s working!” I said. “I can close the hole!” And I exhaled all the air in my lungs to get ready to fix everything with one mighty suck.

  Just as I started to inhale, Gabi ran over to me and pinched my nose shut. I looked at her fingers cross-eyed.

  “Not yet,” she said. “We need to be scientific. You’ve popped four calamitrons so far today. How do you feel?”

  I said with a pinched-nose voice, “Fine. I feel fine.” And I really did. Maybe a little gassy, but that was from all the Cuban food I’d eaten back at the hospital. I really liked Reina Reál’s black beans.

  Gabi didn’t all-the-way believe me. “Let’s get Nurse Sotolongo to check you out before you pig out on any more calamitrons.”

  “Listen to her, Sal,” said the machine, its voice shaky with worry.

  I gave in with a sigh. “Fine,” I said. “Now, can you let go of my nose?”

  We had two more places to search for calamitrons before we headed back to the hospital: in the multipurpose room, where I’d switched the climbing wall, and in the first-floor restroom, where that other Sal had switched Gladises. The multipurpose room was closer, so, with Gabi carrying her new BFF, the entropy sweeper, we headed there first.

  But when we arrived, we saw through the door’s windows that a light was on inside.

  We slowed down, and stopped in front of the door. Then we looked at each other.

  “Are we there yet?” said the very loud entropy sweeper, letting every ax murderer and serial killer in the building know exactly where we were. Gabi and I both jumped in the air like cats.

  “Shh!” said Gabi.

  “Humans,” the machine grumbled. “Even the nice ones turn on you.”

  I reached over and turned off the sweeper. Then, signaling to Gabi with my head, we both pressed our noses to the window to have a look.

  Inside, someone had stacked the gym mats into a big pile and made a blanket out of the mats’ canvas cover. A half-deflated football lay at one end like a pillow. And resting against the football pillow was a shaggy pink teddy bear with hearts for eyes.

  “Oso Amoroso,” gasped Gabi.
>
  That means “Bear of Love.” The name of the teddy, probably. But how the heck did Gabi know that? “What?” I asked her.

  She didn’t answer. Her face was volcanoing with blood, and she began to shake with rage. She walked a step away from the door and turned around. Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and used voice-to-text to send someone a message. This is what she said:

  “Guess where I am standing question mark I am standing in front of the all caps MULTIPURPOSE all caps ROOM comma and guess what I just saw through the window question mark I saw capital Oso capital Amoroso sleeping on a football pillow and a bed made of those gross gym mats period new line new line You are my friend period You are supposed to tell me when you need help period This is all caps COMPLETELY unacceptable period new line new line Write me back all caps THIS all caps INSTANT and tell me where you are period send.”

  Carefully, politely, I peeked over Gabi’s shoulder to see whom she’d sent that message to. When I saw, I gasped.

  But Gabi didn’t respond. She just stared at her phone, trying to force it to send her a response. “Write me back,” she said, her teeth clenched. “A curse upon your mother’s head. Write me!”

  And then, a second later, Yasmany did. In bathroom dang how you find me

  YASMANY STOOD OUTSIDE the first-floor bathroom, brushing his teeth, as we walked toward him. He had on a Miami Heat tank top, a rolled towel draped over his shoulders, and striped old-man pajama bottoms that he’d rolled up to his calves. He was barefoot. His feet were as big as rakes.

  He didn’t look happy to see us. He scrubbed his molars and scowled as we approached.

  I could feel Gabi tensing up. I walked a step behind her, my hands in my pockets, clutching trick props and ready for anything. She got right under Yasmany’s chin and handed the entropy sweeper back to me. He stopped brushing but didn’t take his fist off the toothbrush.

  “Well,” Gabi began. Her voice caught, though, so she had to swallow back a sob before she went on. “This isn’t the gentlest way you could have let me know that you didn’t want to be my friend anymore, Yasmany. But you’ve never been very gentle, have you? No, no one would ever accuse you of being a gentleman. But I suppose it’s best to know these things, rather than wallow under misapprehensions. So, fine. I understand now. I won’t bother you anymore.”