“Ew, you two,” I said, lemon-faced. “I swear, you’re worse than alley cats. Don’t make me get the hose.”
They couldn’t have looked more guilty. “What?” they both said.
Gabi laughed, and, following her lead, so did Dad: The Final Frontier. That broke the spell just enough to get the padres to take a half step away from each other.
“So,” said Papi, ready, willing, and able to change the subject. “Do we ever get to say good morning to Iggy?”
“Oh, yes,” said American Stepmom, walking over to the sparkly security sphere. “I haven’t gotten to bite his widdle footsies in more than a week!”
“Ew! Ew, ew, ew!” said Gabi, who, like me, found the whole adults-eating-baby-feet thing bizarre and gross.
That was my chance. “See?” I interjected. “Now you’ve traumatized Gabi. I think we kids better get out of here before you scar us.” I walked over to Gabi, and overpronouncing my words, using lots of teeth and spit to say them so she would understand how very important this was, I said, “Let’s go to school, Gabi. Right now.”
“Um…” said Gabi. “Okay, I guess.”
I clapped once. “Splendid.” And now for the pièce de résistance that would totally save the day. I turned to Dad: The Final Frontier and asked, “Can you give us a ride, Dr. Reál? I’d love to show up at Culeco getting a piggyback from the most advanced AI in North America. I’ll be the coolest kid in school!”
“Something’s fishy here,” said American Stepmom.
Uh-oh.
“What’s going on, Sal? What are you up to?”
I had to hurry. “Please?!” I begged Dad: The Final Frontier.
Bonita saw no need to change expressions. “In theory, Sal, I could take you to school.”
I deflated. “But in practice?”
“In practice, I do not have an extra car seat or a security sphere to carry you in. Therefore, I cannot.”
I was scrambling. “Okay, but maybe we can take turns riding—”
“Plus,” Gabi interrupted, “we came early so our daddies can get started right away on their work.”
I might have looked a little wild when I turned to Gabi, and, through my teeth, said, “Not. Helping!”
Papi moved toward me, thoroughly Sherlocking me up and down. “Not helping with what, Sal?”
Even Papi was noticing I was hiding something. Was I losing my touch? All I could do was try to salvage the situation.
“Not helping with nothing! Nothing at all! We just need to go to school. Can’t a kid want to go to school? Ha-ha?”
“No one,” said American Stepmom, “is going anywhere until I get to see my widdle Iggy!”
“But—”
“That’s easy,” Gabi jumped in. Always so eager to make people happy, that Gabi. “All I have to do is press this button.”
“Gabi! Don’t—”
She did.
I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth, waiting for the inevitable gasps of shock. It was then I remembered: Oh yeah, I had to go to the bathroom. Like, any more denial and I’d re-create de Nile. Funny how the feeling can come and go like that.
But then the padres gasped together, and I forgot about bathrooms and remembered to be terrified.
“¿Qué en el nombre de la alfombra?” said Papi.
“What is that on Iggy?” said American Stepmom. “Is that…Is that—”
“I think it is,” said Papi.
American Stepmom was not too shocked to finish her question. “Is that an empanada onesie Iggy is wearing? Oh. My. God. Now I really am going to eat him!”
Huh?
I risked cracking one eye open.
No cat.
The only living thing in the security sphere was Iggy. He was awake now, and still empanizado. He looked indignant. It was the exact expression of a baby whose brother from another universe’s mother had just stolen something very precious from him—say, his cat—and he had already begun to plot his revenge. And I have to admit, an angry baby making a revenge face is especially cute when said baby is wearing an empanada onesie.
Since there was no Meow-Dad sitting on top of him, everything worked out better than I could have hoped. Nothing in the world is better at changing a subject than a baby. Everything else the adults may have cared about in this life—family, friends, scientific breakthroughs—went out of their heads while they focused all their attention on Iggy.
Dad: The Final Frontier spoke a command directly to the security sphere (in no language I’d ever heard before), and the top of the sphere folded open, half the globe disappearing into the other half. Seeing her chance, American Stepmom swooped up Iggy and pretended to eat an empanada the size of a human baby.
Once she’d had her fill—it took a while—she passed him to Papi so he could have his turn. He cradled him in his massive arms. In less than five seconds, he had rocked the little Iggster back to sleep.
“He likes you,” said Dad: The Final Frontier. And then, to clarify, she added, “Iggy expresses his love by drooling unconsciously all over you.”
“So did Sal,” said Papi, lost in a memory. “Ah, mijo, you used to sleep just like this in my arms. Where does the time go?”
“Into calamitrons,” Dad: The Final Frontier answered, “which is the problem. They break space and time.”
Papi blinked, as if waking. “Oh, Bonita, that was yesterday. But today, Bonita, today, we have new data! I have some very promising results to show you! Come, come,” he finished, using Iggy’s whole body to gesture for her to follow. And Dad: The Final Frontier, as eager as Papi to start doing BIG SCIENCE, walked quickly to his side. Together they charged toward the front door as quickly as they could without disturbing the baby.
“Did you have breakfast yet, Gabi?” American Stepmom asked her.
“Just one,” she replied.
“Well, you have to have at least one more breakfast to feed that big, beautiful brain of yours.”
“Normally, I would love to, Mrs. Vidón. But Sal said he wanted to get to school early.”
But now that the crisis was over, I was free to take care of other essential matters. “Look,” I said, “if I don’t pee soon, Moses is gonna try to part me. Have all the breakfast you want while I go to the bathroom.”
“Then it’s settled,” said American Stepmom. She moved behind Gabi, put her hands on her shoulders, and started steering her toward our house. “Do you like Nutella?”
Gabi put on the brakes so she could turn around and look American Stepmom in the eye when she answered. “Mrs. Vidón, I am more Nutella than woman. At home, I have a bucket of Nutella so big, you could go over Niagara Falls in it and survive. I eat my weight in Nutella every—”
Gabi was interrupted. The whole neighborhood was interrupted. Birds stopped chirping. Clouds in the sky stopped moving. Trees straightened up like they’d just gotten in trouble with Teacher.
That’s how terrible Iggy’s scream was.
A SECOND LATER, EVERYBODY had surrounded Papi and Iggy.
Papi had put a second arm under the baby. His biceps bulged, and he hunched over so his guayabera formed a shady canopy over Iggy. There wasn’t a force in the world strong enough to make him drop that baby.
Who, now, by the way, seemed fine. The only evidence of his tears were the shiny trails on his cheeks. Iggy worked his eyebrows and mouth as if he wanted to make sure they still functioned. One of his hands was enjoying Papi’s arm hair.
“What happened?” asked American Stepmom.
When she said this, I saw Gabi’s thumbs start flying over her phone. Taking notes for the doctors, I bet.
“I do not know,” said Dad: The Final Frontier. She looked distracted. “Just as we were entering the house, Iggy cried out. But I am replaying my recording of the previous ten seconds, and I can find no stimulus that would justify such a wail from him.”
American Stepmom touched Dad: The Final Frontier’s cheek. “Are you crying, Bonita?”
“It is…unreasona
ble of me,” she said, sniffling. Then she changed her expression to a smile that was making fun of herself. “But Iggy’s distress, no matter how small, saddens my whole being. All the other Reáls have tried to tell me that I need not worry so much about him. ‘Sometimes babies cry!’ they tell me.”
“Not like that,” said Papi. He glanced at me for a second, and I saw the face of a padre who’d had to deal with a chronically ill son for the past five years. My poor Papi. He had learned the hard way the difference between a child’s temper tantrum and an uncontrollable shriek of pain.
The faraway look on Dad: The Final Frontier’s face let us humans know that she was riffling through her database. We knew she had completed her search when she turned back to Papi and said, “Hmm. You are correct, Dr. Vidón. Iggy has never emitted a cry that powerful or agonized before.”
“Poor kiddo,” said Gabi, still furiously thumbing notes into the phone. She didn’t look up when she said, “Maybe we should take him to the hospital.”
Every head rotated to face me.
Okay, okay, I get it, everyone—I’m the resident expert on mysterious diseases of the body. Not that I knew anything about autoimmune deficiency, which is what Iggy had (or used to have before Gabi and I fixed him). But that’s the way norms think: diabetes, autoimmune deficiency, what’s the difference.
To be fair, though, I do know what it means to get taken to the hospital just because you exhaled funny. It’s depressing, always feeling like you’re one odd noise away from getting dragged to the ER yet again. Best to break this well-intentioned but sentimental robot of that bad habit early.
“If he screams again,” I said, “take him to the hospital. Otherwise, it was probably just a one-off thing.” And feeling like this was my chance to say something Enlightening and Profound That Would Live Through the Ages, I added, “Nothing hurts unless it hurts twice.”
Everyone looked at the sky, pondering my wise words.
Everyone but Gabi, who had the keenest cacaseca detector in Miami. “All I need is one right hook to prove you wrong,” she said, punching a fist in her palm.
“You already did. It only took one look at your face to know what pain is.”
“Be nice, you two,” American Stepmom cautioned, straightening her assistant-principal suit jacket.
“Sal’s suggestion seems like a measured and responsible course of action,” said Dad: The Final Frontier. “We will wait and see for now.”
“You hear that, little guy?” Papi falsettoed to Iggy, moving toward the front door. “We’re gonna take good care of you. But we’re not gonna overreact. No, we’re not. No, we’re not. We’re just gonna watch you closely, and if you yell like that again, we’ll—”
The world skidded to a halt when Iggy yelled like that again.
Papi had put one foot through the Coral Castle’s front door. He yanked it back as quickly as if he’d accidentally stepped into a basket of snakes.
The second he withdrew it, Iggy instantly went quiet. He blinked out two tears. But only two. He looked at each of us in turn, gawking with the openmouthed wonder-filled face of babies on baby food jars. Coupled with the fact that he was literally an empanada, Iggy became, for a few moments, the number one cutest thing in the entire universe.
“He seems fine again,” said Gabi, standing on tiptoe and peering into her brother’s face. “Bizarre.”
“Yes,” said Dad: The Final Frontier, running a hand along the wood of the doorway. “It is odd.”
“Odd enough,” said American Stepmom, “for us not to take any more chances. He needs to go to the hospital.”
Papi nodded at Dad: The Final Frontier. Taking the cue, she gently lifted Iggy out of Papi’s arms and set him back inside the security sphere. It enclosed him a second later, like a whale winking. Before Gabi handed Dad: The Final Frontier the phone, she pressed the button that turned on the air filtration system and the button that frosted the globe’s glass.
“I’ll contact all of Iggy’s parents on the way,” said Dad: The Final Frontier.
Gabi pounded the golden helmet back onto her head. “And I’ll let Iggy’s doctors know we’re coming.” She held her arms out to Dad: The Final Frontier. “Boost, please?”
But Dad: The Final Frontier knelt and spoke to her at eye level. “Daughter, I think you should go to school for now.”
Gabi was about to whine but didn’t. It took a hard gulp—like she was swallowing a bat whole—but she held back whatever childishness she had wanted to blurt. Instead, her face grew lipless and thoughtful. Then, after a mature sigh, she said something that sounded like a quote: “‘The most good, for the most people, for as long as you have the spoons,’ right, Daddy?”
Dad: The Final Frontier nodded. “You will only sit and worry at the hospital. But at Culeco, you can be of great service. It is your tech week for Rompenoche, and many people are counting on your leadership.”
“I am playing Alice,” Gabi reluctantly, adultishly agreed.
Dad: The Final Frontier put two hands on Gabi’s shoulders. “I, of course, promise to inform you if Iggy’s status changes, and/or you are needed, daughter.”
Gabi gave Bonita the phone. “Share these notes with his doctors. They’re excellent and thorough. And don’t delay any longer, Daddy. Get Iggy to the hospital as fast as you can.”
Dad: The Final Frontier stood up straight. She smiled superheroically. “As fast as traffic laws allow. Goodbye for now, Vidóns. Dr. Vidón, I will contact you as soon as I am able. Perhaps we can continue our work virtually?”
“The work will keep,” said Papi. “Take care of Iggy.”
“Now!” urged American Stepmom, waving her away with all ten fingers. “Go! Shoo!”
One more self-assured nod and Dad: The Final Frontier ran. She went from zero to thirty in zero-point-zero seconds, cutting across the Coral Castle’s little lawn, her heels tossing tortoise-size hunks of turf into the air. It wasn’t seven seconds before she was too small to see anymore.
“Phew,” said American Stepmom. That one meant Let’s make the best of it. She turned to Gabi and asked her, “Well, how about I spread some Nutella over the biggest chocolate-chip muffin I have for you?”
Gabi had moved over to the doorway. She was running her hand over the wood frame, just like her daddy had. “Does anybody else feel it?” she asked.
“Feel what?” asked Papi.
“Like the pins and needles you get when your leg falls asleep? But, like…it’s hard to explain.” She pawed her way up and down the doorjamb. “Like pins and needles and unhappiness?”
Papi and American Stepmom, both bewildered, pulled their heads back and blinked. But I knew exactly what Gabi meant. When she turned to me, I gave her the tiniest nod in the history of the world.
Gabi, eyes big, whistled silently. “Thanks anyway, Mrs. Vidón,” she said, “but I think Sal and I better be going to school. I have a feeling it’s going to be a very busy week.”
No lie detected. It felt like a month had gone by since I’d woken up this morning.
GIVEN EVERYTHING THAT HAD just happened, I should have been depressed, right? Not a good start to the day, right? So why was it that as Gabi and I walked to school, with the sun blasting down on us like a McDonald’s heat lamp, I was feeling happier and happier?
“So,” Gabi asked me, “did you feel the pins and needles, too, the closer we got to your front door?”
Oh. Oh, oh, oh. “Yeah, I did. But it was even worse for me.”
She went to yellow alert. “Worse?”
“I mean, yeah. Way worse than pins and needles. More like screws and nails.”
Gabi could tease, but she wasn’t shy about showing that she cared about you, too. “Why didn’t you say so? Are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?” She took out her phone and opened an app. “I can call a car and get us there by—”
I laughed. “I’m okay now, Gabi. The farther away I get from my house, the better I feel. But when Papi first activated the remem
branation machine this morning, I felt”—I only hesitated for a deep breath so I could deliver the line without getting tripped up by my emotions—“I felt as empty as a grave without a ghost. Just a soulless corpse.”
Gabi stopped in the middle of the crosswalk, every part of her face that could gape gaping. “Whoa.”
To keep her alive—this is Miami; you do not go full sandwich in the middle of a crosswalk—I hooked her arm in mine and hustled her the rest of the way across the street. A fanfare of honking cars gave us a royal send-off. “You trying to get yourself killed, Gabi?”
“It’s your fault,” she said, pulling her T-shirt straight. She wasn’t mad, though. She was smiling. “Don’t spout poetry at me and then expect me not to appreciate it, Sal Vidón. I have the sensitive soul of an artist, you know.”
So maybe I was a little flattered. I do take pride in my similes. “C’mon, now. Stop exaggerating. That wasn’t poetry.”
She accused me with a finger. No, not that finger: her index finger. “That is a load of cacaseca! It was literally a haiku.” She stopped and closed her eyes and clutched her heart to perform it:
“‘I felt as empty
as a grave without a ghost.
Just a soulless corpse.’”
I counted on my fingers in a panic. It was a haiku. Holy habaneros! How many times had I accidentally spouted ancient Japanese poetry without even knowing it?
“I didn’t mean to!” I blurted.
Gabi started walking again as she answered, “Don’t be modest, Sal. Many of the great kung fu masters were also great poets, weren’t they?”
She was making fun of my pj’s again. I was wearing them to school today because I’d wanted to leave my house ASAP. I’d only run inside to grab my diabetes stuff and my backpack. But it’s not like anyone at Culeco would care about my outfit. There, I’d blend right in, just another cosplayer lost in a sea of middle schoolers made up like anime characters, living memes, and monsters. And even though I felt half-naked without the scores of magician novelties that I usually carried in my vest and cargo-pants pockets, I also felt freer, more agile, more Legolas-y. Maybe I’d be light enough to run away from whatever problems life threw at me.
Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe Page 4