Look, I love the Alice books. I came in wanting to love the show. I already knew the costumes were amaze-pants. And Aventura was a friend. This show was custom-made for me to like it.
But they blew it. All the show consisted of was acting out scenes from the book, word for word. People, I’ve read the book! Everybody has! The pacing onstage was slow because, besides being too devoted to the original, everybody hammed up every scene and the actors were in love with the sound of their British accents. But the biggest sin of all? I’d seen it all before. There weren’t any surprises (except maybe in the costuming, which, as I said, was pretty dang great). They’d just taken everything anybody’s ever done with the Alice books and thrown it up on the stage. I didn’t get it. They were going to “break the night” by doing some tired, been-there done-that version of a story everybody already knew? “Rompenoche” my raisins. It was more like “Rompe-mi-voluntad-de-vivir.” Break-My-Will-to-Live.
In short, it was the exact opposite of the illustrations I’d brought in to show Mr. Cosquillas. And I was going to say that in my review. I didn’t care if he lowered my grade—it was the truth.
But I wasn’t going to report that to Gabi, or any kid at Culeco. My rep was still recovering from the first week of school, when rumors had circulated about me being a brujo. Looking around the hallway now, listening to all these kids laughing and congratulating each other and being so proud of themselves, I knew everyone would hate me if I told them what I really thought of the show. And Gabi was the editor of the Rotten Egg. Telling her the truth would be like shaking hands with every single kid in school and telling them that they’d managed to create a piece of theater so bad, I Would Rather snort a Taser than sit through ten seconds of it ever again.
Another round of texts shook my wrist:
You there, Sal?
Where are you now?
Wanna meet for lunch?
Hello??!?!??!?!
Yikes. I needed to hide, fast, before Gabi tracked me down in person.
But then, to my horror, I realized it was already too late. A buzzing, bumbling robot hummingbird flew around the corner. The Fey Spy.
It spotted me immediately. In a surprisingly good imitation of Gabi’s body language, it stopped short and hovered in the air, gawking at me, stunned. It could not believe I was just standing in the middle of the hallway not answering Gabi’s texts. Then it flew indignantly over to me, flashing me the side-eye the whole time.
The Fey Spy opened its beak as far as it could, and Gabi’s voice came out of its birdy little throat. “Sal, I’ve been messaging you. Why didn’t you reply? You had to be seeing the texts—they come right to your smartwatch.” The drone hovered over my wrist, and I heard the sound of a camera clicking. “See? There they are. Why didn’t you answer me?”
Those were a lot of words to get thrown at you, out of the mouth of a flying robot, all at once. “Give me a second,” I said, taking a step back.
She was pretty peeved. “One one-thousand. Time’s up.” The drone immediately closed the distance between us. “Start talking. And don’t lie to me. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“I don’t lie,” I said, deeply offended. Actually, not that offended, but I played it that way. “And if that’s how you are going to speak to me, then I will bid you good day.”
I ran past the drone and headed for the nearest staircase, sliding past costumed kids as fast as I could. I was halfway to the NE staircase before I started to believe I might actually get away. Could it possibly be this easy?
Of course not. The Fey Spy flew around my head and pressed its forehead to mine, its camera lenses staring deeply into my eyes, its wings flapping angrily. “Not so fast, bubba. Something’s up. You’ve got a secret. What are you hiding? Tell me!”
Whispering through the side of my mouth, I said, “You’re making a scene, Gabi!”
The Fey Spy flew close to the ceiling and looked around in all directions. It saw as clearly as I did that not a single person gave tres pepinos about my shouting match with a robot drone bird. Everyone was still too busy congratulating themselves. Actors, man. Egomaniacs, every one of them.
Meanwhile, the drone, looking especially smug, flew back to hovering one millimeter away from my left eyeball, opened its beak way too wide for comfort, and started shouting again. “No scene, Sal. No delay, no impediment, no problem. So that means you’re officially out of cacaseca excuses.” The bird sighed at how pathetic I was. “I thought you would have learned your lesson by now, Sal. I always get my story. Now spill it!”
Gabi and I may have started out on the wrong foot the first time we’d met, but we’d become pretty good friends over the last three weeks. Now, though? Now I was feeling the same way I had at the outset: annoyed, irked, and peeved to my knees.
So I ate her drone.
I know, I know, you have a lot of questions.
No, I didn’t chew it. Want me to break my teeth?
No, I didn’t swallow it. What is wrong with you? Besides the weeks of stomachaches I’d be giving myself, I really didn’t want Gabi to photograph my internal organs with the Fey Spy. I shuddered to think of the evil schemes she could devise if she knew me from the inside out.
I just chomped it right out of the air, like a dog eating a butterfly. Gabi and her remote control were too slow to prevent it. Also, I have a lot of practice sticking foreign objects in my mouth. As a magician, when I am doing sleight-of-hand tricks, I hide stuff behind my smile all the time. Watches, bracelets, earrings, and, one time, another kid’s retainer—which almost made Papi, who happened to be in the audience and knew exactly how that trick worked, puke. Heh-heh-heh. Point is, I’ve got zero issues using my mouth as a temporary storage unit. Or, in this case, a prison for a particularly annoying robot bird.
How did it fit? The Fey Spy looked bigger than it was. Its wings folded compactly for easy storage. Its body could easily be mistaken for a peanut with a beak. Well, okay, a little bigger than that—more like one of those gross Circus Peanuts that you only see during Halloween and that only useless people give you. Still, it was as easy as eating Halloween candy, putting my lips around that robo-bird.
What did Gabi do when I ate her Fey Spy? What she always does: She yelled at me the whole time I took the NE staircase down to the first floor, from inside my own face. “Sal Vidón you juvenile delinquent you spit my Fey Spy out of your mouth right now it is irreplaceable plus it’s very dangerous to put it in your mouth you could” blah, blah, blah, etc., etc.
“Oh, awl scpit it aut au wight!” I said. Wasn’t easy, talking around the drone—it flapped and fussed and tried to fight its way past my teeth. “A’m gonna scpit it aut wight incoo my new bes’ fwiend, the toiwet.”
The Fey Spy suddenly stopped struggling in my mouth. Gabi fell quiet for a few seconds. Then, both confused and curious, she said, “Did you just say you’re gonna spit my drone into the toilet?”
“Yalp.”
“And did you just say the toilet was your new best friend?”
“Yalp. I’s a weel nice toiwet. I’s name is [indecipherable].” Hey, you try saying the name Vorágine with your mouth full of drone.
“Sometimes,” the bewildered voice of Gabi came out from my own mouth, “I have no idea where to even begin with you, Sal.”
“Ew an’ me bofth, fsister.”
I reached the bottom of the stairs and popped out on the first floor. Hallway 1N was a hamster nest of sixth graders eagerly getting ready for lunchtime. But I could navigate around them way more easily than I could cut through my same-age compadres on the third floor. Evilly enjoying the vision I was having of flushing the Fey Spy down Vorágine’s plumbing, I charged up the hallway and toward the bathroom, using my tongue to immobilize the drone against the roof of my mouth.
“Let’s be reasonable, Sal!” Gabi pleaded. “Don’t do something you’ll regret later.”
She sounded more out of breath than she had before. She was running, I realized—running to intercept
me. Probably she’d logic-ed out where the new toilet had to be. As student council president and editor of the school newspaper, she undoubtedly knew all about the bathroom renovation, even if she hadn’t experienced the AI porcelain throne for herself yet—and she was trying to stop me.
That was not going to happen.
I started running, too, channeling my inner runaway train, plowing through the hordes of hapless kids who had the bad luck of being in my way. I clawed through them, using their flimsy sapling-like bodies to help propel me forward faster, all the while fighting a secret war in my mouth to keep the Fey Spy imprisoned. By the time I reached the turn for the center hallway—Vorágine’s restroom was technically on hallway 1W, but there was a shortcut I could take on 1C to reach it faster—everyone had figured out how much better their lives would be if they moved before I got near them. I Toyko-Drifted left and, once I’d righted myself, poured on the speed. I knew from this morning how fast Gabi was. I was going to have to book it to reach the bathroom before her.
Oh. Oh yeah. This morning. The terribleness of the Rompenoche dress rehearsal had made the start of my day feel like it had happened a million years ago. But now I remembered how Gabi had helped me avoid what could have been, potentially, the most embarrassing moment of my life. By distracting me with the drone, I was able to make it to the school bathroom with my dignity intact. I don’t know what I would have done without her and her Fey Spy.
That same Fey Spy was trapped in my mouth at this very moment. That same Fey Spy was the one I was threatening to flush down the toilet.
Dang it! I think part of me was secretly hoping that, if I ran fast enough, I could even outrun my maturity, which was spoiling more and more of my fun every day. But too late: I was in full Think-Like-a-Grown-Up mode now. And now, thinking like a grown-up, I confessed to myself that I knew better. Whatever little flares of anger or annoyance I might temporarily feel toward a friend, I shouldn’t use those as an excuse to hurt them.
My run turned into a jog, and then my jog turned into a fast walk, and then my fast walk turned into a normal walk, and then I stopped walking. I stood with my hands on my hips, snorting deep breaths in front of the door to Vorágine’s bathroom, knowing full well no drones were going to end up in any of Culeco’s toilets today. Dang it.
Someone was inside the bathroom. The door wasn’t closed all the way, which, for a one-person restroom, is pretty weird. You go into a bathroom, you lock the door behind you—that’s the rule. But because the door was open, I could hear whoever it was pretty clearly. The boy’s voice, speaking with a Miami accent and too deep for sixth grade, sounded angry. Like, scary angry. Lubricated by tears and scratchy with rage, he shouted, “You can’t hurt me! I’ll hurt you! I’ll hurt you so bad you ain’t never gonna hurt no one ever again!”
Fear shares a lot of properties with electricity. It can activate every nerve in your body at the same time, which is shocking, immobilizing, stunning. That voice made my shoulders and knees buzz with the weakening tingle of cowardice. It was the unmistakable sound of a kid going full bully on some other poor kid in the bathroom. I didn’t know who the bully was threatening, but it didn’t matter. All I knew was my instinct was to get my pants away from there and save my own skin.
But I didn’t. I’d been on the receiving end of bullying often enough to know how bad it felt when people who could be helping turned away and left you to your fate. Instead, I looked down at my kung fu pajamas. They helped me channel every martial arts movie I’d ever seen. And if I’d learned anything from those films, I had learned this: The kung fu master always tries to reason with the villains. They always calmly attempt to resolve the issue by using their words first.
Then, of course, the villains never listen, and the kung fu master proceeds to kick them where pistachios don’t grow.
But that’s just because, in a martial arts film, there has to be a fight scene. In real life, a lot of the time, people who get caught in the act of doing a bad thing might just stop doing the bad thing and run away. Sometimes, just being a witness is enough to thwart evil. I could do that. I could be a witness.
And if that didn’t work, well, maybe there was a universe out there that needed a new bully to drop in suddenly.
I pushed my baggy kung fu sleeves up my arms, made my face hard, and marched into the bathroom.
Just as I entered, the bully shouted some more. “You don’t want me? Fine. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.”
The bully was Yasmany.
And he was bullying his own reflection.
YASMANY WAS DOING WHAT I only do in the privacy of my own bedroom, after triple-checking to make sure the door is locked: He was playing out his own personal revenge fantasy. Everybody does it. Shut up—yes, you do. Personally, if anyone ever caught me acting out one of my fantasies, where I’m shouting cut-downs and throwing punches and pretending I’m the Chosen One, I think my heart would stop and never start again. I mean, the cringe, chacho. Makes me shudder just thinking about it.
And this is me we’re talking about: Sal Vidón, the master of relaxation. Yasmany? Chacho was the opposite of relaxed. He was a roller coaster filled with nitroglycerin. He hadn’t spotted me yet—too busy yelling at the Yasmany who stared back at him from the mirror—but when he did…well, I wasn’t sure what would happen. I mean, this was the kid who’d wanted to beat me to a pulp just because I’d tried to help him get his locker open on the third day of school.
Things between us had changed completely since that first encounter. We’d actually started becoming friends over the last three weeks. But he’d had a rough go of it. He was living with his abuelos now because life with his mami had gotten intolerably bad. I don’t know why exactly, since Yasmany wouldn’t go into details, but I knew Children’s Services had gotten involved. When the government steps in to take a kid away from their mami, things must be no bueno. Really, really, really no bueno.
And surprise: All his previous bullying meant he didn’t have a lot of friends. I was worried he might not have learned how to focus his anger only on the people who’d earned it, and not toward the people who were on his side.
Based on what Yasmany was yelling now, things had gotten worse at home. “I’ll just run away!” he screamed, his face straining every muscle it had. “I’ll just live on the street like a [BLEEP!] dog, because I’d rather eat out of a [BLEEP!] garbage can than spend one more minute in this [BLEEP!] house with you [BLEEP!] people.”
I’m not the one censoring Yasmany’s cusswords, by the way. Every time he yelled out a profanity, a shrill bleep pealed through the air, completely drowning out the swear word.
“I ask you again, unidentified person, to please refrain from using inappropriate language in my presence,” Vorágine said from its stall.
Yasmany swung his body left—thank all the pants in the world for that, because if he’d swung right, he would have spotted me—and stomped into the stall. “I told you to stop telling me what to do, you [BLEEP!] toilet!” he yelled.
“And I told you, person, that if you don’t calm down, I will report you to your principal for your own safety.”
“Don’t you [BLEEP!] dare tell Principal Torres anything, you [BLEEP!] piece of [BLEEP!] toilet, or I will kick your [BLEEP!] so hard, I’ll [BLEEP!] [BLEEP!] [BLEEP!] your [BLEEP!] [BLEEP!] sandwich-eating [BLEEP!] into next Tuesday!”
Three uncomfortable seconds destroyed themselves silently before Yasmany added, “How do you always know when I’m gonna cuss?”
“Your vulgarity is quite predictable, unidentified person. Perhaps with a little more self-control and a proper introduction to the beautiful variety of words that exist, you could learn to be more creative. If you’d like, I can play some vocabulary games with you. It’ll be fun! Let’s start with—”
“Yaaahhh!” yaaahhh-ed Yasmany. “I don’t need no [BLEEP!] toilet to be my [BLEEP!] tutor. Why is everyone against me?” He charged out of the stall and gripped the sink opposite it with both ha
nds, head bowed, sucking breath. “Just one friend. Just one person who’s on my side. Is that too much to ask? Just one [BLEEP!] person in the whole [BLEEP!] world who gives two stinking [BLEEP!] about me.” Tears fell out of his eyes and disappeared down the sink, lost forever. “Why doesn’t anybody love me?”
“I love you,” said the Fey Spy, from inside my gaping mouth.
I quickly shut it. I’d been so enthralled by the scene unfolding in front of me, I had forgotten about everything: Gabi chasing me, the drone, the fact that I should be deathly afraid of being seen by Yasmany. I’d had a perfect opportunity to sneak out when he’d run into the stall. Instead, I had just stood there like a lummox. And the stupid, stupid robot hummingbird had given me away.
Terror struck like a lightning bolt. My thumping heart grew as big as my whole chest. Now I couldn’t move, no matter how much I wanted to.
“Gabi?” whispered Yasmany. He looked up in the mirror, and in his reflection I could see the moment when anger retreated and hope returned.
But it was only for a moment. Because if I could see Yasmany’s face in the mirror, that meant he could see mine, too. And I was not Gabi.
His eyes went wide. He hippo-flared his nose. He showed his teeth—all of them. “Sal!” he shouted. “What the [BLEEP!] are you doing in here? I’m in the [BLEEP!] bathroom. What did you hear?”
He lunged and I stepped backward until I was against the door. I went to speak, to explain, to say I was sorry, that I didn’t mean to overhear all this.
But the second I opened my mouth, the Fey Spy flew out of it.
That got Yasmany to back off a few paces. His face became confused. Each of his eyebrows looked like one of those squiggly lines above the letter n in the Spanish alphabet. “What is it with you and pulling birds out of weird places, Sal?” he asked, referring to the raw chicken I had placed in his locker on the third day of school.
Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe Page 9