She smiled one of those welp smiles. “Okay, Mr. Vidón. Oh, and take the time to eat lunch at home, please. I will let your teachers know you won’t be in class. But I need you back at Culeco no later than fifth period.”
“Why? What’s happening fifth period?”
“That’s when I tell the whole school that you’re now the codirector of Rompenoche. And then, Mr. Vidón, it will be time for you to get to work.”
WHEN I WALKED OUT of the principal’s office and into the administrative suite, I saw Gabi and Yasmany sitting in two tiny chairs.
Well, that explained why Gabi hadn’t busted in during my conversation with Principal Torres like I’d been half expecting. She and Yasmany had been my accomplices, which meant they were going to get in trouble, too. So they were waiting their turn to see the principal, while being guard-dogged by Mr. Zacto.
Ah, Mr. Zacto. The perfect target for a prank. He was so neat, so precise, so dapper (he wore a different black suit, pressed to perfection, every day), so by-the-book, so lawful neutral, such a straight shooter, such a rules follower, and so very, very type A that all I wanted to do was make his world just a little messier. Don’t get me wrong: He was always nice and polite and even friendly. But his hair was so perfect! He must have trimmed his Afro every single day to keep the right angles of his hair so precise. And his desk was so orderly, every time I passed it I wanted to “accidentally” sneeze his papers out of place, the same way, in the fall back in Connecticut, I’d wanted to jump in the piles of leaves American Stepmom or Papi had just raked up.
Mr. Zacto stared at me ’zactly like he could read my evil mind. “Keep it moving, Mr. Vidón,” he said to me. “No talking to the accused until after they’ve spoken to Principal Torres.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t think of it, Mr. Zacto,” I said. “Believe me, I have…learned…my…lesson.…”
“Something wrong, Mr. Vidón?”
“No! Nothing! I’m not looking at anything!”
Of course I’d been looking at him. Specifically, I’d let my gaze drift from his bespectacled eyes to his mouth. I kept trying to move my eyes back to his, but I couldn’t, because something utterly fascinating and perhaps slightly disgusting was going on with his mouth. I just had to keep looking at it again and again, deer-in-headlights-ishly.
“Do I have something in my teeth?” he asked, as if that was the worst possible thing that could happen to him. That’s why he kept dental floss in his front shirt pocket. I’d seen him flossing on six different occasions at his desk over the last few weeks. Seriously, chacho must have had gums like alligator hide by now, he was so obsessed.
“I didn’t see anything!” I said, sounding like someone in the Witness Protection Program.
It wasn’t a lie. I hadn’t seen anything. But for some reason, he thought I had. He turned toward the wall, where a small mirror hung—which he’d put there for the sole purpose of helping him floss—and started sawing between his teeth with a piece of minty string.
I turned to Gabi and Yasmany and mouthed, Sorry I got you in trouble.
Yasmany flipped away all worries with a hand. This ain’t trouble, he lipped.
Gabi was scraping one finger over the other in that Naughty, naughty! way. We’re in enough trouble, Sal! she mouthed. She just did not like being in Principal Torres’s bad graces. But whatever. She’d be fine. This would probably be good for her in the long run.
Text me after, I mouthed, thumbing toward Principal Torres’s office.
“No twalking!” said Mr. Zacto, around the floss. His reflection was staring at me. He’d pulled his lips back as far as they could go, for maximum flossing effectiveness. Even with a piece of string between two lower incisors, exposing all your teeth like that makes for a pretty aggressive look.
“I’m going, I’m going,” I said. But then, lowering my eyebrows, I pointed at his reflection in the general vicinity of his mouth, as if I’d seen something new, something horribly new.
He resumed his flossing with a newfound desperation.
I walked out of the office feeling a little better about things. Even though I wouldn’t be able to bring gags to school anymore, I could still pull off plenty of tricks. I just needed to remind myself that magic isn’t about the props. It’s about knowing what your audience believes and using their beliefs against them. Heh-heh-heh.
As I walked home, I kept squeezing a fun-size bag of Skittles in each hand. It’s a trick I learned while playing first-person-shooter games: jump around, keep switching guns, change directions, do anything to keep your attention focused. In FPSs, daydreams equal a one-way ticket back to the lobby. Since I tended to get dreamy and philosophical when I was walking alone, all too often I wasn’t paying enough attention to traffic. Squeezing Skittles, you can’t get lost in your thoughts.
Also, squeezing two fun-size bags of Skittles makes it much easier not to jump into the middle of traffic when someone appears out of nowhere and starts talking to you. “Man, your principal is a first-class stromboli,” said FixGabi. “I can’t believe she spoke to you that way. I’m so glad I don’t have to go to school anymore!”
“You overheard that?” I asked, swallowing my lungs back down my throat, acting casual.
“I’m watching out for you, buddy!” She gave my arm a bro punch.
“I’m glad you’re okay. Last time I saw you, the forces of evil were hot on your tail.”
“They can’t catch me,” she bragged. She snatched one of the bags of Skittles from my hand, tore it open, and started munching. “I’m glad you made it home without my help,” she said. “Did you use the hole I left behind?”
“No. Too many people were in the bathroom looking for me. I had to make a different hole to go somewhere else in my school.”
She sized me up, smiling. “Look at the big brain on Sal! Getting yourself back home with your own hole! That’s some pretty advanced branesurfing you did there. I didn’t think you had it in you!”
“Neither did I,” I admitted. “Oh, and Gabi helped me. She deserves credit, too.”
FixGabi ate a Skittle like she was a devil and it was a sinner. “You’re trusting your Gabi too much.”
I stumbled to a stop at the corner, even though we had a walk signal. “That’s the second time you’ve told me not to trust Gabi. Why?”
She took my arm and kept us walking across the street while she dumped the rest of the candy down her throat. Then she tossed the empty bag on the ground and said, with her mouth full, “Trust me, Sal. I’ve met many Gabis in my journeys through the multiverse. Sooner or later, they’ll double-cross you. And they’re dangerous foes. Best to steer as clear of them as possible. Man, Skittles are so good. Wish my universe had them.”
I wasn’t looking at her as she spoke. I wasn’t watching out for traffic, either. I was gazing at the Skittles wrapper she had dropped without so much as a second thought. Gabi—my Gabi—would never litter, not in a trillion trillion years. And FixGabi had just done it in the same breath she’d used to tell me to stay away from my Gabi.
Something wasn’t right here.
When I looked up from the Skittles bag, I saw something that did feel right—the Fey Spy was hovering not far away.
I turned from it to distract FixGabi’s attention. “WELL,” I said in a louder, more articulate voice, the kind of voice ignorant people use when speaking to foreigners, “IT’S SURE NICE OF YOU, GABI FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE, TO COME HERE AND SAVE OUR UNIVERSE.”
She lowered her eyes at me, raised her eyebrows. “Yeah. Sure. No problem, Sal. Is your place much farther?”
“NOT FAR NOW!” We turned onto the busiest street on the route home. I caught glimpses of the Fey Spy trying to hide behind trees, mailboxes, lampposts, anything, while also staying within earshot. “BUT WHILE WE’RE CHATTING,” I asked FixGabi, “WHY DON’T YOU TELL AGAIN ME HOW YOU LOST YOUR SAL.”
She looked at me like the worst kind of teacher: the ones who make you feel stupid for asking a question. “You okay?�
��
“YES, FINE. YOU WERE SAYING?”
“What’s to say, Sal? Your papi killed him.”
“That is incorrect,” I corrected. My voice went back to its normal volume, because I meant business now. “My papi, who is a different person than the Papi from your universe, hasn’t killed anything in his life bigger than one of his patented seven-scoop sundaes. Certainly not a human being. And even if we played pretend and said, ‘If Papi had to kill one person, who would he kill?’ I’m pretty sure American Stepmom and I would be the very last two people on that list.”
Tut, tut, tut, went FixGabi’s tongue. “Sals always think that. My Sal thought that. And look what happened to him.”
“Yes, great, exactly: Tell me what happened to him.”
I’ve seen kindergarteners hug their stuffed animals with less friendship than I saw in FixGabi’s face at that moment. She didn’t look at me, or the overcast sky, or where she was going. She wasn’t using her eyes at all. Instead, she watched a movie of happier times play in her mind as she spoke. “Sal was great. The best. We were inseparable. The kind of friends they write about in books.”
“I’ve only known the Gabi from this universe for, like, three weeks,” I said. “How long did you know your Sal?”
“Since sixth grade, when he moved to my town. We became friends within days, best friends within a month, and then we—” She stopped herself short. “Let’s just say we were very, very close.”
I swallowed an imaginary toad that tasted like a real toad. “Boyfriend and girlfriend?”
She buzzed her lips at me. “That makes it sound so childish. Our romance rivaled the greatest love stories ever told. We were star-crossed paramours whose only crime was loving too much. And like so many love stories, ours ended tragically.”
Holy potholes, was she laying it on thick. I couldn’t help but laugh.
She turned on me viper-strike fast. “How dare you! Just because you’re still an emotionally stunted child doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have passionate souls.”
I was almost done laughing. Almost. “Sorry. But people in our universe don’t talk the way you do.”
The two dimples made by her smirk were named Caca and Seca. “Oh yeah? Not even Gabi?”
Um. Dang it. I glanced at the Fey Spy and subtly shrugged an apology. “Well, okay, Gabi. But nobody else.”
She stopped walking, faced me. “Let me try to explain this to you in terms you can understand. Sal and I were closer than mere ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend.’ We were soulmates. It was as if we’d loved each other in our past lives, too, and now we were just picking up where we left off. I would have done anything for him. And he made the ultimate sacrifice for me. So don’t you dare insult my deep and abiding love for one of the greatest human beings ever to live, in any universe.”
She sounded sincere. But good actors can sound just as genuine as people who are actually suffering. If my Gabi had told me something while seeming to be this close to tears, I would have felt bad and apologized right away. But I felt more like squinting at FixGabi than apologizing to her.
I’d love to have Gabi’s opinion of this exchange, I thought. And thanks to the Fey Spy, I’d be able to get it later.
For now, I played along. “Sorry, Gabi,” I said. “I can see you really cared for him. You said he made the ultimate sacrifice for you?”
She sighed. “Yes. When he saved me from your papi.”
“Not my papi!” I insisted. “Different person.”
According to her flaring nostrils, I couldn’t be more wrong, but she went on with her story anyway. “I already told you how I tried to explain to Dr. Vidón that the universe needs holes in its membrane. Without some tears in the fabric of spacetime, the universe would explode. But he didn’t pay attention to me, and he wouldn’t hear it from Sal, either. He was so angry that Sal had taught me how to travel the multiverse, he wouldn’t listen to reason anymore, even though we knew better than he did. Adults are like that, you know. They never listen to kids.”
My padres and I had decided never to tell anybody about my “gifts,” and Gabi and I had informally agreed to keep our extra-universal shenanigans to ourselves. The scenario FixGabi was describing now was exactly why. It was why I hadn’t been more forthcoming with Principal Torres.
“So what did he do?” I asked.
“He activated the remembranation machine, full power. And you saw the result of that from the space station.”
“But how did you get away in time?”
We had almost reached a corner. FixGabi hurried over to it ahead of me so she could stand alone and wipe the tears out of her eyes before I caught up to her.
Well, at least that’s what it looked like from the back. I never saw tears; I just saw her hand move as if she were wiping away tears. Realistic fake crying isn’t easy, even for experienced actors. It’s much easier to mime crying than to actually cry. And from a distance, mimed crying looks pretty much like actual crying.
Yeah, I was still suspicious. I’m not sure why. A lot of what she had said reminded me of my situation. Of my papi. But the way she talked about him and Gabi and people in general put me on my guard. I mean, I’m sorry, but Principal Torres is the exact opposite of a stromboli.
When I reached the corner, she asked, “Which way now?” sounding like she was having trouble keeping it together.
“Right,” I answered neutrally.
We turned right. After a few steps, she said, “Sal saved me. When your papi turned on the machine, Sal gave me time to escape. We were in the living room of the Mauve Mansion—”
“The Mauve Mansion?”
She laughed hollowly, the way people at funerals do when they hear funny stories about the person who’s died. “Every Sal lives in a different place. It’s always walkable from Culeco, and always in some hideous, humongous house with a stupid name. My Sal called his house the Mauve Mansion. It was so vile! I mean, seriously, that color: Who would purposely paint their house so that it matched a drowning victim’s skin?”
“That,” I said, “is a really gross analogy.”
“Not as gross as that color.” Her sarcasm was giving her life. And, like a vampire crashing a hemophiliac’s convention, she was hungry for more. “So, what’s your home’s idiotic name? The Salmon Chateau? The Puce Palace? Casa Cacaseca?’”
Yeah, no way the words “coral” and/or “castle” were coming out of my mouth just then. But since I don’t lie, I just redirected. “Stop changing the subject and finish your story.”
She nodded, gathering strength. “When your papi turned on the machine, the universe, like that”—she snapped her fingers—“buckled and bucked all around us. Reality itself shook, like buildings in an earthquake. The living room of the Mauve Mansion turned into a hurricane. Everything started flying and spinning, including all of us. Too late, your foolish papi realized his mistake. But he was flying around the room, too, then, and couldn’t make the remembranation machine stop. None of us could. We were doomed.
“But, Sal, like the hero he was, yelled out to me, ‘I’ll open a portal for you! Get ready to go through!’
“‘No!’ I yelled back defiantly. ‘I’d rather die than go on without you!’
“‘You must, my beloved!’ he replied, his tears being swept off his face in the torrential winds. ‘You must live your life for the two of us from now on!’
“‘Never!’ I screamed. ‘If we must perish, then let us perish together!’
“I started swimming toward him, against hurricane-force winds, against the very will of the universe, determined to hold his hand one more time before we were annihilated. But then he closed his eyes, and as serenely as an angel, he said, ‘Forgive me, light of my life. But if you die here, then I die twice.’
“And then, one breath later, I was floating in the zero g of the space station. I watched as the southern tip of Florida went suddenly from there to un-there, a great big rip in the universe where Miami should be.”
So I did something pretty out of character for me then: I put a hand on her shoulder. I did it the way Gabi had put her hands on my shoulders over the past few weeks—with the affirming, friendly grip of a ship captain steadying a seasick new recruit. In other words, in a way that’s meant to lend strength. Show camaraderie. Help someone get through a tough time.
FixGabi reached over, put her hand on mine, and squeezed. Then she looked at me and smeeped.
“The name of my house is the Coral Castle,” I said.
“Ha!” She laughed, launching the last remnants of sadness out of her body. “I knew it! Every Sal lives in a house with a weird name.”
Maybe she wasn’t that bad after all. I was about to turn around and ask my Gabi to bring the Fey Spy over so I could introduce the two of them. I knew FixGabi was suspicious of all Gabis, but once she met mine, I was sure they’d be best friends in two seconds.
But before I could, FixGabi’s eyes went wide, and she pushed me to the ground like a secret service agent saving the president. “Get down!” she shouted, even as she jumped in the air. “Hadoken!” she yelled, and thrust both palms forward, face out, toward the sky.
No, a fireball didn’t come out of her hands. Nothing came out of her hands. But as I squinted up at the sky, I did see a brand-new hole in the universe. Not a very big one. Only, say, about the size of a very large hummingbird, or a very small drone.
“The forces of evil!” said FixGabi as she helped me up. “They were spying on us. Oh, they’re everywhere. We need to fix your universe now, Sal, before they bring reinforcements.”
So okay. Blasting the Fey Spy into a different universe wasn’t great. But she’d done it because she thought it was an enemy drone. And she’d put herself in danger to protect me. She might have been wrong this time, but her heart was in the right place. Maybe she was someone I could work with after all.
Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe Page 20