Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  Our King of Hearts would be played by Yasmany Robles. We weren’t going to waste his talents by having him play a sad tree. Not while I was codirector, anyway.

  And when parents walked past our re-creation of Maximo Gomez Park, they’d see tables where characters from Wonderland would be violently slapping down dominoes and cussing like old Cuban men.

  Okay, they wouldn’t actually be cussing like old Cuban men, because Principal Torres said we weren’t allowed to cuss like old Cuban men, even for the sake of Art. Gabi was all ready to start a petition against censorship, but I asked her to stand down. Time was short; we had to pick our battles.

  So we went with the next-best option. We set up a Bluetooth microphone and speaker on the domino tables so that Vorágine could hear when one of our actors was about to swear and play the censored sound when they did. Turns out, the BLEEP! is consistently funnier than the actual naughty language it’s covering up. Who knew?

  It was so funny when we tested it, in fact, that we decided to set up microphones and speakers for Vorágine all over the school, so it could bleep out foul language wherever any actor got a little too salty. And Vorágine was thrilled to have a part in Rompenoche. “I have extensive knowledge of vulgar words in over two hundred languages. No utterance of questionable color will get past me! Just let them try to curse in ancient Sumerian—I’ll bleep them back to Meso-[BLEEP!]-potamia!”

  Yep, it would even censor itself if it cussed. Vorágine, as we have seen, is a very ethical toilet.

  But there was still so much work to do. Most of the activity in the stagecraft and set design studio at the moment was centered on constructing the Freedom Tower.

  In real life, the Freedom Tower was the tall yellow-and-white building where so many Cubans who came to the US had begun the process of becoming American citizens back in the day. The set builders were working on our replica as fast as they could, building it and painting it at the same time. But I think we might have been a little too ambitious with that one. It was still only as tall as my armpit. It had to more than double in size in just one day.

  Gabi and I walked up to Coach Lynott, who was heading up construction. He was dressed, as usual, like he’d gotten his entire fashion sense from his love of mashed potatoes. Every piece of clothing on him—visor, polo shirt, shorts, belt, tube socks, sneakers, even the lanyard for his whistle and stopwatch—was white. The only variation in color came from his pit stains, bright as butter.

  But hey, it’d be easy to make fun of my own nature-show-host-wannabe fashion sense, too. I liked Coach Lynott. Beneath all those mashed potatoes, he had a good heart.

  “How’s it going?” I asked him.

  “Wonderful!” Coach Lynott said loudly. Then he leaned over to Gabi me, blocked his mouth with his hand so the kids working on the set couldn’t see it, and whispered, “We’re way behind schedule.” He straightened up again and, practically yelling, said, “We’ll be done in no time!” Then he leaned over and whispered, “We need a miracle to finish on time.” Out loud: “We are rocking and rolling!” Whispered: “We’re doing the dead-man’s waltz here.” Out loud: “Nothing’s going to stop us now!” Whispered: “One sneeze and this tower comes a-tumbling down.”

  I swear to pants, Coach Lynott must have been cursed by a bruja to always make the wrong choice in any given situation. Did he really think putting a hand in front of his mouth was going to keep the set builders from hearing him? I could see their slight but real reactions to Coach Lynott’s fake encouragement and whispered despair. They were getting discouraged.

  Adults out there, listen up: Kids hear better than you do. If you can hear it, so can we, and if you can’t hear it, we probably can anyway. Sheesh.

  Gabi, born leader that she is, noticed the plummeting morale in the room at least as quickly as I did. “Sal,” she said to me, “don’t you think we should bring in some more people to help get the Freedom Tower finished? The crew here is working so hard.”

  “Definitely,” I said. “Also,” I added, reaching into my pockets and handing out fun-size bags of Skittles, “y’all need some candy. Let’s take a break!”

  They didn’t need to be told twice: The set builders surrounded me and, hyena fast, cleaned me out of Skittles. Morale rose instantly. Tech crews tend to be a food-motivated people.

  Coach Lynott leaned over to me and “whispered” behind his hand, “Do you think a break is a good idea, Sal? We’re running so far behind already.”

  I know you’re not supposed to chloroform people and gag them and stick them in closets until Rompenoche is over, but Coach Lynott was really asking for it. Again, the set builders heard him. I could see it in the way they delayed, just for a microsecond, popping another Skittle in their mouths, or how frowns formed for an instant before they bravely made their faces expressionless again. This called for drastic measures.

  In response to Coach Lynott’s whisper, I said to him, at full volume, “Coach, you know how you’re always saying that, to make the impossible possible, you have to believe in your dreams?”

  “Ba-wha-huh?” said Coach Lynott, who, as far as I know, had never said To make the impossible possible, you have to believe in your dreams. But it’s not a lie to ask a question.

  And it didn’t matter how he answered: Yes, no, or whatever the heck ba-wah-huh is supposed to be, I could work with it. “Before I call more people to come help you all, I think a visualization exercise is just what the team needs. Don’t you, Coach?”

  “Um…” said Coach Lynott. Watching him think was like watching a camel chew. “I don’t know if we have the time to—”

  “Great idea, Sal!” said Gabi, yes-anding the heck out of me before Coach Lynott ruined my plan. She took Lynott’s hand and reached out with the other toward another set builder, who instantly took it. At Culeco, as soon as anyone starts grabbing hands, we instinctively form a ring. Theater people love making circles. Before I could inhale and exhale, we had the half-finished Freedom Tower surrounded.

  “I just don’t see the point,” said Coach Lynott, linking hands with me on his other side. “We don’t have time for touchy-feely woo-woo stuff. We should just keep working.”

  I answered him in my cheerful ringmaster’s voice. “We’ll never reach our end goal if we limit our perceiving! Us getting to the finish line requires us believing! ‘I can’t’ is just a lie you tell yourself when you’re deceiving! When people stop themselves from greatness, that is my pet-peeving! So put away your doubts and all your worries and your grieving! It’s time to see the future and the heights we’ll be achieving!”

  Part of my training as a magician has included memorizing lists of words that are easy to rhyme. That way, when I need to say something quickly that sounds like a magic spell, I can whip up a silly poem superfast and use it to distract the audience from the actual trick I’m playing.

  The more I chanted it, the better people could hear the rhymes and rhythm. And when I hit the last line, I raised and lowered the hands I was holding in time with the beat, and then repeated it. “It’s time to see the future and the heights we’ll be achieving! It’s time to see the future and the heights we’ll be achieving!”

  While pumping their arms, everybody started repeating it along with me, louder and louder, Gabi the loudest. Even Lynott reluctantly spoke the lines, though with about as much enthusiasm as an endoscope showing up for work on Monday morning.

  We chanted four more times, each one louder than the next. And then, the chant worked. We were able to see the future we would be achieving. Literally. Because I brought in a finished Freedom Tower from another universe.

  Well, a lot of it anyway. I didn’t want to make a hole that FixGabi could use to get in—that would ruin the trap we were setting for her. So I just brought in, like, 70 percent of that Freedom Tower from the other universe. You could see through it, but only barely.

  “Well, mash my potatoes, it worked,” Coach Lynott said, almost stunned into silence. Then, going from flabbergaste
d to blabbergasted, he shouted, “It worked! It actually worked, kids! I can see what it’s going to look like when it’s done! Can you? It’s like it’s really there. That’s amazing! But it’s like I always say: ‘To make the impossible possible, you have to believe in your dreams!’”

  “THAT WAS A PRETTY neat trick you pulled back there,” Gabi told me as we walked out of stagecraft and set design, the happy sounds of construction vanishing as the door closed behind us. “When you made the tower appear, you made everyone believe they could finish it. It’s a pity you couldn’t have just left the finished tower in this universe, though—at least until after tomorrow night. We could have moved everyone to working on other stuff.”

  I shrugged. “Better safe than sorry. The thing about importing stuff from other universes is that it goes away on its own schedule. We don’t want the tower to disappear in the middle of Rompenoche, do we?”

  “No, we do not. But my point is, Sal, you gave everyone hope, just like a good director should. You’re turning out to be an excellent leader.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without you. You’re the one who clutched it out, taking control of Lynott the way you did.” I took a few more steps before my hands hit the bottoms of my pockets. “We make a good team. You really are someone I can work with.”

  Gabi jammed her hands in her pockets, too. “What are level-four friends for, you jar of farts?”

  “Hey! I’m being serious!”

  She gave me a side-eye smile. “So be serious. No one’s stopping you.”

  We started down the NW staircase as I spoke. “You’re always trying to fix every problem you run across. Doesn’t matter if it’s big or small, or even unsolvable. You’re fearless.”

  She shrugged. “‘The most good, for the most people, for as long as you have the spoons.’”

  “Yeah, well, I guess that makes you a utensils factory, because I’ve never met anyone with more spoons than you.”

  We were halfway down the stairs when Gabi stopped. “Thank you. That’s really sweet.”

  “Nope. Big facts. Another big fact: You’re good at teamwork, which a lot of smart people aren’t. And you’re really good at forgiving people. And then, after you forgive them, you help them recover from their mistakes. You’ve done that for me, for Yasmany, for who knows how many people.”

  “People have done it for me, too. Heck, you’ve done it for me.”

  I started us walking again. “Also, I really like your T-shirts. You’re always putting out a positive message. You’ve devoted your life to being a force for good in the world, down to the clothes you wear. It’s really admirable.”

  She stopped us again, this time at the bottom of the staircase, and stood staring at me like I was a brand-new species. Then, with her hands still in her pockets, she laughed without sound and leaned waaaay back. “Well, mash my potatoes,” she said, in a great imitation of Coach Lynott. “Do you have a crush on me, Sal Vidón?”

  “What? No! I don’t have those kinds of feelings for any—”

  She patted the air and talked me down. “Easy, bubba. That was level-four-friend teasing. If you were any more aro, I’d shoot you out of a bow. But that was a lot of compliments to give me all in a row. Why?”

  Instead of answering right away, I started ambling down hallway 1W. It felt elf-workshop levels of joyous: lots of kids in groups practicing their Rompenoche improv; lots of set builders putting props in place and measuring walls; lots of costumes being furiously stapled, taped, pinned, tied, and hot-glue-gunned together.

  That’s how far costume making had spread all over school. Aventura was out in the courtyard again with her army of seamstresses, seamsters, and seamstrxes, sewing like they were patching the fabric of the cosmos. And in hallway 1W, I had to step around Dr. Doctorpants, who was frantically helping kids on the floor finish their outfits. As Culeco’s resident expert on costuming, you’d expect him to be wearing an awesome costume, and you would not have been disappointed. He was dressed as both Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a two-sided costume, front and back, with four arms and four legs and two faces facing opposite directions—basically, a two-face Tweedle octopus.

  It was such a good costume that, from a distance, I seriously could not tell which side was Dr. Doctorpants’s actual front. I also liked the additions he had made so the costume looked less Alice and more Alicia. Instead of the frumpy British schoolboy outfits of Through the Looking-Glass, he had one of the Tweedles dressed like a Cuban schoolkid, with red shorts, a white shirt, and a blue scarf tied around the neck. The other side was dressed like an American private-school kid, with khaki shorts, a white shirt, a blue vest (that only went halfway around his torso, obviously) and a red tie. PS: If you think you could tell which way he was actually facing by looking at his knees, then you have never met a costumer as good as Dr. Doctorpants. He made both pairs of legs look like they were cotton-stuffed fakes.

  “Doing all right, Doctor?” I asked him. “Gonna finish in time?”

  “Nohow!” one of his Tweedle faces replied. Then he turned his head so the other Tweedle could say, “Contrariwise, we’ll finish in plenty of time.”

  “How can you not finish and finish at the same time?” Gabi asked, laughing.

  “Exactly! She gets it. Okay, back to work now.” And he used both sides of his costume to help two different kids—simultaneously!

  Gabi and I resumed our journey down the hallway, still trying to puzzle out how Dr. Doctorpants’s costume worked. But I don’t think either of us tried too hard. Sometimes mysteries are better than answers.

  But sometimes answers are better than mysteries. “I was complimenting you,” I said to Gabi, “because I really believe all those things, and we don’t always tell people how great they are, and then they’re gone, and we lose the chance forever.”

  Gabi thought about that before she answered. “You’re worried about tomorrow. About FixGabi.”

  I nodded. “When I was in the space station, I saw Miami and Cuba and the Bahamas wiped from the face of the Earth. It was”—it took me a sec to figure out what I wanted to say—“it was like the geography version of seeing my Cuban American background being wiped out of existence.”

  One of the nice things about talking to someone who reads a lot is that, when you make a big pronouncement like I just had, they get it. I watched Gabi’s face telegraph her shock and sympathy as she registered my words. “FixGabi’s no joke. But we’ve set a trap for her. We’ll have the element of surprise. We’re gonna get her, Sal. We won’t let what happened to her universe happen to ours.”

  I emptied my lungs. “I hope so. But it’s like when I’m playing Poocha Lucha Libre. I’m pretty good. I’ve been Top Dog of the Day seven different times.”

  “I’ll assume that’s a good thing,” said Gabi, whose idea of a video game is seeing how far she can shot-put an Xbox.

  “Trust me, Gabi, it is. But I still lose a lot of games, every day, even to people I should have beaten easily. Except Papi. I never lose to Papi.”

  Gabi nodded solemnly. “What you’re saying is that, in life, sometimes the wrong person wins.”

  “Sometimes it feels like the wrong person is always winning.”

  Now it was Gabi’s turn to sigh. “Don’t I know it.”

  “So,” I said, feeling smeepier and smeepier, “I just want you to know, in case I don’t get to later, that I think you’re an incredible person. There’s no one like you in the world, Gabi Reál. You are one of a kind.”

  There, as we stood in front of the door to the student council room, aka the Ovum Throne, Gabi gripped my shoulder like a cornerwoman asking her boxer for just one more round. “Thank you, Sal. You are, by far, the most mature cishet male Cuban American type-one diabetic tween I’ve ever met.”

  She was joking to keep herself from smeeping. “Thanks,” I deadpanned.

  “And,” she added, her eyeballs shining and wet, “you’re an actual, legitimate, honest-to-pants miracle worker. I mean, I am as atheis
t as a mountain. I used to think miracles were either misunderstandings or lies. But you, Sal, have introduced me to the science of miracles.” She took a step back and spoke more quietly. “You saved my baby brother, Sal, and therefore my whole family. Thank you. Thank you forever.”

  Yeah, there was no stopping her waterworks now. “Bring it in, sister,” I said, inviting her into a hug.

  “Really” she asked/said, so elated that I could hear her using an interrobang. She ran into my arms and Heimlich-hugged me. If either of us cried, no one else in the hallway could tell.

  As Gabi rested her chin on my shoulder, she added, “Do level-four friends hug?”

  “Naw,” I answered. “But level-five friends do.”

  She stepped out of the hug, smiling. “I do have to correct you about one thing, however.”

  “What’s that?”

  She stepped over to the student council room’s door and opened it. Inside, the Gabis from the Sisterverse were sitting in four of the egg-thrones, gabbing away. They all had on similar Alicia outfits.

  “There are at least four other people in the universe who are quite a bit like me,” Gabi added, smiling like the Jaws of Life at a demolition derby. “Now, what do you say we go over our plan one more time?”

  FROM THE OUTSIDE, I could see how some parents could think Rompenoche was a bit of a mess. But from my position as codirector, I knew the truth.

  It was gerbils.

  I mean, front to back, side to side, up and down—any way you looked at it, it was a parade of mayhem, guaranteed to overload your senses. Salsa music filled every hallway: thudding bongos, tragic trumpets, singers on the edge of a nervous breakdown declaring that it was the end of the world and they were going spend their last few minutes dancing. On the first floor, Miami landmarks had been gene-spliced with fantasy worlds, making them familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, both homey and weird.