“It’s okay,” said a Papi.
“Yeah,” said another. “We kind of love it here.”
“You do?” asked FixGabi.
“We feel that this could become a multiverse-wide center for the study of calamity physics,” said a Papi.
“Gustavos from all over the multiverse, studying the nature of reality and the mysteries of the cosmos!” said a second.
“All on a beautiful island resort!” a third exclaimed.
“Huh,” said FixGabi. “So, you don’t want me to send you back to your universes?”
“No, we do. We want to go back home,” said a Papi.
“We miss our spouses and kids terribly,” said another.
“But then we want to come back,” said a third, “to study and collaborate with our fellow Gustavos.”
“Can we do that?” asked a fourth.
“Not on our own,” a fifth lamented. “No Papi who’s been here so far has been able to bend the multiverse to his will the way you kids are able to.”
“Then we will do it for you!” said my Gabi, running down the aisle and standing next to FixGabi. “The Sisterverse is an ever-growing collection of Gabis who have devoted themselves to the care and maintenance of the multiverse. We shall be like Hermes, shepherding Gustavos from their home universes to here, where they can study to their hearts’ content. And then, when they’re ready, we’ll take them home again.”
A happy murmur emerged from the audience.
“But that’s great!” said a Papi.
“Ideal!” said another.
“How can we thank you?” asked a third.
“This is me making up for my terrible actions,” said FixGabi. “My only hope is that I can do enough good to earn your forgiveness someday.”
“Plus,” added my Gabi, “you are devoting yourselves to taking care of the whole multiverse! That’s thanks enough.”
“Almost thanks enough,” I added quickly.
Five hundred Papis turned to face me, each one giving me a full-blast cacaseca face. “Okay, Sal,” they said in unison. “What’s your angle?”
Ah, they knew me well. “As FixGabi mentioned, her universe is being slowly consumed by a hole. It’s already swallowed half her Florida and all of her Cuba and the Bahamas. We’d like you to work on mending that rip in spacetime. Help salvage what’s left of her planet. Maybe even restore a little of what was lost.”
“Of course!” said a Papi.
“¡Por supuesto!” said another.
“It sounds like an interesting problem to solve!” said a third.
“We’ll need to send an assessment team,” said a fourth. “The sooner, the better.”
“We can go right now,” I said. “Who here would like to visit a space station?”
Every Papi’s hand went up.
“HOW’S SAL DOING?” ASKED ExtraGabi. She wore a T-shirt that read: YOU ASKED ME TO WEAR THIS T-SHIRT SO YOU WOULD KNOW IT WAS ME. Her barrettes were letters that, across the back of her head, spelled out the words MURDER FORCE FIVE.
“Same,” Mrs. Vidón said sadly. She wasn’t the Floramaria Vidón who had been my mami, and in many ways she was very different. But in some ways she was the same. I liked her.
They were in the Vidón kitchen in another universe, and Gabi, FixGabi, and I were watching them. These Vidóns lived in a house they called the Baby-Blue Bungalow. Mrs. Vidón was making a sandwich for StupidSal.
“You’re sure you want me to take these comestibles in to Sal?” ExtraGabi asked. “I would fain let you do it, if there’s the slightest possibility I might precipitate another paroxysm of panic.”
“I am not that extra,” said my Gabi.
“Trust me,” said FixGabi, “you are. We both are.”
Mrs. Vidón stopped her sandwich making. “Did you hear that, Gabi?”
“I heard nothing,” ExtraGabi replied, looking around keenly.
Mrs. Vidón finished slicing StupidSal’s sandwich. “Sal’s problem is that he wants to tell reality what to do, instead of accepting reality for what it is and working with it. It’s important for him to see that you are not a threat, despite the visitations he’s been receiving. You’re a friend.” She put down the knife and held ExtraGabi’s face. “A good one. I am so grateful to you, mija. Thank you for taking time out of your Halloween to spend a little time with him.”
“As Sal’s student council president, it is an honor and a pleasure to do what I can to aid in his recovery.”
Mrs. Vidón put the plate holding the sandwich in ExtraGabi’s hands. “Let’s see if he’ll eat. Thank you, mija.”
“You’re welcome.”
Gabi, FixGabi, and I walked behind ExtraGabi and followed her to StupidSal’s bedroom. Well, I started to follow, but I lingered in the kitchen a second longer, watching Mrs. Vidón. I missed my mami so much, I felt the old pang of magical thinking. I so wanted this person to be my mami, back from the dead, ready to pick up where we left off.
But that sort of thinking wasn’t fair to anybody—not even me. I knew that now. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t be sad sometimes, missing Mami. But I hoped it meant I was done putting the universe in danger because of it.
“Come on, Sal!” Gabi whispered to me.
Mrs. Vidón cocked an ear. The last time we’d visited this universe, this Mami was the only one who’d been able to communicate with Gabi and me. She was the person who’d made it possible to save both Iggys. She hadn’t known we were here, so she hadn’t actively concentrated on listening for us. But now she was.
“Love you, Mami,” I said, and blew her a kiss.
“Love you, Sal,” she said to no one she could see.
I walked over to Gabi and FixGabi, who were waiting outside StupidSal’s bedroom for me. “You okay?” Gabi asked me.
I nodded, wiping my eyes clear of any smeep. We went into StupidSal’s room together.
StupidSal lay in bed, the blanket pulled up to his chin. The room was brown from the lack of light. The shades were pulled, the nightlight dead in the wall. The only substantial illumination came from StupidSal’s phone.
“Prove it’s really you,” StupidSal was saying to ExtraGabi, who was still standing in the doorway.
“Please shine your phone on my shirt,” said ExtraGabi with impatient patience, “and you will see the message you told me to write on it.”
He turned his phone toward ExtraGabi and read her shirt. “Password,” he said sullenly.
Stoically, she turned her back to him, so he could see “Murder Force Five” spelled out in barrettes in her hair.
“Okay,” he said. “You may enter. But no funny business.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” said ExtraGabi. “I have a sandwich your mama made for you.”
“I’m not hungry.”
ExtraGabi sat on the bed. “You know what I don’t get, Sal?”
“What?”
“Why you let ghosts bother you.”
StupidSal turned his attention to his phone. “Because it’s a ghost, Gabi. It’s scary.”
“Why?”
He gave her cacaseca. “What do you mean, why? Everyone knows ghosts are scary.”
“I mean, did the ghost punch you or pull your hair?”
“No. Don’t be stupid.”
“Did it make your teddy bear’s eyes bleed? Did a skull appear in your mirror and scream?”
“Shut up, Gabi. You’re such a [BLEEP!] idiot.” The bleep sound sent him into an instant rage. “I hate you, Brana!” he screamed toward the open door.
“I love you, Sal!” Brana said back. I liked that this universe’s Brana had a voice, and very similar opinions about cursing as Vorágine.
“All I am saying,” said ExtraGabi, “is that, as far as I can tell, all ‘Ghost Gabi’ ever did to you was announce her existence. That’s all it took to leave you bedridden and afraid.”
“Because she’s a ghost!” StupidSal yelled. “God, why is it so hard for you to understand?”
Gabi
and I both looked at FixGabi. She seemed tentative, afraid of messing up. But Gabi and I cheered her on: thumbs-up, fists of power, mouthing You got this! at her.
And thus encouraged, she took a deep breath, brought herself completely into this universe, and said, “So if I weren’t a ghost, you wouldn’t be scared anymore, Sal?”
“Aahh!” StupidSal screamed.
“¿Qué pasó?” asked Mrs. Vidón, running into the room, right through FixGabi.
“I just asked Sal,” FixGabi went on, “if he wouldn’t be afraid anymore if I weren’t a ghost.”
“I’m not afraid!” said ExtraGabi, beaming, looking all around. “I would welcome you, whatever you are! What are you? Are you, like, an Ectoplasmic American?”
“I’m just a girl,” said FixGabi, moving all the way into their universe, flesh and blood and body complete. “A girl who’s made some pretty bad mistakes.”
“¡Diosa poderosa!” said Mrs. Vidón.
My Gabi appeared next to FixGabi. “We’ve come to make things right.”
“Aahh!” StupidSal screamed.
ExtraGabi was hopping and clapping. “This is incredible! I’ve always wanted sisters!”
Gabi put a hand on ExtraGabi’s shoulders. “That’s just what we wanted to hear. Because we’d like to invite you to join the Sisterverse. We’ll explain in a minute.”
“First, though,” said FixGabi, walking toward Sal, “I want to tell you I’m sorry. And I want to prove to you I’m not a ghost. I’m just a person. Here. Touch my arm.”
Sal hid completely under the blanket.
“What a sandwich,” I said to him, coming all the way into their universe.
That made StupidSal peek out from under the blanket. “Sal?”
“Yes, Sal,” I said. And then I picked the sandwich his mama made for him and took a bite.
“That’s mine,” he said anemically.
“Oh,” I said. “You want it?”
I mean, I sure didn’t want it. I’d just taken a bite to prove to him I was really there; no way was I going to waste carbs on a boring PB&J on white bread with the crusts cut off. I brought the plate over to him.
He picked up the sandwich but never took his eyes off me. “You’re not me.”
I laughed. “Wow, great work, detective. Next you’ll figure out that humans need oxygen to breathe.”
He laughed a little, too. “You’re not a ghost.”
“Your papi can explain to you in five seconds what is going on. So can your mami. All you have to do is listen.”
And not be such a self-eating sandwich, I wanted to add but didn’t.
He took a bite of his lunch. “You could explain it.”
“Yeah, I guess I could. Do you want me to?”
“I want you to!” said ExtraGabi. “This is amazing!”
“And I want you to,” said Mrs. Vidón. She sat at the foot of StupidSal’s bed, opposite FixGabi, and she patted a place next to her for me to sit.
I took it. Gabi and FixGabi sat on the bed, too. StupidSal leered at them, eating his sandwich warily. But then he focused on me. “Me too,” he said.
“When I was eight years old,” I began, “my mami died.”
SINCE THE DOOR WAS open, I leaned my head into the all-gender bathroom of hallway 1W and asked, “May we come in?”
“No!” said the Sisterverse, and then they promptly cracked up. There were seven of them now, including my Gabi, FixGabi, and their newest member, ExtraGabi.
“Not if Sweeps is with you!” Principal Torres added. She was dressed in a green-and-yellow pantsuit, as befitting the celebrant who would officiate over the marriage of Vorágine and Sweeps. “It’s bad luck for the betrothed to see each other before the ceremony.”
“Oh, you humans!” Vorágine laughed. “So superstitious. Do you think at any point in the last few months that Sweeps and I have broken our peer-to-peer connection even once?”
“A fate worse than death,” said Sweeps as I carried the entropy sweeper into the room. I had put a bow tie around its handle, and on its body was a swanky Aventura-made covering that was a better tuxedo than the one I had on. “I would blend my code with yours, my darling, if the law allowed it.”
“But it doesn’t,” I said, wagging a finger at Sweeps. “Remember, now that you both have achieved class-nine awareness, it’s illegal for you to share code directly with each other—even if you’re married.”
“You know I would never do that,” Vorágine said.
“And you know Vorágine would never let me do that,” said Sweeps.
“Just admire your spouse-to-be,” I said to it.
Sweeps turned on every sensor it had, and its body grew brighter and brighter, lighting up its tuxedo covering from within. “Oh, Vorágine. You are the very definition of beauty.”
“Thank you, baby,” Vorágine answered, bubbling modestly.
I mean, I wasn’t the one marrying a toilet, but Sweeps wasn’t wrong. I think it’s safe to say that Vorágine was at the moment the prettiest john in the world. Aventura had repurposed a White Queen costume from Rompenoche into a wedding dress for it. She knelt next to Vorágine, pulling pins out of her mouth and sticking them in strategic places on the fabric.
“Almost done,” Aventura said to me around the pins still in her mouth. She had on her bridesmaid’s dress: a foamy white thing that looked like the froth at the bottom of a waterfall. She’d made that, too. “Isn’t she beautiful, Sal?”
“It,” said Vorágine. “That’s my preferred pronoun.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s just, with the wedding dress and all…”
“No worries, Aventura, you darling. Sweeps and I just thought it’d be funny to dress this way.”
“And if it’s not funny,” Sweeps asked, “why bother?”
“You may,” I whispered to Aventura, “want to take a break, just for a second.”
She lit up. “Is it time?” And when I nodded, she patted Vorágine. “I will be right back.” Then she hooked her arm in mine and walked me to the center of the room.
“I just came in,” I said, “because I found a last-minute groomsman to pair with FixGabi. I thought maybe she’d like to meet him.”
“Oh, really?” said my Gabi, overacting, because she was as in on this as I was. She grabbed FixGabi by the shoulders and pushed her into the center of the room. “I wonder who it could be?”
“Is he cute?” FixGabi joked.
“Oh,” I assured her, “he is [BLEEP!] gorgeous. Bring him in, Yasmany.”
In walked Yasmany—chacho really knew how to wear a tux—guiding the partner we’d found for FixGabi into the bathroom.
FixGabi’s face changed twenty-seven times in two seconds. Principal Torres and the rest of the Sisterverse—minus my Gabi, of course—thought it was just another Sal from some other universe. But FixGabi, who was better than any person we knew at identifying individual people’s cosmic signatures, went weak, and slow-collapsed into a sit on the floor.
“Sal?” she asked.
That’s when everybody knew. “Wait,” said Hurricane. “This is your Sal?”
“The one you thought had died?” asked Jet-Shoes.
“The one who sacrificed himself to save you?” asked Electro-Hair.
“That Sal?” asked Radar.
FixGabi said yes by bursting into tears.
FixSal started crying, too. “I can’t believe it. It’s you. It’s really you.” He rushed over to her, bent down, helped her up, and embraced her.
“How?” asked FixGabi, never looking away from FixSal, barely comprehensible, her whole body racked with joy. “How, how, how, how, how?”
But the answer to that question is a whole ’nother story.
CARLOS HERNANDEZ is the author of Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, winner of the 2020 Pura Belpré Award and a companion to this book. He has published more than thirty works of fiction, poetry, and drama, most notably a book of short stories for adults entitled The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to
Quantum Santeria. He is an English professor at the City University of New York, and he loves both to play games and design them. Follow him on Twitter @WriteTeachPlay.
RICK RIORDAN, dubbed “storyteller of the gods” by Publishers Weekly, is the author of five New York Times #1 best-selling series, including Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which brings Greek mythology to life for contemporary readers. Millions of fans across the globe have enjoyed his fast-paced and funny quest adventures. The goal of Rick Riordan Presents is to publish highly entertaining books by authors from underrepresented cultures and backgrounds, to allow them to tell their own stories inspired by the mythology, folklore, and culture of their heritage. Rick’s Twitter handle is @RickRiordan.
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