“No, I mean, I thought you would call it the evil eye. Aren’t you American?”
I blinked. “Um, yeah. But my parents are Cuban.” Which is mostly true—both my biological parents are.
“Oh,” Gladis said, as if she didn’t want to say any more.
Nice and slow and not at all angrily, because I don’t get angry, I asked her once again, “So why’d you think I gave you mal de ojo?”
Gladis didn’t look up from her knitting. But she was purling like there was no tomorrow.
“Because, Sal,” said Juan Carlos Chaviano, Gladis’s best friend. I’d gotten to know him a little over the past few days. Nice guy. He’d come to Culeco to study songwriting and was already three-quarters of the way to becoming the next Latin pop star. No matter what he said, he beamed at you like you were a camera that was broadcasting his smile to millions of fans.
I smiled back at him. “Because why, Juan Carlos?”
“Because,” he said with a gleaming-teeth laugh, “you sacrificed a chicken in Yasmany Robles’s locker. What else is she supposed to think? You’re a brujo, chacho.”
Welp. Worst-case scenario confirmed.
“I didn’t sacrifice a chicken!” I said to Juan Carlos. “It was a magic trick!”
Juan Carlos shrugged, which meant Sorry, man, nothing I can do for you.
I felt my neck getting hot. “And anyway, there’s no such thing as brujos!”
Gladis shook her head. She stopped knitting long enough to stare at me straight in the ojo when she said, “Can’t fool me.” She looked a little scared and a little defiant and a lot like she wished she could send me to the center of the Earth with her eyes.
It’d been a long time since I’d been around anyone that superstitious. I’m pretty sure the last time it was Mami. It kind of stunned me.
So I kept my head down for the rest of the class. I needed time to think.
Seventh period was my PE class. Only at Culeco, they didn’t call it PE, or phys ed, or gym. They called it Health Science and the Practice of Wellness. I guess the fancy name was to help make dodgeball sound like something smart people did.
The class was held in the multipurpose room on the second floor. It didn’t look like a gym. It was bigger than average, with a tall ceiling and a hard, mean rug the color of sandpaper. At the start of class, everyone had to help lay big padded mats on the floor, and five minutes before class ended, we had to gather them up, lean them against a wall, and spray them down with nose-burning sanitizer. Probably the same stuff Mr. Milagros used to melt dead bodies.
Culeco was an arts school. Phys ed wasn’t exactly the highest priority. You didn’t even have to change into gym clothes if you didn’t want to.
It definitely smelled like a gym, though—like socks made of cheese. And all the sanitizer spray did was add a blue-toilet-liquid stench on top of the cheese socks. But if there was one thing in the multipurpose room that made it feel like a real gym, it was the rock-climbing wall.
It stretched from floor to ceiling and was separated into green, yellow, and red zones, depending on how good a climber you were. So far in class, a lot of people had slammed the victory button at the top of the green part, which made a siren howl and a red light spin. A few people had reached yellow, with more sirens and lights. But no one had reached the top of red.
That’s where I was going. I was getting to the top today. After my first two days of being defeated by the red zone, I had come up with a plan. The glory of making it all the way up would be mine.
And between Yasmany, Gabi, and the worrisome developments in Textile Arts, I could really use a little glory.
But as I headed to get in line for my turn on the climbing wall, Mr. Lynott intercepted me.
He looked like a brolic manatee wearing gym clothes—small head, big chest, and tiny from the waist down. He spread his arms and legs as wide as he could to block me.
“Um, Sal,” he said, “maybe it’s not such a good idea, you climbing. Maybe you should join the yoga pace group.”
I was pretty sure of what was coming. I reminded myself that I do not get angry and played it straight. “Why?”
“You know. Because of your”—he leaned in to whisper—“condition?”
Oh.
Principal Torres must have had a talk with Mr. Lynott. On the first day, he’d spent all class busting my chops, and yesterday he’d sent me to the principal’s office for eating Skittles. But now—after Principal Torres let him have it, I guessed—instead of acting like a drill sergeant, he was going to act like a chicken culeco for its only egg.
I actually did want to join the yoga pace group, eventually. Magicians need to be extremely flexible if they’re going to escape from straitjackets and stuff. And after banging my knee on the stairs earlier, maybe climbing wasn’t the best idea today. But the way Mr. Lynott whispered “condition” to me? Yeah, I didn’t have time for cacaseca like that in my life.
So I made my eyes really big and asked, “Mr. Lynott, you’re not denying me equal access to school activities based on my disability, are you?”
Mr. Lynott was a white dude. I mean white hair, white nose hair, white eyebrows, white Stonehenge teeth, white gym clothes, white sneakers, and a metal whistle hanging from a white string around his neck. This white dude’s skin went from white to red as fast as a squid camouflaging itself. “What?! No! I would never do that! It’s illegal to deny you access to all the same equipment as normal kids.”
I had practiced looking like I was about to cry in front of a mirror for moments just like this one. “You mean I’m not a normal kid, Mr. Lynott?”
His face collapsed like a condemned building. “What?! No! That’s not what I meant! You can do anything anyone else can! You’re perfectly normal in your own unique way!” And then, trying to pretend he could still pull off the drill sergeant routine, he added, “Now, um, get on that wall and, er, show me what you got, Vidón!”
“Yes, sir!” I saluted, and headed for the wall.
Kids had lined up for the green and yellow zones, but it looked like everyone was sick of falling off the red zone. No line, no wait.
I belted myself into the climbing harness. Only when I was completely strapped in did I remember that I needed someone to spot me.
The harness was attached to a rope, which ran through a pulley on the ceiling about twenty feet up, and whoever was holding on to the other end of the rope would keep you from falling to your death when you slipped off the climbing wall. (Well, okay, there was an extra-thick pad at the bottom of the wall that probably would keep you from dying. But still.)
I admit it: I was afraid to ask anyone to spot me. The way the kids in the hallway had stared at me and the way Gladis had petted her ojo turco had me freaked. What if no one at Culeco wanted to spot a brujo?
“Whatcha waiting for, Vidón?” said Mr. Lynott from behind me. Then I did turn around. He had the rope tightly grasped in both hands. He was going to spot me.
Relief felt like cool water running down my back. “Nothing at all,” I said, and made for the wall.
“You can do anything!” Mr. Lynott cheered. “Diabetics are number one!”
Well, he was trying. I started to climb.
The lower part of the red zone is only a little harder than the other zones. It was just missing a few footholds, compared to green and yellow. I made it halfway up the wall in no time.
The first tricky spot was where I’d fallen on the first day. You had to turn yourself upside down against the wall, like a cockroach changing directions. While upside down, you had to latch on to the two footholds above you with your feet. And then—this was the hard part—you had to bend your knees and arc your spine all the way back, like you were trying to stick your head up your own butt. You had to grab the single handhold above your feet, and, while holding on for dear life, flip right-side up again, and put your feet back into the footholds.
On the first day of school, I hadn’t been able to make the flip. Yesterday, tho
ugh, I’d managed to pull it off. When I did, the whole class broke into applause, and everybody had stopped what they were doing to see if I’d make it to the top.
But I’d fallen almost immediately. Feeling light-headed, I’d peeled off the wall. That’s when I’d had some Skittles to level my blood sugar and Mr. Lynott had sent me to the principal’s.
(Hadn’t done a good job of eating today, either. Really had to take care of that soon.)
The thing is, I probably would have fallen yesterday, anyway. Because the next part of the wall is the real killer. There’s only one hold to reach for, and it’s more than five feet higher up. The only way to get there is to jump for it.
Which is stupid. The chance of you being able to jump high enough, slap at the wall, and grab the hold tight enough to support your entire body weight is practically zip. And even if you did manage to do all that, you still had to pull yourself up—with one arm—high enough to slap the victory button with the other hand. Complete and total cacaseca.
So last night over dinner, I’d told my padres about the climbing wall—showed them a picture I took and everything. The conversation got serious, fast. My papi’s a physicist, so he got out paper and pencil and protractor and asked me to sketch the wall. After I did, he drew some lines and did some math that might as well have been magic formulas.
By the time he was done working his magic, he was pretty sure that wall had been designed to be impossible to conquer.
That made him angry. “Are they trying to discourage children? What’s the point of putting up a climbing wall that’s impossible to climb?”
“Well, then,” said American Stepmom, “Sal will just have to do the impossible.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll just cheat.”
Papi swallowed his lips and held up his index finger. “Um…Are you allowed to cheat?”
“Yes!” American Stepmom and I yelled at the same time. Then we high-fived.
So as a family, we came up with a way to get to the top of the red zone.
Now, as I stood on the two footholds, having already made the flip and looking up at the ridiculous jump I had to make, I pulled my secret weapon from a vest pocket: a plastic six-pack ring. Being extra sure I was balanced, I slipped my wrists through two holes on opposite sides and got ready to jump.
The idea was that I could catch the hold with the six-pack ring. I figured it could support my weight for at least a few seconds (one of the benefits of being on the smaller side) and buy me a few inches of reach as I jumped. It would also allow me to use the strength of both arms to pull me up, instead of just one. Then I could quickly free a hand and slap the victory button.
And best of all, maybe the kids on the ground wouldn’t be able to see the clear plastic ring. I could tell them I did it with magic!
Which, I suddenly realized, seemed like a much better idea last night than it did today, before Gladis and Juan Carlos and who knew how many other kids thought I was a brujo.
I didn’t look over my shoulder. I didn’t have to. No one had applauded me for getting this far today, but I knew they were watching. If I made it to the top of the impossible red zone, my rep would be permanent. I would be a brujo forever.
Change of plan. I tucked the six-pack ring back into my pocket. A different kind of trick was called for today.
I leaped for the handhold above me, hard as I could. I slapped at the wall. I stretched my fingers as far as they would go.
Annnnnnd I didn’t even get close. I fell.
Well, technically, I just swung in the air. I sagged in the harness like a depressed lobster, then punched my palm in fake anger. “So close!” I spat out as Mr. Lynott very carefully lowered me down.
“Not even,” said Octavio Murillo. I didn’t know what his specialty at Culeco was. If I had to guess, I’d say he was studying Being Really Freaking Tall for His Age. He was next in line for the red zone.
“Yes I was!” I retorted as my feet touched the ground. “Retorting” is what you do instead of replying when you know you’re wrong.
He shook his head, sad for me. “Next time, better use your magic broom, mago.”
“Mago” was…interesting. He’d called me a magic user. But he didn’t say it like it scared him any. It was more like the way everybody makes fun of everybody in middle school—just hit ’em where they’re weak. It was even kind of friendly, in a way.
So I unclasped the last buckle on the harness, walked up to Octavio, got under his nose, and said, “Mago, huh? Wanna see a magic trick?”
“Sure,” he said.
“I can make a bird appear out of thin air,” I said.
People in the green and yellow zone lines were watching, so I had to make it good. I started waving my hands around mysteriously. Nothing in my right hand, I showed Octavio, and nothing in my left. Then, after three great flourishes, I materialized from behind my hand…my middle finger.
“Tweet tweet,” I said.
Octavio laughed, right along with everybody waiting in the lines. He could take a joke. Good to know some kids at Culeco could.
But I’d forgotten Mr. Lynott was right there. He blew his whistle. “Personal foul, Vidón! You’re going…” Then he faltered.
I think he was going to finish that sentence with “straight to the principal’s office.” He’d caught me red-handed, or -fingered, or whatever. I had definitely just earned myself another heart-to-heart with Principal Torres. Not good at all.
But instead of a one-way ticket to Detentionville, Mr. Lynott said, “You’re going…um…places, Sal! You’re going places! Because being a diabetic will never get in the way of your dreams!”
The bell rang. As we headed for our next classes, Octavio, walking beside me, said, “Dude, I think you broke Lynott. What the ’seca was he talking about?”
My first impulse was to talk smack about Mr. Lynott, be funny, make Octavio laugh and therefore like me. But half a second’s pause and I knew that’s not how you treat people, especially not people who are trying to do better. “Lynott’s all right,” I said. “He’s just never tangled with a mago before.”
JUST ONE MORE class to get through, and then I could eat something before I keeled over. But it wasn’t just any class. It was Intermediate Theater Workshop, and today we were all expected to put on a short display of our talent. Or “show-and-tell,” as our teacher, Mrs. Waked, called it.
ITW was held in the prop room. I liked seeing all the past costumes and backdrops Culeco students had used in their performances. It made you feel like you were part of something bigger.
A lot of the props had been donated to Culeco by Mrs. Waked. She had collected a lifetime’s worth of them from the movies, TV series, and commercials she’d been in. Scattered on shelves, hanging from coatracks, or resting in boxes and trunks, you could find wigs and hats, scarves and boas and sunglasses, crutches and umbrellas and a half-dozen trench coats. Lift a lid and you might find a talking toy parrot, a barking robot dachshund, and a sock-puppet butler that Mrs. Waked had voiced in six different Super Bowl ads. A bunch of “As Seen on TV!” products whose use no one could identify sat around like weird alien artifacts, daring someone to experiment with them. Makeup kits bigger than tool chests overflowed with all the fake noses, ears, teeth, and facial hair a middle school acting class could want.
It was BYO spirit gum, though. That stuff is expensive.
As I walked through the room (finally a few minutes early to a class), a bunch of the kids stood off by themselves, practicing for the show-and-tell we’d all be part of in a few minutes. It looked like several of them were going to perform monologues. And that meant you didn’t want to sit in the front row. These were all serious actors dedicated to perfect pronunciation and crystal-clear enunciation. Every word that began with a “p” or a “t” would spray enough spit to put out a forest fire.
The singers do-re-mi’ed and mi-re-do’ed down again, and the musicians—saxophone, electric guitar, harmonica, a row of wineglasses, harp—practice
d the toughest licks in their songs. Dancers rehearsed their moves deliberately, over and over, and it made me kind of wish that they always danced in slow motion. One girl had a puppet who apparently thought she was the stupidest person in the world. Adam Hoag wore a beret—that’s how you knew he was a director—and sat watching his laptop screen while nervously going over the intro notes for his short film. Widelene Henrissaint, on the other hand, was the opposite of nervous. She ran through a kata with a bo staff, looking intense and very well trained and very Darth Maul–y. She was going to be tough competition. But I would beat her. As good as her kata was, it wasn’t magic.
I’d had a chance to stop by my locker before class to grab the props I needed for my act: six pairs of handcuffs in all different colors. (Unfortunately, I’d been so excited about performing that I’d forgotten to grab my lunch, too—which wasn’t a smart move for someone with a useless pancreas.) I’d been practicing a handcuff routine since I started my career as an illusionist, and at this point, I had it down to a science. I was going to blow some minds today.
And there was one mind I couldn’t wait to explode into itty-bitty pieces: Gabi Reál’s.
She hadn’t made it to class yet. I admit that I wanted to catch a glimpse of her act before the period started. I had a feeling that, as good as kata girl’s routine was, Gabi was my true rival. But there was no sign of her.
At the front of the room, Mrs. Waked, wearing a black velvet dress and a bustle that gave her a bumblebee butt, was arranging folding chairs in rows close to the stage. There were no desks in Intermediate Theater Workshop, just folding chairs. “No taking notes in this class!” Mrs. Waked had told us on the first day. “An actor memorizes.”
She italicized words all the time when she talked. You could hear it.
“Want some help, Mrs. Waked?” I asked. You say her name “Wok-ed.” I had emphasized both syllables in her name when I said it, and she noticed.
“Of course,” she said, kind of laughing and kind of suspicious. “What a nice young man.”
Sal and Gabi Break the Universe Page 4