Sal and Gabi Break the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  But I surprised even myself when I asked, “What’s the best way I can help Iggy?”

  “WHO’S IGGY?” ASKED American Stepmom.

  Oh, right. There was no way she could have known about him. So that took a while to explain. I basically had to catch American Stepmom up on the last two days of my life (minus the stuff she already knew, and the stuff she didn’t need to know).

  Once I’d finished, I thought we’d get right into brainstorming ideas to help Iggy. Instead, she said, “So. Gabi Reál.”

  And her face was all fox meets chicken.

  “Yeah. So?” I answered, shaking the last dregs of cocoa into my mouth.

  “She sounds like an interesting person.” Oh, if eyebrows could talk.

  All right. Let’s go. “She is an interesting person, Mother.”

  “The sort of person you might want to, oh, I don’t know, get to know better?”

  I made wide eyes at her. “Oh yes, Mother. Why, she’s the fastest friend I’ve ever made, Mother.”

  “Oh. That’s great,” she said, in that way that meant That’s not quite what I meant. “Friends are great. Aren’t friends great?”

  “Friendship is magic,” I agreed.

  “And sometimes, you know,” she continued, fishing for chocolate bits in the bottom of her mug with her fingernail, “the right friend can become even more than a friend.” Her eyes flipped to me.

  Time for gg. “Are you implying that you want Gabi Reál to be my girlfriend? Because I don’t think I’m ready for dating. What with all the universe breaking and all, I’ve got a lot on my plate.”

  She looked shocked and hurt (she was neither, the big faker). “I’m not implying anything,” she said, scrambling. “You don’t want romance, you don’t have to have romance. You get to be whatever gender you want and love whoever you want. Or just have lots of friends—whatever! It’s up to you. You can always adopt to give me the grandkids I require.”

  “We were talking about Iggy?”

  “Oh yeah, Iggy.” She took our mugs to the sink and rinsed them. “Well, the best thing you can do is support the family. Why don’t you text Gabi and ask her?” She looked over her shoulder at me. “Oh, unless you don’t have her number.”

  “No, I have it,” I said, taking out my phone.

  “Has her phone number,” she said, placing the mugs in the dishwasher and definitely not sneaking looks at me.

  “Stop trolling. What should I say?”

  “Just tell her you’re really sorry about her brother, and you want to help. And, oh,” she said, walking up to me, “this is serious: Make sure she knows you mean it as a friend. Girls have to be careful, you know.”

  “Trust me, Gabi can take care of herself,” I said, and pressed send.

  “Good job,” said American Stepmom, leaning against the same piece of counter I was. “Now, what do you say we get some sleep? School tomorrow, for both of us.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait to see if she writes back?”

  American Stepmom patted my shoulder. “Darling, it’s really late. I’m sure Gabi Reál has been asleep for the past—”

  My text tone is the sound in Poocha Lucha Libre when you dominate your opponent so bad you become their master and can make them do dog tricks. “Yesss, master!” my phone said with a slobbering voice.

  I showed my screen to American Stepmom. “Told you,” I said.

  “Yesss, master!” my phone said again.

  And again.

  And then fifty-six more times.

  American Stepmom watched, completely hypnotized, as Gabi machine-gunned text after text at us. My arm started shaking from holding up my phone up to her for so long.

  When I was pretty sure it was over—oh, wait, no, there went sixty—when I was pretty sure it was over, I asked American Stepmom, “So, what did Gabi say?”

  She blinked like she’d just learned how. “Phew, baby. It’s a long story.”

  Iggy, Gabi had texted, had “suffered an episode” that “left the Reál clan in a state of poignant despair” all night long. Only Gabi’s mom “could enjoy the privilege of keeping vigil at the side of the incubator” this late after visiting hours, which was “one of the myriad indignities I and my fathers are forced to endure.” They “held their collective breath” every time a doctor or nurse entered the room, only to be told that “Ignacio’s condition had neither improved nor deteriorated since the initial incident.”

  My heart is rent in two, like an abandoned valentine, read text 64. Four more texts had come in while I read them. Text 65 was the only emoji she’d used during her entire text storm: a broken heart.

  “Your girlfriend is quite the writer,” said American Stepmom.

  She could see how the news about Ignacio was hitting me, and she was trying to lighten the mood.

  I turned and smiled at her: no teeth, stretched lips, and shaking my head. “Dude, I play online. Can’t tilt me.”

  “Seriously, though, Sal,” she said, not too seriously, but actually completely seriously, “if you want, I’ll drive you over to the hospital right now. Oh, no—you’ll have to wait for visiting hours.”

  “No, I don’t. The Reáls are practically running that hospital. They throw parties all night long in the waiting room. I’m sure I could visit them now. I could put on a magic show for them. Make them feel better.”

  She hadn’t been expecting that answer. But American Stepmom wasn’t someone who backtracked once she offered you something. “Well, okay. Ask Gabi what she thinks.”

  But Gabi stiff-upper-lipped me.

  What a generous, selfless offer, kind Sal! she texted back. You are a true, if still relatively new, friend. I would gladly accept the solace of your company in this dark hour if I weren’t in need of an even bigger favor from you. It seems I will be unable to attend school today. Therefore, I need you to collect notes from all the classes I will miss. Momentarily, I will send you an annotated list of the students whose notes you must copy for me. Some of them are more thorough than others, and all leave a great deal to be desired, alas. But I must make do. If you will kindly deliver the notes and homework assignments to me after school today, you will be doing me the greatest favor possible.

  Over the next several minutes, Gabi texted me psychology reports of all the people she wanted me to get notes from.

  Gladis Machado, according to Gabi, responded best to bribery—a pack of my Skittles would work perfectly on her.

  Gladis Machado. The ojo turco girl. Great.

  I didn’t know the second person Gabi wanted notes from. Her name was Teresita Tómas, and, according to Gabi, she needed to be strong-armed a little. If, for example, I implied that she might lose her gossip column in the Rotten Egg, her notes for math and the History of Technology would be, and I quote, “impeccable.”

  Gabi had three separate classes with Aventura Rios, and apparently she was the smartest note taker of the bunch, but she had handwriting “like a San Francisco earthquake.” Aventura, Gabi decided, would “simply have to write more neatly for me.” If she didn’t, I was asked to tell her that Gabi might put off running the “Valedictory Notes” article she was planning to write about her. Aventura really wanted that article; she was going to use it to bolster her application to a costume-making summer program in Italy. She’ll play ball, Gabi ended, as sweetly as a mob boss.

  And, oh, if I would “be so kind” as to go over the lesson in our Intermediate Theater Workshop with Gabi in the hospital that evening, she would be “ever so grateful.”

  “Phew, baby!” said American Stepmom, reading over my shoulder again. “That kid’s a shark. Are you sure you want her as your girlfriend?”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “Get good, Mom,” I said, and went to bed.

  SOMETIMES, THERE’S NOTHING more expressive than Spanish. Take “madrugada,” the word for “so stupid early it’s still dark outside.” It’s one of those words that seem to mean more than a dictionary can tell you. It sounds like the word Merlin would use
to turn his enemy’s teeth into worms.

  The madrugada is my time. It’s when I feel the most magical. And I was going to need all the magic I could find to succeed in today’s mission: close the hole in Yasmany’s locker. If I could.

  So when my alarm went off at stupid-early o’clock, even though I hadn’t gotten much sleep the last two days, I felt full of power and potential. I showered, did all the pokey-bleedy-beep-you’re-fine stuff, microwaved breakfast, mathed out the rest of my food for the day, loaded my pockets with tricks, and put on a very special ball cap (see below).

  On the way out the door, I grabbed one more little item: the entropy sweeper Papi had used to scan me when I was in the hospital.

  I wouldn’t have taken the device if it hadn’t begged me.

  I didn’t even see it at first. I just heard it moaning “Woe is I. Woe is I!” over and over.

  I had the front door open already, but I closed it and followed the sound of the sweeper’s wailing. I found it behind the couch and under a blanket.

  I pulled it out, leaned it against the wall, and peeked under the blanket. “You okay there, entropy-sweeper dude?”

  “No, I am not okay!” it snapped. “What part of ‘Woe is I!’ was unclear to you?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, isn’t it supposed to be ‘Woe is me’?”

  It laughed triumphantly. “No! The correct grammar is ‘Woe is I’! Shakespeare got it wrong in that little speech of his. Therefore, I am smarter than Shakespeare.”

  “Riiight,” I said, dropping the blanket. “Well, good luck with that.”

  “No! Wait! Don’t leave!”

  Reluctantly, I turned back around. “Dude, I have to get to school.”

  “Yes, but I’m going to be so lonely! Now that your papi has his stupid remembranation machine, he doesn’t need his loyal old entropy sweeper anymore. He threw me behind a couch! He’s gonna recycle me, kid! Cut me up for spare parts! You’ve got to save me!”

  I walked back over to it and removed the blanket. “Papi wouldn’t do that. You’re lying.” And then, doubting myself, I asked, “Can a class-eight artificial intelligence lie?”

  “Oh yeah, sure. I lie all the time. I’m lying right now.”

  My brain short-circuited a little. “But if you’re lying about lying…But if you’re telling the truth about lying…”

  “I just blew your mind, didn’t I, kid? Bwa-ha-ha!”

  This thing was trouble. I should have just walked away. But the fact was, it could really help me with my plan. And if Papi had left it under a blanket behind the couch, he probably wouldn’t be using it anytime soon.

  So I grabbed the weed whacker from the garage, stuck it behind the couch, put the blanket over it, and took off for school with the number one mobile calamitron detector in the world before the parents’ bedroom door had even cracked open.

  Out on the sidewalk, I asked the entropy sweeper, “Do you want me to turn you off until we get to school?”

  “I treat the on/off switch as more of a suggestion,” it said.

  That’s when I noticed that the switch was already set to OFF.

  Yeah. I yanked the battery out of the handle then and there, and Mr. Class-Eight AI went to sleep for a while.

  I had to solve three problems to pull off this mission:

  1. Get inside Culeco

  2. Beat the cameras, so I didn’t get recorded

  3. Distract Mr. Milagros

  If the doors were locked, I’d have to find another way to get in. But I was sure I could. I am the Master Magician, Salvador Vidón!

  The real trick was getting inside undetected. The cameras looking down from the ceiling would nail me if I wasn’t prepared.

  Of course I had a plan to beat them, which in this case came in the form of the single ugliest hat in the multiverse. It was made of reflective rainbow material, and on the front it said WHAT’S THE BRIGHT IDEA? That’s because it was also studded all over with like fifty LED lights.

  The moment I saw it in the bargain bin in a dollar store—and, dude, if you make it into the bargain bin in a dollar store, you know nobody wants you—I knew I had to have it. (You should’ve seen the look American Stepmom gave me when I asked for an advance on my allowance so I could buy such a hideous thing.) Because, see, all those LEDs bouncing off that reflective rainbow material would blind a surveillance camera. The light would overwhelm the lens, and all people would be able to see on the video would be this huge glowing shape moving around.

  I turned on my hat—I think I was legit brighter than the peeking sun in that moment—and then tried the front door to Culeco. It was unlocked.

  I opened the door and walked in. Two problems solved, one to go.

  Of course, Mr. Milagros was going to be the hardest problem of all. But, once again, I had a plan.

  I, disguised in rainbow light, burglar-stepped over to the administration office, which was close to the front doors. It also wasn’t locked. Culeco seemed to be a weirdly trusting school.

  Once inside, I tiptoed over to the office manager’s desk. Judging from it, Mr. Zacto was more OCD than I was. Both his inbox and outbox trays had zero papers in them. He had a calendar almost as big as the desktop, and he had jotted notes on it in a beautiful cursive script, like a Founding Father’s handwriting. The fountain pen he used, complete with white plume, stood proudly in the back right corner of the desk.

  On the front right corner, Mr. Zacto had squared his phone so that it looked like it had been custom made to fit in that spot. The phone was why I was there.

  I had to be careful not to move a thing on the desk. Dude would know. I took a clown-size hanky out of my pocket, held it with my thumb and finger, and used it to pick up the receiver. There was still plenty of clown hanky left to cover the part you speak into, which I did, and still more clown hanky I could use to press the appropriate button on the phone’s speed dial.

  I could see from the carefully labeled phone that the top button was for reaching Mr. Milagros. This guy had the janitor in the number one speed-dial spot. Mr. Zacto? Yeah, definitely a clean freak.

  The phone rang just once before he picked up. “¿Bueno?” he greeted.

  I knew he would be at school already! My favorite custodian back in Connecticut was the same way. He basically lived at school, saw everything, knew everyone. Nicest guy you could ever meet, too, just like Mr. Milagros. They were two of a kind.

  It’s harder to play tricks on people you like if you can never let them in on the joke. You have to stick to tricks that definitely won’t hurt them or make them feel bad. So, in terms of classic Sal Vidón pranks, this one would be pretty mild. But all that mattered was that it worked.

  Time to find out if it would. “Mr. Milagros,” I said.

  “Buenos días, jefa. Llegó tempranito esta mañana. ¿Mucho trabajo?”

  And see, he said all that because he thought I was Principal Torres.

  I’m pretty good at voices, but it also helped that I was doing this over the phone, and that the only person Mr. Milagros would be expecting to hear from this early, calling from the office, would be Principal Torres. Just like emotions change your eyesight, people hear what they expect to hear.

  “Mr. Milagros,” I repeated, “have you had a chance to look at the all-gender bathrooms on the first floor this morning?” I delivered the line with the same tone Principal Torres used on students in her office—the tone that meant I already know you’re guilty, but I want to see if you’re going to lie to my face.

  I literally heard Mr. Milagros sit up straight. “No, jefa.”

  I exhaled into the phone like a bull about to charge. “Well, then, perhaps before anyone else has occasion to visit them, you could bring the very cleanest mop in the school, and a very large bucket filled to the brim with powerful chemicals, and you could make sure they are just a little bit cleaner than they are right now? What do you think?”

  There were a few seconds of silence. This was a man who took pride in his wo
rk. Filth was the enemy, and he would defeat it no matter what. I could almost hear him powering up. I could almost hear his eyes narrowing, his warrior’s smile spreading over his face.

  “Para servirle,” he said, two octaves down from his normal voice. And then he hung up.

  I hadn’t lied to Mr. Milagros. I had just asked him if he’d check the bathrooms, and if he thought it’d be a good idea to make them a little cleaner. A very mild prank. Not even a prank, really. More of a recommendation.

  It’d take him a few minutes to prepare his bucket, and if I knew the man, he’d spend every last second up until the first bell scrubbing the first-floor bathrooms. They’d be gleaming by the time he was done. And in the meantime, I could experiment on Yasmany’s locker without getting caught. Everybody wins.

  But I had to move quickly. I left everything exactly the way I’d found it on Mr. Zacto’s desk, then, careful not to bang the entropy sweeper against anything, I quietly lunge-walked out of administration and up two flights of stairs. It wasn’t a minute before I was face-to-face once again with Yasmany’s locker.

  I set the alarm on my smartwatch to go off twenty minutes before school started. Then I took a breath, exhaled an “okay,” popped in the sweeper’s battery pack, and turned it on.

  “I’m alive!” it said.

  I looked around for anyone who might have heard it blurting. No one. But still.

  “Shhh!” I said.

  “Silent mode activated,” the entropy sweeper said. It sounded disappointed.

  “I said, ‘shhh!’”

  “I know. And I was acknowledging that I had heard you and was complying with your request.”

  I let go of one of the handlebars to wipe my own forehead. “You can’t answer me and be silent at the same time, you stupid machine!”

  “But if I don’t answer, that could mean I hadn’t understood your command and was not ready to comply. The only way you could know for sure that I was ready to start being quiet is if I told you I was going to—”