Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (A Sal and Gabi Novel)

by Carlos Hernandez

  And then, lunch! I actually got to eat lunch! It was delicious, and life was beautiful.

  And then, sixth period.

  I was the first student to make it to Textile Arts, ten minutes early. Dr. Doctorpants, who was dressed as a Jigglypuff for the day, set me up at my pace group’s table so I could get a jump on my scarf.

  The other students arrived one by one. They seemed friendlier. Juan Carlos told a funny story about lying about his age and almost getting a part in a shaving commercial. So far, so good.

  Then, a minute after the bell had rung, Gladis Machado showed up.

  I kept on knitting, but I watched her, side-eyed. She went up to Dr. Doctorpants and got on her tiptoes to whisper something into his jiggly ear. He jiggly-shrugged, and then jiggly-pointed to a corner of the room. Gladis didn’t look at anybody in our pace group, not even her buddy Juan Carlos, when she swooped in to scoop up her knitting and stomped off to the corner. There, she got on a stool and proceeded to angry-knit.

  It had to be me she was avoiding. And that made me feel a little sick. She was that scared of me.

  I needed to be sure. “What’s with Gladis?” I asked casually.

  Juan Carlos, who, I noticed, had a mustache that looked like someone had killed a few mosquitoes on his upper lip, laughed. “Don’t you read the paper, Sal? You’re a brujo, chacho!”

  It was the exact same line as yesterday, but the pace group gave him a few chuckles for free because, well, when Juan Carlos told a joke, you wanted to laugh.

  But I was too busy feeling terrible to laugh along. I couldn’t risk looking at Gladis anymore, because if she caught me, she’d think I was giving her more mal de ojo. Only a few hours ago I’d thrown a tarantula at my student council president and scared her out of her mind. I just wanted to go up to Gladis and say, “Look, really, you don’t have to be frightened of me. I’m not a brujo. I can just reach across universes and pull out chickens. It’s science!”

  Yeah. Gonna take a wild guess and say that that probably would have made things worse.

  Even when I’m feeling miserable, I am a showman. I sighed loudly and turned my eyes heavenward. “I wish I could convince Gladis I’m not a brujo.”

  Aventura Rios shook her head, wearing a thin smile.

  She was new to our circle; she used to be in the advanced cosplay pace group, so I wasn’t sure what she was doing here. She was brown and big-haired and the kind of thin that gave Cuban mamis nightmares.

  And the scarf she was making? It was so complicated and beautiful and twisty and decorated with dips and whorls that I could hardly believe it existed, even when I was looking straight at it. It was like math done in yarn.

  “Nee, nee, nee,” said Aventura, smiling. “Don’t worry about Gladis. She is an idiot. She’s like a Pop-Tart: You know how they look good, and then, when they jump out of the toaster, you, like, smell them, and you’re thinking, ‘This gone be good!’ But the second you bite into it you want to vomit and half-chewed Pop-Tart is falling out your mouth and you’re like, ‘Why did I think that would be good?’”

  I blinked really fast, couldn’t help smiling. “Well. That’s a description.”

  “A disgusting description,” said Juan Carlos. He actually looked slightly queasy.

  “Easy there, chacho,” said Aventura, taking a brief break from her knitting to grab Juan Carlos’s shoulder sincerely. “I’m not saying you can’t like your personal little Pop-Tart. I am just saying that Pop-Tarts that believe in brujería are idiots. But if you don’t care about that, you go right ahead and enjoy all the Pop-Tarts you want.”

  Juan Carlos was clearly having trouble following Aventura’s speech. That’s what happens when you let your smile do all your thinking for you. “I don’t eat Pop-Tarts,” he said, smiling unsurely. “An actor has to watch his figure.”

  The group laughed, though I’m not sure everyone was laughing at the same thing. I, however, was feeling much better about everything. “So, Aventura,” I said, “you saw the Rotten Egg article about me, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” she answered. She could knit so fast. It was hypnotizing, watching her.

  “It basically called me a brujo. You don’t believe it?”

  “That would be”—she paused for effect—“ah-no.”

  “How come?”

  She lay her knitting on her lap to count on her fingers. “One, because there’s no such thing. Two, because I have a bruja abuela.”

  Juan Carlos laughed the loudest. “But, Aventura, how can both be true?”

  “Because, Juan Carlos, she thinks she’s a bruja, and she acts like a bruja, and she is legit scary. Like, you go into her house, which is, like, basically just a kitchen and a bed and no light, and the door shuts behind you, and you smell the greasy soup that’s probably some kid being cooked for dinner, and you’re like, ‘This is how every horror movie starts.’”

  “I do eat children,” I said defensively.

  “Nee, nee, nee.”

  “What’s ‘nee, nee, nee’?”

  “It’s ‘no, no, no,’ plus ‘stop fronting.’ It’s really useful. People are fronting all the time. Oh my God, people, just be real, okay? So much cacaseca coming out of people’s mouths.”

  The more she talked, the more I liked Aventura.

  “I still wish I could just, like, explain to her I’m not a brujo,” I said. “That way she wouldn’t have to be scared.”

  She started knitting again. A soft black web grew out of her hands as she spoke. “Gladis hurt your feelings. I get it. But you have more friends than you know. Lots of people in this school like it when a kid acts decent.”

  Oh. Decent. She must have seen me on my knees this morning. Which was both a little embarrassing and a huge relief right about now.

  “So what should I do? Apologize?”

  “You don’t need Gladis,” Aventura said. “Just ignore her.”

  Of course, the second someone says “Ignore her,” the first thing you do is look at her. I shot a quick glance at Gladis.

  Big mistake.

  Gladis got up, threw her knitting down on her stool, and, clutching the ojo turco around her neck, stomped over to Dr. Doctorpants. She whispered furiously at him.

  As she stomped back to her stool, Dr. Doctorpants jiggly-waddled over to me. “Um, Sal. Do me a favor? Don’t look at Gladis anymore.”

  “Dr. Doctorpants,” said Aventura, “I’ve been sitting with Sal the whole time. He didn’t do anything. Gladis is out of line.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, and moved to a seat where I had my back to Gladis.

  “Thanks, Sal,” said Dr. Doctorpants, jiggling away with a wave.

  “Hard to ignore people when they come after you,” I said to Aventura.

  Aventura was fuming. “So unfair.” She chewed. And somehow, her fury made her knit even more interesting patterns into her scarf. That thing had become its own little microverse at this point. No matter where you looked, your eyes dove in, wanting to see more.

  “The best revenge is to do great work,” she said after a second, cooling down, her needles flying. Watching her knit, I almost believed her.

  But I didn’t want revenge. I wanted to be decent. If people liked it when I just got on my knees to ask for forgiveness, just wait until they saw this apology. It was going to be spectacular!

  I relaxed.

  Now I just needed to find the perfect…Just needed to have a look around the multiverse for…Got to be a universe around here with the perfect…Hey, is that me?!

  It was me. I was looking into a universe that had a classroom just like mine. In this one, Dr. Doctorpants was dressed as Amethyst from Steven Universe. All the same students were there: There was an Aventura and a Juan Carlos and a Gladis. And the Gladis was sitting right next to a Sal.

  I mean, it made sense. Multiple universes, multiple Sals, just like there were multiple versions of Mami Muerta. No surprises there.

  What was surprising was that this universe’s Sal was looking r
ight back at me.

  Whoa, I thought.

  “Hola,” said that Sal, pronouncing the h.

  It took me a second to realize he hadn’t moved his lips.

  Hm. I relaxed and imagined talking with my forehead instead of my mouth. Can you hear me? I thoughtsaid toward him.

  And I guess he did, because he replied, Yeah, spada. You’re pretty good. It took me a long time to make my forehead talk. So. You’re here for a reason. What is it?

  Um…I thought/replied. And then, to clear everything up, I added, Um…

  This Sal nodded at me the way I nod when I do random squads online and get paired with noobs—half-resigned, half-determined to have fun anyway. The multiverse knows what it’s doing. It always seems to lead you just where you need to go. So what do you need, spada?

  I didn’t know what “spada” meant. I was guessing it was that universe’s slang for chacho.

  My friend is scared of mal de ojo, I thoughtsaid. I came looking for a way to help her.

  That Sal bent over laughing, tenting his hands over his mouth. When other people around him noticed, he immediately played it cool again. But then he looked at me sideways and thoughtsaid, Dude, you are going to love this.

  He tapped Gladis on the shoulder, who had been sitting next to him without a worry in the world. She turned to him and smiled. It didn’t take me two seconds to figure out they were friends in this universe. She seemed happier, too. Like a totally different person.

  Sal, almost whispering to her, judging by how close they were, seemed to be asking her for something. She looked vaguely in my direction, but I don’t think she could see me. And then, with a big smile, she took the scarf she’d been knitting off the needles and handed it to Sal.

  Sal stretched it out for me so I could see it. It was an ojo turco scarf, with a big blue eye and everything. No way any mal de ojo was going to get past that thing!

  We just need to switch this for your Gladis’s scarf, Sal thoughtsaid. Can you do that without ripping?

  I leaned in closer. Ripping the scarf?

  No, you sandwich. Ripping the universe.

  Well, at least they used “sandwich” in that universe, too. Made me feel a little better.

  I guess I took too long to forehead-splain to him that, no, actually, every time I try to bring anything in from another universe, I rip a hole bigger than a Saint Bernard trying to squeeze through a cat door.

  He shook his head. No worries, spada. This one’s on me.

  And then—How? No, seriously, tell me how?—he brought the ojo turco scarf over to where my Gladis was sullenly knitting by herself and presto-chango-switcheroo! Now, sitting there on Gladis’s needles like she’d been knitting it all class long was the ojo turco scarf.

  My vision of the other universe was starting to fade. I could just make out the Sal from there handing his Gladis the scarf he’d taken from my Gladis before I was completely, unrelaxingly brought back to my universe by my Gladis’s scream.

  “My magic trick scared Gladis,” I told Principal Torres.

  “¿No me diga?” said Principal Torres. “That girl’s at the nurse right now. She’s frightened out of her mind.”

  “I was trying to help.”

  “Sal, according to your own account, you were across the room, with your back to Gladis. Yet without moving a muscle, you switched the scarf Gladis was knitting for a totally different one.”

  “I know! It was a great trick, right?”

  That’s when Principal Torres laid the ojo turco scarf across her desk. “You had to know how she was going to react to it, Sal.”

  “But I didn’t, Principal Torres. I really thought she was going to love the trick. I mean, who doesn’t love magic?”

  “A lot of people,” she deadpanned.

  But I kept on plunging ahead. “And the scarf! I thought she would really love the scarf. Because, see, it has the eyeball thing on it! It will protect her from black magic!”

  That earned me a look. A long, long look. “Do you think I am stupid, Sal?”

  Uh-oh. It’s never good when an adult says that. “No, ma’am.”

  Principal Torres started to pace around the room, hands behind her back. “Let’s review the facts, here. To pull off this stunt, you had to come to school with that scarf and had to set up everything before sixth period. You must have been planning this trick since at least yesterday. That’s premeditation, Sal.”

  Well, there she was wrong. Not her fault: How could she know that I’d just relaxed my way around the multiverse and found a nice little world where another Sal was willing to help a spada out? Well, I couldn’t tell her the truth. She’d never believe it.

  So how about the biggest lie I could think of?

  “It’s true,” I said to Principal Torres, bowing my head and wringing my hands. “I’ve been plotting my terrible revenge against Gladis since yesterday, when she first accused me of giving her the evil eye. I felt attacked. Embarrassed. Misunderstood. So I let those feelings turn me into a…a villain! A monster! A regular Rasputin! Oh, what evil glee I felt, knitting that scarf! How can you ever forgive me?”

  I know I was laying it on thick. That was supposed to be part of the charm.

  Smiling and fluttering her lashes like she really had been charmed, Principal Torres said, “Oh, I think two days’ detention should earn my forgiveness.”

  “What?”

  See, because I’d never had detention before. I thought she’d let me off with a warning.

  “Today and tomorrow,” she said, sweet as honey. “Your assignment is to write an apology to Gladis. And it’d better be good. Do you think you can write an actual apology, Mr. Vidón? Something from the heart?”

  How could I apologize for crimes I had not committed? There’d been no premeditation! I really was trying to help.

  But okay, I felt genuinely sorry for Gladis. I was sorry she ended up in the nurse’s office. That I could apologize for—from the heart.

  Wait, the heart? There it was, thumping in my chest, brainlessly beating, stupid as a stress ball. It didn’t care a thing about what I did or who I hurt or how much of a jerk I had been today. It just kept on pumping.

  Writing from the heart wasn’t the answer, not if I honestly wanted to say sorry. “I’ll do better than that, Principal Torres. I’ll write a letter straight from the stomach.”

  Her outburst of laughter almost made her glasses fly off her nose. But then—she was a smart one, my principal—she sat down in her chair and said, “If your apology makes your stomach feel better, Sal, you’ll have written a very fine letter. Have it done by tomorrow, okay?”

  I got up to leave. “I will. Thank you. Sorry again. Good-bye. See you later. Have a nice day. Hope all is well. Best wishes.”

  “One more thing, Sal,” said Principal Torres.

  I literally had one foot out the door. I stopped midstep and looked at her, bracing for the worst.

  “If you happen to see a student in detention who needs help with a paper on, say, diabetes, perhaps you could lend him a hand? I daresay you’re the school’s foremost expert on the subject.”

  “Happy to,” I replied. And then I vamoosed.

  I MISSED MOST of seventh period talking to Principal Torres. Conquering the red wall would have to wait for tomorrow. And I felt so bad about getting detention that I almost forgot to enjoy Intermediate Theater Workshop.

  Luckily, Mrs. Waked had brought in her collection of masks from all over the world—fancy and expensive-looking, full of colors and feathers and costume jewels and empty eyes. We spent the whole class trying them on and coming up with characters based on them.

  Mine was a beautiful goat mask. Because it had real horns and real fur and looked like it cost a fortune, I took really good care of it and tried not to move around too much.

  Which was the wrong thing to do. “Sal,” said Mrs. Waked, “goats are brilliant and ornery. They like to hop around, head-butt people, scale mountains, and eat homework. Now I ask you, are y
ou a goat, or are you merely a child in a goat mask?”

  Then she pointed at her solar plexus with both hands and nodded encouragingly.

  I didn’t need to be told twice: I got on all fours and rammed her in the gut (super gently, of course—this was acting class). She did a pratfall and shot an egg out of her dress, then applauded me from the floor. “Excellent. You were marvelous! Now, go forth, billy goat, and be gruff about it!”

  I had excellent goat fun for the rest of the class, perching on chairs, chewing pages out of people’s notebooks. It was impossible not to feel better.

  Until the bell rang. Detention time. Ugh.

  “Hey!” said Gabi, running up to me. She was wearing a shark mask that had a bloody leg sticking out of the mouth. “Don’t forget! We’re doing your interview now. Are you ready to go? Come on! Oh, wait, I have to go to my locker and—”

  “I have detention,” I said glumly.

  She pulled off the mask. Her actual smile was every bit as sharky. “Yeah, I know.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, but I knew it was a stupid question as soon as it came out of my mouth.

  And I got the exact answer I thought I would. “I know everything that happens at Culeco. I’m the editor—”

  “Of the Rotten Egg, yes, I know. So why’d you ask if I was ready to go if you knew I was going to detention?”

  “Because I’m going with you.”

  I suddenly felt a little better, in that misery-loves-company way. “Oh, you got detention, too? What a shame. What’d you do?”

  “I didn’t earn detention. What, you think I’m some kind of hoodlum or something? I just like it.”

  I crossed my arms. “I’m not a hoodlum.” And then my brain caught up with the rest of what she had said. “Wait. Did you say you like detention?”

  She looked at me with genuine pity. “Oh, you really don’t know? C’mon, Sal. Follow La Jefa. I’m going to show you one of the coolest things about Culeco.”

  Gabi led and I followed.

  Detention was on the third floor, in the Library and Technology Commons. I hadn’t actually been to the library yet. The Coral Castle is so full of books, I basically live in a library. And, I mean, it was only the fourth day of school.