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

by Carlos Hernandez

  “Gawah?!” exclaimed Yasmany. I think “Gawah?!” is how you say “What the pants are you talking about?!” when your mouth is full of toothpaste. Then he said, “Oou mah beff fren imba word!” and so much toothpaste juice dribbled out of his mouth I had to turn my head so I didn’t barf on the spot.

  Gabi took both of his hands into hers. “You ran away from home, Yasmany.”

  He became very still. Then he nodded, just once.

  “And you didn’t call me.”

  Yasmany didn’t move.

  “How could you not turn to me in your time of need? I am very good at solving problems, you know.”

  Yasmany stared at Gabi. Then, for two seconds, he glared at me. Then he looked at Gabi again.

  “Who gave you Oso Amoroso, Yasmany?”

  Finally he answered again. “Oou did.”

  “That’s right. I gave you Oso Amoroso. In fourth grade, for Valentine’s Day, back when I had a crush on you. I even gave him a name in Spanish, because I thought you would like that. Remember? I haven’t seen him for years. But then, just a few minutes ago, boom, there he was, asleep on the terrible, horrible, lonely bed you made for yourself out of gym mats and a football. A football, Yasmany! In the multipurpose room. With no one to take care of you! How could you, Yasmany? How could you?”

  Gabi started knocking on Yasmany’s chest with both fists like he was a door she wanted open.

  Yasmany, looking desperately at me, pointed at Gabi with both fingers and mouthed to me around his toothbrush, Wha’ do I do?

  I shrugged. I had no idea.

  Help me! he pleaded soundlessly.

  Sal to the rescue. I took a step and stood beside Gabi, put a kind hand on her shoulder. She stopped punching Yasmany and turned to me. Her look was begging me to find a way, somehow, to make everything better. So was Yasmany’s.

  So I did. I made everything better. By letting rip the fart of my life.

  A word about farts.

  They’re overused as jokes. As someone who’s serious about showmanship, I’ve learned that even the best-timed butt burp in the world won’t get as many laughs as you think it will. It turns out a lot of people don’t think farts are funny at all.

  I know, I couldn’t believe it either when I found this out. But it’s true. It’s smarter to find a more original joke whenever you can.

  I know all this. But I have a confession: Pants bombs always make me laugh. Like, always. Can’t help it.

  And since Gabi giggled like a windup monkey whenever I said “cacaseca,” I had a feeling they’d make her laugh, too. I decided to take the risk. And so I made my butt sing like an opera dude.

  At first, no one said anything. Gabi’s face was stuck somewhere between disbelief and disgust. Yasmany seemed to have swallowed some toothpaste, and he coughed a little.

  Then Gabi, blinking, pulled out her phone. “Oh,” she said. “I got a text.”

  “Who from?” I asked, looking for any way to change the subject away from my vulgar little performance.

  “Your underwear,” said Gabi, eyes wide. “It wants to die with dignity.”

  Yasmany’s toothbrush flew like a missile out of his mouth and landed halfway down the hall, trailing a stream of toothpaste foam behind it. Gabi ducked and I dodged, both of us getting out of the way just in time.

  And then we all fell on the floor and forgot who we were and cracked up for ten minutes. I laughed so hard it felt like I was being squeezed to death by an extremely funny boa constrictor.

  Gabi and Yasmany, too. They kept begging for mercy, struggling to breathe, and then someone (me, for instance) would talk about my underwear on its deathbed, surrounded by its underwear family, pleading for someone to pull the plug so it didn’t have to go back to work under my jeans ever again, and we’d all laugh some more.

  And then, somehow—I honestly don’t remember how it worked—Yasmany went to get his stuff from the multipurpose room, and Gabi went with him to “help” (really, to make sure he didn’t bolt). He was going to come with us to the hospital, and Gabi’s mami was going to feed him, and he’d have a place to sleep (because Ms. Reál had that whole hospital wrapped around her finger), and we’d figure out what to do in the morning.

  Gabi and I didn’t ask what had happened to him at home. We didn’t ask him to share his feelings. Gabi started to, and I cut her off, because I already knew he couldn’t. Back when Mami was dying, I always got so angry and confused when people tried to make me tell them how I was feeling. My insides had felt like a tar pit, the kind that used to suck dinosaurs down to their deaths.

  And then, one day when I was visiting Mami at the hospital, a clown volunteer tried to distract me by pulling a dove out of a newspaper. He fooled me so bad! It was a fake dove with plastic eyes, but when he started puppeting it, I couldn’t believe how alive it looked. It was the first time I’d felt anything close to happiness since Mami had been admitted.

  He taught me how magic can make something appear out of nothing, and make dead things more alive. He didn’t tell me to feel better or to talk about the horrible blackness slushing around in my chest. He put on a show, and the good feelings came with it.

  After that, I was hooked. I’ve been a showman ever since. Sometimes I do magic, and sometimes I endanger lives with a little thunder from down under, but the point is the same. Sometimes, when it’s too hard, when it hurts too much, only silliness can save us. And I’m all about doing whatever it takes to help people make it to tomorrow.

  Yasmany and Gabi left me alone in the hallway while they went to get his stuff. Alone with the entropy sweeper.

  I turned it on.

  “I’m alive!” it yelled, and put on its typical light show.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, sweet as Splenda—which, to be honest, has an aftertaste like medicine. “Maybe you could scan this hallway for calamitrons?”

  “Already did,” it replied, proud of itself. “I’m super good at my job!”

  I waited for it to tell me. It just sat there changing colors like a multicolored sandwich.

  “And?” I finally asked.

  “Oh yeah.” It turned red and serious. “Zero calamitrons on this entire floor.”

  “Even in the bathroom?”

  It relaxed, started cycling through the rainbow again. “Yep, even in the bathroom. Which, by the way, is surprisingly clean. Your school should give your janitor a raise.”

  Man! How did that other Sal switch Gladises without any extra calamity? I needed to learn how to do that!

  Which reminded me: There was still one more experiment to run.

  I jogged up the nearest stairs to the second floor and into the multipurpose room. Gabi and Yasmany were stacking the mats back up. Near them, a duffel bag that didn’t look very full had the head of Oso Amoroso sticking out of the zipper.

  “We’re almost done,” said Gabi. “Sorry if you were bored downstairs.”

  Yasmany looked suspiciously at the entropy sweeper. “What the heck is that thing?”

  I shrugged. “Long story, bro. I just need to—” And then I stopped talking.

  Because I was looking at the climbing wall. Which was back to being covered with handholds and footholds. The red zone was just as easy as the green and yellow zones. It was like I’d never changed a thing earlier that day.

  “Zero calamitrons!” said the entropy sweeper.

  “Okay, good! Zero calamitrons is good!” said Gabi, throwing the last mat on top of the pile. But she missed, and the mat rebounded off the pile, and a second later she was buried under it. Only her hands and feet stuck out from beneath it.

  “Ow,” she said. But it was a funny “ow,” not an actual “ow.” Yasmany, shaking his head, went to help her. “Girl, you got to grow an inch!”

  I turned back to the wall. It had fixed itself, without me needing to snort anything. Well, I thought to myself, most of the time, that’s what the rips in the fabric of the universe do. Eventually. If you leave them alone.

  If
I relaxed a little, I could start to see the climbing wall I’d stolen from another universe, kind of superimposed over the actual wall. But it was back in its own universe now, where it belonged. No harm done.

  But here’s what I didn’t get: The climbing wall was way bigger than the chicken I’d put in Yasmany’s locker. So why had the wall fixed itself already, while the hole in the locker remained? And there were lots more calamitrons still floating around at the Coral Castle. Why?

  I felt like I could almost figure this out, like the answer was on the tip of my tongue. But it wouldn’t come.

  “You okay, Sal?” Gabi asked. She and Yasmany walked up to me. “You look a million miles away.”

  “Hey, Gabi,” I said, pointing at the wall, “do you see what I see?”

  She squinted. “What?”

  “Don’t stare. Relax.”

  She nodded. Her head fell on her left shoulder, and her eyes went sideways, like a drunk fish’s. “Oh. Yeah. I see it now. A double wall! What does it mean?”

  “I know!” screamed the entropy sweeper. “A dismembranation event happened earlier today that has since remembranated itself, resulting in—”

  I flipped it off. And then I turned it off, too.

  “I’m not sure,” I said to Gabi. “But I know Mr. Lynott is going to be very confused on Monday.”

  “I don’t see anything,” said Yasmany, squinting.

  “Oh!” said Gabi. She gave me a huge Play along wink. “It’s ’cause you’re doing it wrong, Yasmany. You have to relax first. Close your eyes.”

  He did and shook out his limbs like a boxer. “Okay.”

  “Good. Now, put your hands on your head.”

  He did that, too. “Yeah?”

  “Okay, now take a deep breath and hold it,” she singsonged.

  Yasmany took a breath. He held his breath.

  Gabi tiptoed around him and then, with zero warning, tried to give him a wedgie.

  I mean, she grabbed the elastic band of his underwear, and she pulled and hopped around and flexed every muscle in her body trying to lift him.

  Yasmany (who definitely had a bit of the showman in him, too), opened his eyes and looked left and right, trying to see what was causing him mild annoyance. Then, turning around, he looked at Gabi with his lower lip out, like a scientist discovering a new species of bug.

  “This. Is. No. Fair!” said Gabi, still struggling to even budge him. “This. Is. Supposed. To. Work! I. Saw. A. Documentary!”

  Yasmany shrugged, hooked two fingers through one of Gabi’s belt loops and then started walking off with her like she was his purse. And not even a heavy purse.

  Gabi, while hanging sideways from his hand, still tried to wedgie him. Got to give it to the girl: She doesn’t give up.

  But she couldn’t even slow Yasmany down. He moseyed over to his duffel bag, scooped it up without breaking step, planted a kiss on the forehead of Oso Amoroso, and headed for the exit. “You coming, chacho?” he called over his shoulder to me. “I’m hungry. They got good food at the hospital?”

  “My family set up a buffet,” Gabi said, like it was totally normal to have a conversation when you were hanging from Yasmany’s arm like a purse. “Cuban food. All your favorites. Even pernil.”

  The word “pernil” stopped Yasmany dead. He looked over his shoulder at me. And then he took off running, Gabi giggling and Oso Amoroso jiggling as he ran.

  Yasmany was not all right. I had no idea how bad his day had really been. But jokes and food and attempted wedgies all helped. It would get us to tomorrow, anyway.

  REINA SHOULD HAVE been Yasmany’s mami.

  She fed him. Oh, how she fed him. Then, after she had fed him, she fed him again. Then, when he said he was still a little hungry, she almost died of joy. And then she really fed him. I mean, that last plate she served him was so huge, someone could have carved four presidents’ heads on it.

  And Yasmany ate it all. He’s pretty big for his age, but he looks more like a runner than a football player. I have no idea how he fit that much food in his body.

  The Gabi dads all knew Yasmany and treated him like family—particularly, like the runt of the family. I’m not saying I loved it when Grizzly Dad’ums put Yasmany on his shoulders and helicopter-spun him like a pro wrestler, and then Yasmany almost barfed because he’d eaten like ten pounds of pernil, and then Grizzly Dad’ums got in trouble with Ms. Reál for playing too rough. But I’m not saying I didn’t love it, either.

  Dada-ist captured the helicopter in a sketch and gave it to Yasmany, who appreciated it as seriously as a child getting his first ever balloon. Daditarian dared him to eat a cheesy bug, and he refused and refused—until I ate a handful of them, crunching away. Then, making a pained face and scratching his tongue with his top teeth, he popped one in his mouth and chewed.

  And almost barfed again. This time, Daditarian got in trouble with Ms. Reál.

  Luckily, Cari-Dad was there. As a doctor, she knew exactly what would cure Yasmany’s nausea: chocolate cake. She brought a slice over to him, and any chance of him getting sick before he vacuumed it off the paper plate vanished as quickly as the cake did.

  I could see Cari-Dad doing a sneaky examination of Yasmany while he ate cake. She asked him a few questions: “Anywhere hurting right now? Where’d that bruise on your neck come from? Headache? Blurred vision? Did you feel dizzy at any point today?” And Yasmany answered them without thinking: “No. Fell. No. No. Only when chacho over there spun me around.”

  Grizzly Dad’ums shrugged.

  Cari-Dad patted his back and left the waiting room. The walls were glass, so if I leaned back in my chair, I could follow her down the hallway. She stopped at the welcome station by the elevators, where two Miami-Dade police officers were standing. She shook their hands, and they spoke for a minute. Then Cari-Dad took out her phone and texted someone.

  Ms. Reál’s phone went off. She read the text, excused herself, and a few seconds later joined Cari-Dad and the cops in the hallway.

  “Don’t draw attention,” Gabi whispered, sitting on the folding chair next to me.

  I let my chair fall forward and land on all four legs. I didn’t want to be nosy, but this was serious. So I wouldn’t draw attention, I looked at the floor and whispered, “Is Yasmany’s papi a bad guy?”

  Gabi made one of those noises that sounded like a laugh but couldn’t be a laugh because nothing about what she said was funny. “The bad guy is his mom.”

  “Oh,” I said. And I didn’t know what else to say for a long time afterward.

  Luckily, Gabi has a lot of dads. They were hilarious and nice and liked to have fun. When one of them became sad—thinking about poor Iggy, maybe, or now Yasmany—another four kept the conversation going. Slowly, Gabi came out of her funk. Her dads really were magical.

  I noticed there was at least one dad missing. “Where’s Dad: The Final Frontier?” I asked Gabi.

  “Recharging.”

  “That,” said Papi, getting up, “sounds like a good idea. Time for all calamity physicists to go to bed.”

  “And assistant principals,” added American Stepmom.

  Like any proper Cuban gathering, it took the adults another forty-five minutes of conversation to actually say good-bye. The padres told me to obey Gabi’s parents like they were my parents (which made me snort), go to bed soon, check my blood sugar, brush my teeth, etc. I said yes, yes, yesyesyesyesyes, and practically had to push them out the door to get them to leave.

  But just as I had shoved them out, Ms. Reál and Cari-Dad came back in, and it took the padres another half hour of good-byes, this time with Ms. Reál thank-you-sobbing, before they left for good.

  And actually, I did go to bed pretty soon after. Nurse Sotolongo came by the waiting room to get Yasmany and me, since we were sharing a room that night.

  Nurse Sotolongo put out her hand to shake Yasmany’s. “Hi!” she said. “It’s good to meet you. Gabi’s told me you’re an old friend of the family.”


  Yasmany looked—I had no idea he had the ability to look this way—shy. “Hi,” he said, and mostly looked away as he shook hands with Nurse Sotolongo.

  Everyone in the room became suddenly interested in anything other than their handshake.

  This wasn’t a normal hospital room. I’m pretty sure it was a closet the hospital had converted into a room where doctors and nurses could catch a few hours’ sleep. No machines, no monitors, no medicines, no medical supplies. No window, either. It was dark as a dragon’s stomach.

  Two small cots were wedged in there, side by side. The sheets smelled like disinfectant that was trying too hard to smell like a summer day. I only just fit in my bed. I couldn’t see much, but Yasmany’s Stonehenge feet had to be hanging off the edge of his.

  I knew by our breathing we were both awake. But we didn’t speak for a long time. We just let the darkness pour into our eyes for a while.

  “Sal?” said Yasmany.

  “Yeah?”

  But he went quiet again. I thought maybe he wouldn’t say anything more for the rest of the night.

  Then he did. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what?”

  He sighed. “Why I act like I do.”

  I turned on my side. I couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, but I knew he could tell from my voice that I was facing him now, and that meant I was taking him seriously. “Don’t you think about how you act?”

  “Yeah. At night. When it’s too late to fix anything.” I heard him trying to fit himself better into the bed, which made both cots shake. “You always think before you say anything. How you do it?”

  My turn to sigh. “I think too much, Yasmany. Way, way, way too much. And it gets me in trouble all the time.”

  He let my words hang in the air for a while. Then, sounding tired and quiet and like someone I could be friends with, he said, “Hey, Sal?”