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the road, unable to move out of the way if a car came hurtling over the asphalt.
    Zora and Garuda walked by, the iguana in a top hat and the bird in an evening gown. They greeted him in Spanish. Gabe realized that he had forgotten his Spanish, the language that was supposed to be his own. He felt a heavy shame that anchored him more firmly to the middle of the street.
    The light around him twisted, burned, and shriveled. His entangled senses passed through solar storms between twin suns. He woke up sweating.
    Lupe pounded on his bedroom door.
    â€œWake up, wake up, wake up!” his sister said. “Dad wants you at breakfast.”
    â€œI’m up,” Gabe mumbled.
    He closed his eyes. He could still see solar storms behind his eyelids. The dream wasn’t evaporating the way his dreams usually did.
    Lupe pounded on the door again.
    â€œI’m up!” Gabe said, louder this time.
    He got up. He got dressed. He checked in with the Envoy, who occupied an otherwise empty aquarium in Gabe’s closet.
    â€œMorning, Envoy.”
    The Envoy’s mouth peered up from the aquariumlike a purple periscope. It made a throat for itself and cleared it. “Good morning, Ambassador. How do you feel? How’s your head? Does it ache? Is it dizzy? I see that it hasn’t exploded.”
    â€œNope,” said Gabe. “Still here. No headaches, no dizziness. No explosions.”
    â€œGood,” said the Envoy.
    â€œI think so too,” said Gabe. “I did have a weird dream, though.”
    â€œDid you arrive at the Embassy in this dream?” the Envoy asked, alert and more interested.
    â€œNo,” said Gabe. “But how will I know?”
    â€œYou’ll know,” said the Envoy. “Protocol will welcome you when you arrive. I should explain more before you actually get there. And once there, you should try to learn whose ships are nearby.”
    â€œOkay,” said Gabe. He yawned. “So what’s Protocol, exactly?”
    Someone knocked on his bedroom door. The Envoy ducked its mouth back into the aquarium, and Gabe shut the closet. “Hello?”
    His mother came in, looked around at the floor, and suggested that she might be going insane. “I’ve lost some laundry,” she said. “I was sure I put in a load this morning, very first thing, but now it’s gone. Poof. I’ve lookedeverywhere. You didn’t helpfully empty the dryer and then put all the clothes away, did you?”
    Gabe heard a burbling and unhappy noise come through his closet door.
    â€œNo . . . ,” said Gabe.
    â€œAi,” she said. “Well, hurry downstairs. Your father is waiting to fry up your breakfast.”
    â€œI’ll be right there.” Gabe promised.
    Mom went downstairs.
    Gabe opened the closet. “Did you hear that? A load of laundry disappeared.”
    â€œThat shouldn’t have happened,” the Envoy said, sounding nervous. It climbed out of the aquarium. “The black hole should have dissipated completely by now. I’ll go back to the basement. Hopefully the basement still exists. Don’t let anyone else go down there.” It oozed out of the room through a heating grate.
    Now Gabe felt extremely awake. He dashed through the house, confirmed the non-basement location of every family member, and gathered up all three pets, locking them in his room. Then, and only then, Gabe got dressed, brushed his teeth, and joined his father in the kitchen.
    Dad gave him a nod, tossed bread dough in a pan of oil, and handed Gabe a cup of homemade horchata . Then he poured himself a cup of coffee. It was probablyhis third cup of the morning. He wore an old cooking apron composed of more grease than fabric and covered in whole constellations of splattered stains.
    Gabe sat and sipped his sweet-but-not-too-sweet horchata . He thought about his dream, rolled it over and over in his head the way he might roll an unfamiliar taste