by Eric Geron
“But you’re down a man, since Ben had to leave to do all that king stuff,” said Lonnie, annoyed at the silly rule and at Chad for enforcing it.
Chad let out an exasperated sigh. “Exactly. Down a man,” he said, cocking his head to the side and pursing his lips in defiance.
“Jay,” Lonnie said, hoping he had better news.
Jay looked at the floor, then shook his head, genuinely unhappy. “I’m sorry,” Jay told her. “Coach trusted me, and I’m not going to stay captain if I just throw out the rule book.”
Lonnie stared long and hard at Jay, disappointed. “If my mother thought that way, she would have lost the war.”
Chad sneered. “Okay,” he said in a mocking tone.
Lonnie sighed and started to walk away.
“Read the rule book,” said Chad, shaking it at her back.
Jay sighed. “All right, guys. Let’s call it. That’s practice.” He and his team filed out of the room.
On his way out, Carlos gazed up and saw Jane leaning on the balcony. She was in her cheerleading uniform and held her tablet. “Jane!” Carlos shouted. “Hey,” he added.
“Hey, Carlos, what’s up?” Jane smiled and looked down from the balcony.
Carlos hopped up onto a concrete block below her. “Uh…not much. You?”
Jane glanced at her tablet. “Way too much. We were going to go with the blue-and-gold banners for Cotillion, but now we can’t find the right shade of blue.”
Dude, in his R.O.A.R. uniform, sat on a block and whined at Carlos.
“Uh…yeah…That’s a bummer….Uh, speaking of Cotillion—” said Carlos.
“I know, right?” Jane interrupted. “It’s all anybody is talking about twenty-four seven. It’s like they’ve never been to one before.” Jane let out an annoyed laugh.
“Uh…I haven’t,” admitted Carlos quietly.
Jane’s eyes opened wide. “Oh…” She quickly tried to save face. “Lucky,” she said, shaking her head. “I always end up serving punch with my mom anyway. And this year I got stuck on the decorating committee, because Audrey went off to a spa vacation with Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.” Jane grimaced at the thought.
“Oh, uh…Hey! Maybe we should just, uh, you know…” Carlos blanched.
“Skip the whole thing? I really, really wish I could….It’s so nice to have a friend who’s on the same wavelength.” Jane beamed at him. Just then, her phone dinged, and she groaned. “I gotta go! Good practice, though!” Jane dashed off.
Dude looked at Carlos and whimpered. “It wasn’t the right time, all right?” Carlos responded, exasperated.
Fake it till you make it? More like fake it till you break it!
I don’t know how much longer I can pull off this charade before I completely snap!
In the boys’ dorm room, Carlos sat on his bed with his laptop and Dude.
“All right.” Carlos let out a sigh. “How to get out of the friend zone,” he murmured as he typed the phrase on the laptop.
From a plaid dog bed next to Carlos, Dude studied the screen.
Carlos pretended to glare at him. “I see you reading over my shoulder.”
Dude blinked at him.
Mal burst into the room, shut the door, and locked it. She was panting. She paced back and forth, then saw the TV playing. There was a clip of Ben feeding strawberries to Mal. She rushed across the room and shut off the TV. Mal’s whole body was quivering.
Her eyes flashed a dazzling green and a gust of magical power stirred her hair.
“Whoa, whoa. Easy, girl,” Carlos remarked.
“What, you think this is so easy?” Mal walked around his bed and faced him. “You don’t have people taking pictures of you every single time you open your mouth to say boo, not that I can even say boo, but ya know….” Mal took a few deep breaths, and Carlos looked down and continued quietly typing on his laptop.
“Carlos,” said Mal, throwing her hands up.
He looked up. “Yeah,” he said absentmindedly.
“Do you ever miss screaming at people and making them run away from you?” asked Mal, hoping that someone other than her was missing the Isle.
“You’re thinking of my mother, and I was usually on the other side of it. So not really, no,” said Carlos. Then he bolted up. “Oh, hey, Mal. Did you bring it?”
As Mal raised something in her hand to show Carlos, someone rattled the doorknob. A second later, a key turned in the lock and the door opened. Chad crept in. When he saw Mal and Carlos, he froze.
“Oh! Hi!” he said with his classic cheesy fake smile. “Just came to use your 3-D printer. Won’t be a sec,” he said.
Carlos gawked. “How’d you get a key to my room?”
“Oh! I printed it up last time I was in here,” said Chad nonchalantly. “You guys were sleeping.” Chad strolled to the 3-D printer and turned it on. “Come on! Your printer is so much better than mine,” he said. “And you installed all those hacks—”
“Out! Now!” Carlos pointed to the door, adding, “Leave the key.”
“Fine.” Chad dramatically left the room.
Carlos turned away from the door toward Mal. “Oh. Uh…my potion?” he asked.
Mal lifted a cherry-red gumdrop in her fingers. “Yeah. Um…here you go.”
Carlos’s face lit up. “So it’ll make me say what I really feel to Jane?” he asked.
“I mean, it’s a truth gummy, so take it or leave it,” said Mal flatly.
“Awesome.” Carlos reached out to grab it.
Mal hid it behind her back. “Hold on. No.”
“What?” asked Carlos.
“Do you really wanna take this? Like, always telling the truth? I only ask because if I took this right now, I would get myself kicked back to the Isle. Not that that sounds ridiculously unappealing, but—”
“Yeah…Yeah, I’ll take my chances.” Carlos reached out his hand.
But before they knew it, Dude had leaped down and eaten the gumdrop from Mal’s hand.
Mal gasped. “Bad dog!”
Dude jumped back onto the bed. “That thing was nasty,” he said. “And you”—he spoke to Carlos—“you just gotta man up. And, while you’re at it, scratch my butt.”
Carlos and Mal stared at Dude in amazement.
“Well…you heard him,” Mal told Carlos. “Scratch his butt.”
Mal left the two of them to talk.
She had bigger fish to fry.
Speaking of fish, behind the magical barrier keeping all the baddies on the Isle of the Lost, evil was afoot in its greasiest, fishiest, dare I say, shrimpiest form….
Ursula’s Fish and Chips sat on a dreary wharf on the Isle of the Lost.
A swashbuckling young man, Harry, son of Captain Hook, strolled toward the shop, holding a glinting silver hook in one hand. He wore a black pirate hat, a long red leather coat, black pants, and a smirk on his face that made other pirates quake. His piercing green eyes and sharp cheekbones made him both beautiful and frightening.
Harry passed through a dusty lane where bedraggled pirates were selling their gaudy wares. The dirty pirates regarded him with fear, leaping aside, huddling together, hiding, shaking, and watching him with wide eyes as he walked by.
Harry smiled to himself. He loved the attention.
He crossed a dock with frayed coils of rope and cracked crab traps on either side. His footsteps sounded heavily on the wood, drawing the attention of pirates lounging on barrels and surrounding platforms. He stopped in front of a rotten storefront. A plaque reading URSULA’S FISH AND CHIPS and featuring Ursula the sea witch in her glory days hung outside it. Painted wooden tentacles spiraled out of both sides of the building. The paint had faded, just like Ursula’s powers, but the whites of Ursula’s eyes still glowed in the gloom. Below the plaque was a sign that read YOU’LL TAKE IT HOW I MAKE IT! Below that was a lantern illuminating an inspection notice, marked “F” for fail, awarded by the Isle Department of Unhealth.
With his hook Harry lifted a
string of silver fish from a pan resting on a dock beam, and he regarded a red-haired pirate holding a fishing rod. He tossed one of the fish back into the sea with a smile. The red-haired pirate looked on, mortified. Harry turned on his boot and sauntered through the seaweed-green swinging doors of the diner.
He entered the dumpy, smelly eatery, which was filled with slovenly scalawags hunched over mismatched tables. The place stank of rotten fish, which fit the filthy aesthetic: splintered dock beams, smashed lobster traps, an old waterlogged organ, chandeliers made out of steering wheels, and signs that said things like TIP OR ELSE! and EMPLOYEES MUST NOT WASH HANDS. Besides fish and chips, the diner sold other slop, such as sea slugs, gulf goo, and pickled lamprey. Harry stashed his sword in a rusty sword-check urn by the door that held others. Then he handed his string of fish to a diner and sashayed across the room.
He approached a long wooden table. Its stools were taken by a motley crew of dim-witted teen pirates who talked over trays of fish and chips. Among them was Gil, Gaston’s brawny son, who had dirty blond hair peeping out from under a cap and wore an orange-brown leather vest. What Gil lacked in IQ he made up for in muscles. Harry knocked a pirate aside, used his stool to hop over the tabletop, and turned on the ancient fuzzy-screened TV by twisting a manual dial.
There was the infamous-on-the-Isle clip of Mal and Ben at their press conference.
A teenage girl with long turquoise hair plopped a tray of food down on the table in front of Harry, who looked hungrily at it. The girl wore a turquoise leather jacket with fringe epaulets, a fringe skirt, and a brown pirate’s hat with starfish embroidered on it. She was every bit a pirate punk and also the spitting image of her sea witch mother, Ursula—back in the day, of course. Uma was the girl’s name, and she wore Ursula’s gold nautilus shell on a gold chain, though the necklace had no powers on the Isle of the Lost, where magic was forbidden and as obsolete as the old TV at which she glared.
Uma turned and grabbed fish sticks from Harry’s tray, then chucked them angrily at the TV screen. “Ugh!” she yelled. She turned back to her pirate crew. “Poser,” she shouted, referring, of course, to Mal.
“Traitor!” Harry called out at the TV.
Leaning on the table, Uma scanned the lounging pirates. “Hello?” she yelled.
The pirates instantly heaved every bit of food within reach at the TV. They swore loudly, then slouched back into position and howled with wicked laughter.
Harry shook his fist at the TV. “I would love to wipe the smiles off of their faces! You know what I mean?” He grinned, and his scary-pretty eyes glinted.
Uma turned on dim-witted Gil, who was busy eating eggs. “Gil!” she barked.
“Huh?” asked Gil, completely and utterly unaware.
Uma leaned toward him. “You want to quit choking down yolks and get with the program?”
Gil mumbled with his mouth full of food and pointed. “Yeah, what they said!”
Uma turned back toward the others. “That little traitor, who left us in the dirt.”
Harry sucked food off his fingers. “Who turned her back on evil,” he said.
“Who said you weren’t big or bad enough to be in her gang,” Gil told Uma as he refilled his empty tray with food at a serving counter connected to the kitchen. “Back when you were kids. Come on, you guys remember,” Gil said to a seething Uma. “She called her Shrimpy, and the name just kind of…stuck.” As he had been speaking, the pirates had all grown very quiet.
Uma rolled her eyes at Gil. “That snooty little witch, who grabbed everything she wanted,” Uma snarled. “And left me nothing,” she added quietly.
The pirates looked from Uma to each other solemnly.
“No,” said Gil through a mouthful of soggy fries. “She left you that sandbox,” he explained, oblivious to Uma’s annoyance, “and then she said that you could have the shrimpy shovel—”
Uma wheeled on him. “I need you to stop talking.”
“Look, we have her turf now,” Harry told Uma. “They can stay in Bore-adon—”
“Harry, that’s her turf now!” Uma cried, pointing at the TV showing Mal’s press conference. She switched it off. “And I want it, too. We should not be getting her leftovers!”
She grabbed the arm of Harry’s filthy red jacket. “Son of Hook!” she said. She latched on to Gil’s bicep. “Son of Gaston!” She looked at the grimy ceiling. “And me, most of all, daughter of Ursula.” She looked at Harry. “What’s my name?” she asked.
Harry took off his hat and bowed down to her. “Uma,” he said, smiling.
She stared at Gil, who looked up, startled. “What’s my name?” she yelled.
“Uma?” he said through a mouthful of food.
She sighed and turned to the other pirates amassed before her at the table. “What’s my name? What’s my name?” she called out to them.
“Uma!” they boomed in unison.
That’s right. Uma. She felt in her heart that she, not Mal, was the true Princess of Evil. Uma felt that she and her crew of pirates were the rottenest to the core. She’d show Mal…somehow. Uma strutted along the top of the long table, and her pirate crew cheered for her.
Just then, a long tentacle slithered out from the kitchen and lashed at Uma.
Shrieking, Uma leaped up and dodged it.
Her pirate crew ducked on the sides of the table to avoid it, too.
“Shut your clams!” bellowed Ursula’s voice from the kitchen.
“Mooooom!” Uma shouted. She tossed back her hair and regarded her pirates. “It’s all right.” Her voice got louder. “Because when I get my chance to rain down evil on Auradon, I will take it! They’re gonna forget that girl. And remember the name—”
“Shrimpy!” yelled Gil, slamming his fists on the table.
Everyone looked at him in silence.
Harry glanced at Uma, who nodded. Harry then led Gil to the door and threw him out of the diner.
Uma was satisfied that Gil had gotten what he deserved. But she wouldn’t truly be happy, not until Mal got what was coming to her.
Back in Auradon, things aren’t all that and a bag of fish and chips, either….
I’m ramping up the princess act for my big date. Here’s hoping Ben bites!
It was time for Mal and Ben’s perfect picnic date at Reflection Pond.
Ben had brought Mal to a surprise picnic when she had first gotten to Auradon Prep. They had ridden through the countryside on his Vespa. Ben had then led her on foot through a grove. And after they had crossed an incredible suspension bridge with a beautiful stream below it, Ben had put a blindfold on Mal and led her gently down a dense forest path until eventually they stopped. When he had instructed her to open her eyes, they were at the Enchanted Lake, with its crystalline jade water and stone platform of ancient pillars wrapped in ivy and flowers. It was a surprise Mal would always cherish.
Today Mal was the one surprising Ben.
And she couldn’t wait for the moment to end.
On a gazebo overlooking the calm green pond and surrounding lush tree-filled countryside, Mal and Ben sat at a table, covered by a gold tablecloth, which boasted all sorts of treats: soup, hors d’oeuvres, beef ragout, cheese soufflé, pies, puddings, pastel-colored cakes, fresh fruit tarts, a loaf of warm bread, and tiers of appetizers. All the fixings for a royal picnic to make Ben feel like a cherished guest.
“Would you like a hot hors d’oeuvre?” asked Mal. She wore a pale blue dress, and her long ice-blond hair was loose and down. She fed Ben with her hand.
Ben ate the appetizer, moaning. “This is the best thing I’ve ever had.”
“So you like it?” asked Mal.
“I more than like it, in fact.” Ben leaned in close to Mal and pinched a cracker from a tray, then sat back. “I double like it.”
Mal giggled.
Ben gestured to a nearby bowl. “Beef ragout?” He picked up a bite with a fork.
“Did I surprise you? Did I do it?” asked Mal with a curious smil
e.
Ben took the big bite of the beef ragout. “Yeah. This is every single dish Mrs. Potts made for my parents! What did it take you—three days?” Ben surveyed the extravagant array of perfectly prepared fresh foods.
Mal eyed the picnic basket that sat on the table beside her. “Don’t…even ask me,” she said, laughing.
“Well, it means a lot that you stopped and did all this for me. With all the craziness that’s been happening to you,” said Ben. He took her hand in his.
Mal couldn’t look Ben in the eyes. She stared down at the table and smiled.
Ben turned her face gently toward him. “I’ve missed you.” He caressed her cheek. “We never have a lot of time to be just us.”
It was true. Ben was busy being king and governing the United States of Auradon. And she was preoccupied with pretending to be his proper lady.
Mal wiped a drop of sauce from the corner of Ben’s mouth.
Ben smiled. “Can’t take me anywhere.”
Mal laughed. She had said the same thing to him during their first picnic at the Enchanted Lake when she’d tried her first jelly doughnut and gotten sugar on her lips.
Mal was beginning to relax and enjoy herself.
Ben looked around. “Do you—do you have any napkins?” He reached for the picnic basket.
“I do, actually—” Mal said, feeling the moment slipping toward chaos. “I can grab them.”
But before Mal could get his napkin, Ben reached into the picnic basket to look for one and instead pulled out Mal’s spell book.
Mal gasped and froze.
Ben looked at the cover. “What’s this?”
Mal stared at him, wide-eyed. “I…threw it in really last minute in case it rained and we needed to…I needed to step in.” She attempted to take it from him.
Ben flipped through the various pages marked with sticky notes. “‘Speed-reading spell.’ ‘Blond hair spell…Cooking spell,’” Ben read. He looked at the picnic feast, slammed the book shut, and turned to Mal. “And here I was giving you props for fitting in so well! For doing your best!” Ben said loudly, shaking his head.
Mal began incanting a spell and waving her finger. “Take back this moment that has passed….” She chewed her lip, trying to remember it. “Replace it…Return it…”