The boy shook his head, his eyes still full of tears. “You don’t.”
“Okaaaay,” Carlos said. This was getting stranger and stranger. “Then how do you know me?”
“Are you kidding?” the boy exclaimed. “You’re my hero!”
Carlos snorted. “I think you have me confused with someone else.”
But the boy shook his head adamantly. “No. It’s you. You’re my hero. I heard about you when you first came to Auradon from the Isle of the Lost. You were on TV and in the newspaper. You’re so cool. You’re my favorite VK.” Then the boy seemed to notice Evie standing there for the first time and his eyes went wide. “Sorry!” he said to Evie, looking caught out.
Evie smiled a tender, caring smile. “No apology necessary. I agree. Carlos is pretty cool.”
“What’s it like at Auradon Prep?” the boy asked Evie. “Is it amazing? My daddy went to Auradon Prep a long time ago. I can’t wait until I can go!”
Evie smiled. “It is pretty amazing.”
“What are you doing in this train station all alone?” Carlos asked.
This seemed to remind the boy why he was crying in the first place. His eyes filled with tears again, and he tipped his head back and started wailing. He sounded like he was trying to say something but his words were choked by sobs.
“Shhh,” Carlos said, trying to calm him down. “Shhh. It’s going to be okay. Slow down. Take a deep breath.”
The boy did as Carlos said, finally managing to form coherent words. “I lost my mommy.”
“Awww.” Jane knelt down next to the boy. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. We’ll help you find her. Right, guys?” Jane looked at Carlos and Evie.
“Of course!” Evie said.
Carlos glanced at the next platform and could see that the train from Charmington had come to a stop and the doors were opening. He knew if they helped this boy, they might lose their chance at an Auradon Express train ticket. They might lose their chance at twenty points. A very crucial twenty points.
“Carlos?” Jane said.
Carlos shook his head. He was being ridiculous. He couldn’t just leave this little boy to fend for himself. That would make Carlos no better than his mother. They’d just have to make up the points another way. Maybe there’d be another train from Charmington arriving later in the day.
“Of course we’ll help you.” Carlos stood and extended his hand for the little boy to take. The boy looked in disbelief between Carlos’s hand and Carlos’s face, a grin the size of Triton’s Bay appearing on his lips. He took Carlos’s hand, and Carlos helped him to his feet. The boy was wearing black-and-white leather pants that looked a lot like Carlos’s. On top, he had on a ratty old blue T-shirt that was about four sizes too big, with the words RAD REP printed across the front in faded yellow letters. Carlos assumed “rad rep” must be some kind of popular Auradon kid thing he’d never heard of.
As Carlos led the boy into the train station, he glanced back at Jane, who was beaming with pride. He flashed her a wink and she winked back.
“First, I have to ask you the most important question of all,” Carlos said to the boy.
The boy gaped up at him with joyous anticipation, as though waiting for an edict from King Ben himself. “What?”
Carlos squeezed his hand. “What’s your name?”
The kid’s name is Henry, and fortunately, it didn’t take long for us to find his mother.
Carlos and his team learned Henry and his mom had been separated when getting off a train from Grimmsville, where they lived. His mother had been worried sick, searching all over the train station. When she saw her little boy being led over by Carlos, Evie, and Jane, she let out a yelp of relief and ran to them, scooping up the boy in her arms and kissing his face over and over.
Carlos felt happy watching Henry be reunited with his mother, but he also felt a twinge of jealousy. His own mother never ran to him like that. Never scooped him up in her arms like that. His mother never showed him any affection. She barely paid him any attention unless she needed him to run an errand for her or scrape the bunions from her feet.
“Thank you!” Henry’s mother said to the team after setting her little boy down. She turned to Carlos and did a double take. “Wait a minute, are you…”
“Yes, Mommy!” the boy chirped. “It’s him! It’s Carlos De Vil!”
The mother’s smile tripled in size. “Well, what do you know? It is him! What a wonderful day this is.” She turned to Carlos. “He’s your biggest fan. He’s really into computers. When he found out you were, too, you became his hero.”
“Can we take a picture? Can we? Can we? Can we?” The boy started jumping up and down, tugging on his mother’s hand. “Please! Please! Please!”
Carlos couldn’t help chuckling. “Okay by me, bro.”
The mother pulled her phone out of her purse and went to turn on the screen. Her face fell with disappointment. “Oh, no. Sweetie, I’m so sorry. My battery is dead.”
The boy looked like someone had just told him fairies weren’t real.
“That’s okay,” Carlos said, stepping in to save the day once again. He pulled his own phone out and handed it to Jane. “We can use mine and I’ll send the picture to you. How’s that?”
The boy’s mother flashed Carlos another grateful smile, and Carlos and Henry posed in the center of the beautiful glass-walled train station. Carlos got down on one knee so he was the same height as Henry. He put his arm around Henry’s shoulders and beamed toward the camera. Jane snapped the photo.
After sending the photo to Henry’s mom and saying their good-byes, Carlos and his team returned to the platform where they’d been waiting for the Charmington train.
Carlos’s shoulders sagged when he saw that the platform was completely deserted. The train had emptied and all the passengers had left. The students who had been milling around, waiting to take photos of tickets, were also gone.
They were all twenty points richer now.
And Carlos’s team was, once again, leaving empty-handed.
I’m super bummed. We just lost a bunch of points we needed. This is not going as planned.
Ten minutes later, Jane, Carlos, and Evie were sitting in an outdoor café in downtown Auradon, having lunch. Carlos was eating a sandwich, Jane was sipping on a smoothie, and Evie was, of course, typing something into her phone. Carlos hadn’t even wanted to stop for lunch. They’d already wasted enough time that day, but Jane had been insistent.
“You need to eat,” she’d said. “You need your strength. A captain is no good on an empty stomach.”
At that very moment, Carlos’s stomach had growled and he’d given in. Jane sort of had a point. Plus, they needed to regroup and come up with their next plan. They still had only ten points and he was certain Jay’s team had at least fifty-five, if not more by now.
“I can’t believe how far behind we are,” Carlos muttered as he took a sip of his chocolate milk.
“Yeah, but it was worth it,” Jane said. “Just look how cute you two are.” She had been scrolling through photos on Carlos’s phone and now turned it around so he could see the picture of him and Henry on the screen. “Look at his smile. You’re like a celebrity to him!”
Carlos scoffed. Some celebrity he was. He couldn’t even manage to get more than ten points in a scavenger hunt. He stared at the photo, focusing on the boy’s T-shirt and leather pants. With the matching white hair and those pants, Carlos and Henry could easily pass as brothers. Henry had called Carlos his hero, but Carlos certainly didn’t feel like a hero right then. He felt like a failure.
“This reminds me of a time when I was interning for Carina Potts and we threw a big birthday bash for John Darling’s son. He was turning seven. All the kids there were so adorable.”
“Carina Potts is my idol,” Evie said, finally setting her phone down. “She’s such a savvy businesswoman. You are so lucky to have landed an internship with her. What was it like? Was it the best summer of your life?”
br /> Jane’s face fell. “Actually, no. Not really.”
Evie looked confused. “What? Why not? She’s supposed to be brilliant.”
“She is,” Jane said. “I just don’t think she thought I was very brilliant.”
Carlos’s gaze whipped toward Jane. “What? That’s impossible. Didn’t you spend like an entire weekend organizing her party supply inventory? And didn’t you stay up until three in the morning weaving flowers into a garden wall?”
Jane shrugged. “Yeah, but she must not have thought I did a very good job. She never gave me a single compliment all summer.”
“Jane,” Evie began gently, but it was clear Jane didn’t want to talk about it anymore, because she quickly interrupted Evie.
“That’s all in the past. It doesn’t matter. Let’s focus on the scavenger hunt.” Then she flashed Evie and Carlos a smile that Carlos could instantly tell was fake.
“Okay,” Carlos said warily, wondering if he should let this go. But it was clear from Jane’s expression that she was finished talking about it. He made a mental note to bring it up later, after the hunt was over. “Let’s review the list again and decide what to go after next.” He took his phone back from Jane and clicked on the message from Fairy Godmother he’d received that morning.
He scanned the first two items on the list:
A puppet made of wood—5 points
A slipper made of glass—5 points
They already had both of those. Carlos continued farther down.
A picture of your team posing in the display window of Belle’s Boutique—10 points
He quickly skipped over that one, not wanting to be reminded of Evie’s failure to listen to him in the shop. He was still pretty frustrated about that.
An Auradon Express train ticket originating in Charmington—20 points
That one was now a lost cause. After Henry and his mother had left the train station, Carlos had checked the information screens hanging in the terminal. The next train from Charmington wouldn’t arrive until seven o’clock at night. By then it would be too late. Which meant all hopes of getting number four on the list were gone. Carlos sighed and moved on.
A violet-gold pixie fork—25 points
Carlos looked hopefully up at his team. “Does anyone know what a violet-gold pixie fork is? It’s worth twenty-five points.”
Evie shook her head. “No clue.”
He then looked to Jane who, for some reason, wouldn’t meet Carlos’s eye. She was staring intently at the straw in her smoothie. Maybe she was still thinking about Carina Potts. “I think we should skip that one,” she said quietly. “It sounds hard.”
Carlos frowned and turned back to the list.
A selfie with Grumpy—25 points
Carlos thought back to the conversation he’d overheard on the train platform, among the members of Jay’s team. Mal had said that convincing Grumpy to take a selfie would be impossible. But Carlos had to wonder if that was true. Twenty-five points would help his team a lot. It would put them at thirty-five, only twenty points behind Jay’s team, assuming they hadn’t already scored any other big items.
He glanced up at Evie, who had buried her face back in her phone. Her brows were furrowed and the salad in front of her was completely untouched.
“Evie,” Carlos said.
“Hmm?” Evie replied without looking up.
“Do you think you can talk Grumpy into taking a selfie with us? You are dating his nephew.”
Evie immediately shook her head. “No way. No how. That man is adamantly against photos of any kind. The only thing he hates more than photos is laughter. We should forget about that one because no one in the competition is going to get those points. It would take an act of magic to convince him to take that selfie.”
Carlos scowled and continued to the next item on the list:
The recipe for the “gray stuff” from Lumiere’s Bistro—20 points
But he couldn’t quite concentrate on any of the words on his screen, because something Evie had said was ringing in his ears.
It would take an act of magic to convince him to take that selfie.
An act of magic…
Carlos quickly glanced at the screen on his phone and reread number six on the list—the recipe for the gray stuff from Lumiere’s Bistro. He remembered Lonnie saying that, too, was near impossible. Lumiere rarely ever gave out recipes.
Suddenly, Carlos felt an idea forming in the back of his mind. An idea that would involve doing something he’d sworn to himself he would not do. But they were desperate. They were running out of time. They only had three more hours until the scavenger hunt was over, and they were way behind the other teams.
They just needed a little boost. A little shortcut. A teensy bit of help. To get them back on track.
“You know,” Evie said, setting down her phone, “like I was saying before, I think there’s a hazelberry tree on campus. We could go check it out and see about getting number eight.”
But Carlos dismissed her idea with a wave of his hand. “Actually, I have a plan!”
“Great!” Jane said, slurping up the last of her smoothie. “Let’s go!” Carlos stared at her. Was it just his imagination, or did Jane seem a little too eager to leave the café?
Carlos pushed his chair back from the table. “We just need to make a quick stop at my dorm room first.”
I can’t let go of the idea to use the collar to help. We just need to make up some points and catch up to the other teams.
“I don’t understand what we’re doing here,” Evie complained as they stood on the doorstep of Grumpy’s small one-story wooden cottage. “I already told you, he’s not going to agree to this. This is a waste of time.”
Carlos inconspicuously touched the red dog collar he’d slipped onto his wrist and hidden under the sleeve of his jacket. “I’m feeling lucky.” He knocked hard on the door.
Evie raised an eyebrow. “Luck has nothing to do with it. According to Doug, the guy is very disagreeable.”
Just then, the door swung open and Carlos, Evie, and Jane all looked down at the small man standing in front of them with his arms crossed. “What do you think you’re doing banging on my door at one o’clock in the afternoon?” he barked.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Jane was quick to say. She was always the first to try to smooth out a rough situation. “We were hoping that we might be able to take a selfie with you.”
Grumpy huffed. “A what?”
“A selfie,” Jane repeated, pronouncing the word slowly.
“What on earth is that?” Grumpy blustered.
“Oh!” Evie perked up, clearly wanting to be the one to explain this particular cultural phenomenon. “It’s this great invention where you hold the camera up like this”—she positioned her phone in front of her face and gave her hair a toss—“and you take a photograph of yourself. See? Selfie.” She flashed a warm smile at the dwarf until her phone beeped with an incoming message and she lowered the device to read it. “Sorry, just gotta take this real quick.”
“I don’t take photos with kids,” Grumpy grunted.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Jane said. She was smiling so big it looked like she was straining her face. “Because we’re not technically kids. We’re teens. So it’s different.”
“I don’t take photos with teens,” Grumpy said, his arms still crossed defiantly over his chest. Carlos noted that he really did look pretty unhappy.
“It’s for a good cause,” Jane tried.
Grumpy snorted. “If you want to serve a good cause, you’ll get off my doorstep.” He was about to close the door in their faces when Carlos stepped up and extended his arm to stop it.
“Carlos,” Jane whispered warningly, “what are you doing? He said he won’t do it.”
Carlos flashed Jane a smile. “Let me give it a try.” He bent down so he could look Grumpy in the eye. The dwarf stared back at him in challenge.
“Mr…um, Grumpy,” Carlos began and then cleared his throa
t. “You see, we’re competing in the annual Auradon Prep Scavenger Hunt and—”
“I don’t care what you’re competing in, I told you to get off my doorstep.”
Evie, who had apparently just finished replying to her incoming message, tapped Carlos gently on the shoulder. “I think maybe we should go. This is exactly what I said would happen.”
But Carlos ignored her. He gave his wrist a little shake, feeling the soft leather of the dog collar rub against his skin. “Like I was saying,” he went on in an authoritative tone, “we’re competing in the annual Auradon Prep Scavenger Hunt and we need to take a selfie with you. It’s worth a lot of points, so I’m going to go ahead and demand that you man up—or dwarf up, or whatever—and take the picture with us.”
Carlos’s words were so bold and commanding, both Evie and Jane winced and looked at Grumpy, fully expecting him to explode with grumpiness. But he didn’t. He stood there for a moment, his arms still crossed over his chest, and stared dazedly back at Carlos, as though he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Okay, fine, but let’s make it quick. My favorite TV show starts in a couple of minutes.”
Evie’s mouth fell open. Jane was rendered completely speechless. Carlos smiled and thanked the dwarf as he sidled up next to him and put his arm around Grumpy’s shoulder. He clicked his phone camera to selfie mode and hoisted it high above his head. But when he looked at the screen, he saw that only he and Grumpy were in the shot. “Girls? Are you gonna get in here or what?”
The girls were both still standing there, staring at Carlos in absolute awe. They snapped to attention and ran over to Grumpy and Carlos, wedging themselves into the picture.
“Smile!” Carlos said. Evie and Jane both beamed up at the camera. Grumpy, who Carlos was certain was not used to smiling, made an effort to pull the corners of his mouth up. It looked more like a grimace then a smile, but it didn’t matter. Carlos snapped the photo. And just like that, the twenty-five points were theirs.