Carlos's Scavenger Hunt

by Jessica Brody

  “Good evening, Carlos,” Fairy Godmother said, smiling her tender smile. “I was just leaving. Walk with me.”

  The headmistress began to stroll along the beautifully landscaped walkways of the Auradon Prep campus, her sensible heels click-clacking on the pavement. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  Carlos opened his mouth to speak but suddenly felt nervous. Was he really about to command the headmistress of the school? Was he really going to give Fairy Godmother—the Fairy Godmother—a direct order? He’d never given a direct order to someone of her authority. He worried he wouldn’t be able to do it. He worried he wouldn’t be able to physically form the words.

  Come on! Carlos scolded himself. This is what being a leader is all about. Giving commands. Taking charge. If you can’t give a simple order now, how do you expect to lead an entire team to victory tomorrow?

  His pep talk seemed to work. He stood up a bit straighter and said, “Fairy Godmother, I’d like to talk to you about the scavenger hunt.”

  Even the headmistress seemed to get a little giddy at the mention of the big competition. She perked up and let out a tinkling little laugh. “Oh, yes! The scavenger hunt! Are you excited? I’m excited.” She lifted the brown satchel in her hand and gave it a dainty little pat-pat. “I’ve got the teams and final item list right here. This year is going to be the most epic hunt ever, if I do say so myself.”

  Carlos knew it was now or never.

  “Yes, right,” he said, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves. “So, I would like to be captain of one of the teams.”

  Fairy Godmother stopped walking. She turned to Carlos with a look of disappointment and made a tsk sound with her tongue. “Now, Carlos, I know you’re still new to the school and haven’t yet competed in this hunt, but you should know that a lot of people want to be captain. If I granted everyone’s wish to be captain, we’d have more captains than teams! Therefore, I don’t take any requests from students. I make these decisions entirely on my own.”

  Not this time, Carlos thought nervously.

  He swallowed hard. He couldn’t believe what he was about to do, but he needed his shot. He needed his chance. He couldn’t let this opportunity pass him by.

  Carlos puffed up his chest, trying to appear bigger than he actually was, and said, “Fairy Godmother, you will make me a team captain.”

  For a long time, the headmistress just stood there, gaping at Carlos like she didn’t even recognize him. And he supposed that made sense. He didn’t feel like himself. He felt like a completely different person. A more confident person. A person who gave orders and got results. He felt like a captain.

  In fact, he was so confident that his command had worked, he didn’t even wait around for Fairy Godmother to respond. He just nodded, said “Good night” in a stern voice, and turned back toward the dorms.

  The whole way back he couldn’t keep a silly grin off his face.

  As he returned to his dorm room and slipped the magic dog collar back into his duffel bag, he whispered his new title aloud: “Carlos De Vil, team captain.”

  He really liked the sound of that.

  Unless they’ve got big plans. And I’ve got to get to the banquet hall pronto.

  Everyone was up bright and early the next morning, milling around the bulletin board in the banquet hall. Carlos was too nervous to eat his breakfast. All the confidence he’d had walking home the night before was suddenly gone. What if dog collars didn’t work on fairy godmothers? What if the dog collar had only enough magic in it for one person and he’d wasted it all on Chad Charming? What if the teams got posted and his name wasn’t listed as captain?

  When Fairy Godmother, holding her brown leather satchel, appeared inside the banquet hall, Carlos felt as though his heart leapt into his throat. Once again the banquet hall fell silent as Fairy Godmother approached the bulletin board. When she opened the satchel and pulled out a large paper scroll—the master team roster—it was as though the entire banquet hall had stopped breathing.

  “I hope we’re on the same team,” Jane said to him, grabbing his arm and squeezing it. Carlos’s throat went dry. He tried to swallow, but feeling Jane’s hand on his arm made it difficult.

  Fairy Godmother ceremoniously unfurled the giant scroll and pinned it to the board. Then, with a flourish and a bow, she said, “Let the annual Auradon Prep Scavenger Hunt begin! May the best team win!”

  The moment she stepped away from the bulletin board, there was a mad rush across the banquet hall. Students were running and pushing and tripping over each other. Carlos thought the whole thing was very un-Auradon-like. It was as though that competition was the one day a year when the AKs acted like…well, VKs. Auradon kids were normally so polite and well-behaved and courteous. But not that day. Not with scavenger hunt glory on the line. Jane had been right. The stakes were high, and it showed.

  Carlos’s heart was pounding as he slowly maneuvered through the crowd toward the bulletin board. He heard people shouting with excitement upon finding their names on the roster Fairy Godmother had pinned to the board.

  “Yes!” Jay shouted, pumping his fist. “Team captain! Of course.” He turned to Lonnie and Mal. “You two are with me, and we’re going to rock this.” He put his hand in the air, and the two girls immediately high-fived him.

  Well, at least I’m not taking orders from him, Carlos thought, feeling relieved. Jay was one of his best friends, but sometimes he could be a little full of himself.

  Carlos crept closer to the board, squinting at the blur of names on the long scroll.

  “Oh, snap!” Jordan, the Genie’s daughter, called out as she stepped away from the board. She turned to King Ben and Chad Charming. “Looks like you two royal highnesses are under my rule this weekend. Come on. Follow me. We need to start talking strategy.” Ben and Chad exchanged uneasy glances but then dutifully followed Jordan to a nearby table.

  The suspense was killing Carlos. He tried to elbow his way through the crowd, but there were still too many people blocking his view of the scroll.

  “What?” he heard Audrey screech. He stood on his tiptoes to see Audrey scowling with her hands on her hips. “There’s no way I’m taking directions from her.”

  Then Carlos heard an evil laugh and saw Freddie staring at the roster. “Looks like you don’t have a choice,” Freddie said gleefully. “Read ’em and weep. For the next five hours, you and Ally have to do what I say.”

  Audrey’s eyes got wide, like she was about to cry. “Fairy Godmother!” she wailed. “This is so not fair. You have to switch me.”

  But Fairy Godmother shook her head, looking mighty pleased with her selections. “Sorry, Audrey. You know the rules. The team roster is final. No changes.”

  Audrey stomped away from the board, leaving a tiny crevice of space. Carlos darted forward to fill it. He let out a sigh. He’d finally made it to the bulletin board! He cast his eyes upward, taking in the long list of teams. There were so many!

  He scanned the scroll, searching for his name. But the farther he moved down the paper, the more convinced he became that he wasn’t even on the roster.

  Had Fairy Godmother forgotten to include him? Was he being disqualified for trying to force her to make him a team captain?

  Carlos heard a soft squeal, and he turned to see Jane, who had snuck up to the board as well. Her eyes lit up like fireworks as she stared at the very last team on the scroll.

  Carlos felt his heart sink. Of course she would get chosen. She had gotten chosen as the project manager for their class project, and now she had been chosen as their team captain for the scavenger hunt. No one had a problem seeing Jane as a leader. Not Carina Potts, and obviously not Fairy Godmother, either. She was organized and efficient and on top of everything. She was a natural.

  Carlos sighed and was about to congratulate Jane. After all, he didn’t want to be a sore loser, and Jane deserved the role just as much as he did.

  But as he opened his mouth to speak, Jane blurted out,
“Congrats, Carlos! I knew you could do it!”

  Carlos frowned. Congrats? Why is she congratulating me?

  But then Carlos noticed Jane was pointing at something on the bulletin board. He crouched down and squinted at the scroll. And then he saw it. That was when Carlos De Vil finally went from sidekick to superhero.

  Team Captain: Carlos

  Team Members: Jane and Evie

  It worked! The dog collar worked!

  Carlos had given the command and Fairy Godmother had followed it. And now he was going to lead a team! He rather liked his team, too. Jane and Evie were some of his favorite people. There was no way they were going to lose this. With Carlos’s leadership skills and Jane’s organizational skills and Evie’s…

  Wait a minute. Where is Evie? Carlos thought as he and Jane took seats at one of the dining tables to await the distribution of the scavenger hunt list. Carlos didn’t remember seeing her during the mad rush to the bulletin board. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d seen her at all during breakfast.

  “Have you seen Evie?” Carlos asked Jane.

  “Oh,” Jane said. “Yeah, she said she was going to be late to breakfast because she had to finish up something important in her dorm room.”

  Something important? What could be more important than the annual Auradon Prep Scavenger Hunt? Does she not understand what the stakes are?

  Carlos told himself to brush it off. She’ll be here. She’s probably finishing up some homework so she can then devote all of her time to the hunt. Carlos certainly couldn’t blame her for that.

  He shrugged. “Okay. Just as long as she’s here before we get the—”

  Carlos was about to say item list, but just then, every single phone in the banquet hall started to beep, startling him. There were so many phones beeping at once that it sounded like an electronic cricket symphony. Curious, Carlos looked at the message that had just arrived on his phone—and apparently on everyone else’s phone as well. He saw the subject line, and his adrenaline kicked up about thirty notches.

  The Official List for the Annual Auradon Prep

  Scavenger Hunt

  “This is it!” Jane cried, staring at the screen of her own phone. “It’s starting!”

  No, Carlos thought, craning his neck to see above all the people milling about the banquet hall. It can’t start yet. Evie isn’t even here!

  Carlos read the first few lines of the message.

  Welcome, team members and team captains! The hunt is now afoot! Remember, items on this list are assigned point values according to level of difficulty. You must take a time-stamped photograph of each item for it to count. The team with the most points by 3:00 p.m. today will win the title of Auradon Prep Scavenger Hunt Champions! There is only one rule: you MUST stick together as a team.

  Carlos caught just a glimpse of the first item on the list peeking out from the bottom of his phone screen, but he wouldn’t let himself look at it. And he told Jane not to, either. Not until they were all there. He wanted to do this as a team. So instead, Carlos composed a new message and sent it to Evie.

  Where are you? Hunt is starting!

  Her response came almost immediately, as though she was already staring at her phone when Carlos’s message arrived.

  So sorry! On my way down now!

  Carlos was desperate to look at the items, but he forced himself not to, keeping his gaze trained on the door as they waited for Evie. But the longer they waited, the more he heard other teams already buzzing about the list, and it was really starting to make him antsy.

  “Oh, seriously, did you see number two?” Freddie asked her team. “So easy.”

  “Yeah, but what about number six?” Ally replied, sounding concerned. “That’s practically impassable!”

  “I think you mean impossible,” Audrey said, clearly still sour from her team assignment.

  “No, I mean impassable,” Ally replied.

  “Okay, boys,” Jordan was saying to Ben and Chad. “We’re tackling number eleven first.”

  “What? But that one seems so hard,” Chad argued. “Shouldn’t we start with something easier?”

  “Don’t argue with your captain,” Jordan scolded in a teasing voice. “C’mon, Your Majesties, let’s go.”

  As teams started to file out of the room and the banquet hall became emptier and emptier, Carlos was about to boil over with anticipation. There was still no sign of Evie, but Carlos couldn’t take the suspense any longer. He knew he couldn’t leave without her. The rule was they had to stick together. But at least he could start thinking about how to acquire some of the items.

  “Okay, we can’t wait anymore,” he told Jane. “Let’s look at the list.”

  Jane sighed, clearly relieved that Carlos had said that. She looked pretty impatient herself.

  Carlos felt excitement rising inside him. This was it! The big list! He was about to see what he’d be spending the rest of that beautiful Saturday searching for.

  With a deep breath, Carlos scrolled down and read the list.

  A puppet made of wood—5 points

  A slipper made of glass—5 points

  A picture of your team posing in the display window of Belle’s Boutique—10 points

  An Auradon Express train ticket originating in Charmington—20 points

  A violet-gold pixie fork—25 points

  A selfie with Grumpy—25 points

  The recipe for the “gray stuff” from Lumiere’s Bistro—20 points

  Fruit picked from a hazelberry tree—25 points

  A perfect yellow rose—15 points

  An Auradon Prep gym T-shirt from at least 20 years ago—15 points

  A bowl of Tiana’s famous gumbo—25 points

  I’m not so sure about this list. Some of the items are easy. But some don’t even make sense!

  Carlos stared at the list in awe. What was a violet-gold pixie fork? And where on earth were they supposed to find an Auradon Prep gym T-shirt from at least twenty years earlier? But no matter—they would figure it out. Carlos decided the best strategy was to start at the top of the list and work their way down. He already knew where they could find a puppet made of wood and a slipper made of glass.

  Except they couldn’t leave until their entire group was there, and there was still no sign of—

  “Oh my gosh! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Evie burst into the banquet hall pink-cheeked and breathless, like she’d just run laps around the tourney field. “I’m here.” She glanced around the empty room in confusion. “Where is everyone?”

  “They’ve all already left on the hunt,” Carlos said, trying to keep the sharpness out of his tone. She really did look sorry. But that didn’t change the fact that they were the only team left in the banquet hall, which meant they were already behind.

  “Oh!” Evie said. “Sorry. You guys could have started without me. I could have caught up.”

  “Actually, we couldn’t have,” Carlos said. “The rule is that we have to stick together the entire time.”

  “Oh,” Evie said again, cringing. “Well, I’m here now. Let’s go! Let’s win that trophy!”

  Carlos sighed. “It’s not a trophy. It’s an engraved stone in the courtyard.”

  Evie bit her lip. “Oh, right. I forgot.”

  Carlos was frustrated with Evie, but he told himself to let it go. She was there now and that was all that mattered. So what if they were a little behind? They could catch up. And he was sure whatever reason Evie had for being late was a good one. She wasn’t the kind of person to let her friends down.

  “Okay,” Carlos said, clapping his hands together and assuming his best team captain voice. “Let’s do this. We have eleven things to collect on this list and only five hours to do it. And some of them are very hard.”

  Jane piped up. “Actually, I think maybe we should strategize and figure out which items to focus on. No one has ever gotten all the things on the list.”

  Carlos flashed Jane a smug grin. “That’s only because I’ve nev
er competed before. I fully intend to get every single thing on this list.” Carlos was confident he could achieve it. And hearing Jane say that it had never been done before only made him want it more. He didn’t want just to win the competition; he wanted to win by a landslide. He didn’t want just to beat the other teams; he wanted to pulverize them. If this was his one shot at proving himself a leader, he had to impress people. No, he had to wow them. And Carlos knew that collecting every single item on the list was the way to do it.

  “I say we go big or go home!” Carlos said, pumping his fist in the air. “I say we go for all of them.”

  Jane looked like she was about to argue with Carlos, but then she shook her head, smiled, and said, “Okay! You’re the captain!”

  “That’s right!” Carlos said, beaming at the title. “I’m the captain. Now let’s go get ’em, team! Are we ready?”

  Carlos expected a rallying shout from his teammates, but the only one who responded was Jane. Carlos glanced around for Evie and saw that she had ducked into a corner and was tapping into her phone, her brow furrowed.

  Carlos groaned. “Evie! I’m trying to lead us in a battle cry.”

  “Sorry!” Evie said without looking up from her tapping. “Just two…” Tap. Tap. Tap. “More…” Tap. Tap. Tap. “Seconds…” Tap. Tap. Tap.

  She pressed a final key with a flourish. “And done!” Evie slipped her phone into her pocket. “All finished. I’m ready to go! Battle cry? Let’s do it! Hiyaaa!”

  Carlos slouched. “Never mind. The moment has passed. Let’s just go.”

  First stop: Geppetto’s workshop. It’s almost too obvious that we’d go there to find a puppet made of wood. No wonder this one is only worth five points.

  Not only did they have plenty of marionettes to choose from, but the young man working at Geppetto’s was nice enough to take a photo of the entire team holding one of the puppets. Carlos saved the photo to his phone, and the team rushed out.