Carlos's Scavenger Hunt

by Jessica Brody

  Next they headed to the Museum of Cultural History, where they were easily able to snap a photo of Cinderella’s glass slipper, which was on display in one of the exhibits.

  So far, so good, Carlos thought as they ran out of the museum. They already had ten points!

  “Where to next?” Jane asked.

  “Ooh!” Evie said. “I think I know where we might find a hazelberry tree. It’s right near—”

  “We’re moving on to number three,” Carlos announced, interrupting Evie. “Let’s head to downtown Auradon to take the picture in the display window of Belle’s Boutique.”

  Evie perked up. “Belle’s Boutique? Oh, great! I really need to pick up some lace there and maybe a few extra buttons for—”

  “We’re not shopping, Evie,” Carlos snapped, and then reminded himself to chill. He flashed a smile. “I mean, we don’t have time. We need to stay focused.”

  “Right, focused,” Evie said, but right as she said it, her phone beeped and she immediately glanced down at the screen, let out a frustrated sigh, and started typing.

  Carlos did his best to stay calm. What was so important that Evie couldn’t spend a few hours on a scavenger hunt? It was actually kind of strange. Evie wasn’t normally that distracted.

  Is something wrong? Carlos wondered. Should I ask her about it?

  But he decided they didn’t have time. He would have to ask Evie later.

  As soon as they arrived at Belle’s Boutique, Carlos knew that task wasn’t going to be simple. They had to get a picture of all of them posing inside the display window, but the shopkeeper—a cranky elderly woman—saw them walk into the store and immediately pointed toward the door. “Oh, no. No more Auradon Prep students taking photos in my window. I’ve had ten teams in here already.”

  Carlos felt panic flare in his chest. “Please, ma’am. We really need this photo.”

  But she shook her head. “No way. The last team completely messed up my window display.”

  Evie tilted her head toward the display window, her lips pursed thoughtfully. “Hmmm. I could help you fix the display. You really should be highlighting more of this season’s dresses, anyway. Bright yellows are totally in. And maybe some—”

  “Evie,” Carlos whispered, growing impatient. “We don’t have time to be dressing windows. We have to get all of the items on the list by three o’clock.”

  “Yes, but—” Evie tried to argue, but Carlos cut her off.

  “C’mon, let’s go.” He led Evie and Jane out of the store, and they stood on the sidewalk, staring at the window. “We need a plan.”

  “Maybe we should move on to the next item on the list,” Jane suggested.

  “No.” Carlos immediately shot her down. “We’re not skipping any. We just need to figure out a way to convince the shopkeeper to let us take the photo. Evie, do you have any ideas?”

  But Evie wasn’t listening. She was back to typing something on her phone, completely distracted again.

  Distracted.

  Carlos was suddenly struck with an idea. “I’ve got it! I’ll call the store, pretending to be the water department. I’ll tell her there’s a leak in the alley behind her store. Then, when she goes out the back door, we’ll go in the front. We’ll snap the photo and get out of there before she returns.”

  “Great!” Jane commended him. “Well done. No wonder my mom chose you as captain!”

  Carlos felt a small jab of guilt at the compliment, because he knew Fairy Godmother hadn’t really chosen him. Carlos had commanded her to choose him while he was wearing the magic dog collar. But he told himself it didn’t matter. What mattered now was how he handled himself. And he had to admit that so far he was doing a pretty awesome job. They’d already knocked two things off the list.

  “Okay,” Carlos said, “first we’ll need to set up my phone across the street to take the picture. We can set the timer to give us enough time to get inside the store and pose in the window. I’ll make the call to the shop owner on Evie’s phone. Evie?”

  Evie glanced up from her phone screen, looking startled at hearing her own name. “Huh?”

  “Can I borrow your phone?”

  “Um…” she said hesitantly. “I’d really rather you not. I’m waiting for an important e-mail.”

  “Here,” Jane said, offering her phone to him. “You can use mine.”

  “Thanks.” Carlos propped his own phone on a small brick wall across the street from Belle’s Boutique, angling it so it had the perfect view of the display window. Then, using Jane’s phone, he dialed the number for Belle’s Boutique. When the shopkeeper answered, Carlos lowered his voice a full octave, impersonating an adult. “Hello there. This is…um…Gustav McManister from the City of Auradon Water Department. I’m sorry to inform you that we’ve had reports of a leak in the alley behind your store.”

  Jane stifled a giggle, which almost made Carlos burst out laughing. He had to turn away from her to keep a straight face.

  “A leak?” the shopkeeper said, sounding skeptical. “I was just out there a few minutes ago. There was no leak.”

  Carlos hesitated, trying to think fast. “Um, yes, well, the leak seems to be…” He glanced at Belle’s Boutique, scanning the building for some kind of inspiration. That was when Jane tugged on his sleeve and pointed to a set of stairs leading to an underground level of the shop.

  “Originating from the basement,” Carlos said into the phone.

  Apparently, those were the magic words, because the shopkeeper let out a panicked shriek. “The basement? But all of our inventory is stored in the basement.”

  “Yes, well, you’d better get down there right away,” Carlos said, giving Jane and Evie a thumbs-up.

  Jane crept across the street and peered in through the shop window. When the shopkeeper had disappeared down the stairs, Jane signaled to Carlos. Carlos set the timer on the phone for thirty seconds and programmed it to take five photos. He figured that should be enough to capture them in the window.

  He motioned to Evie that they should go, then darted across the street and joined Jane at the front door. He was about to walk into the store when he noticed that Evie was still standing next to the brick wall, tapping into her phone again.

  “Evie!” Carlos called, covering the mouthpiece of Jane’s phone so the shopkeeper wouldn’t hear. “We have less than half a minute!”

  “Coming!” she said. Without looking up from her screen, she hurried across the street and followed Carlos and Evie into the shop.

  “There’s no leak down here!” Carlos heard the shopkeeper say into the phone as the three of them headed for the window.

  “Um, yes there is!” Carlos said desperately. “You need to look harder. For at least another ten seconds!”

  Carlos and Jane assumed poses in the window, pretending to be mannequins.

  “Uh-oh,” Jane said, wrinkling her nose. “There’s too much perfume in this shop. It’s making my nose tickle. I think I’m going to sneeze! This happened when I was interning for Carina Potts. We gave out French perfume for party favors at Esmeralda’s birthday bash, and I was sneezing all night.”

  “Don’t sneeze,” Carlos ordered her. “At least not until we get the picture.”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Jane said, waving her hand in front of her nose. Carlos held his mannequin position, praying that Jane could hold her sneeze. A second later, he realized that Evie was not with them. She was still standing to the side of the display window, typing on her phone. “Evie! The timer is about to go off!”

  “Be right there!” Evie said brightly.

  Carlos marched over to Evie and began to pull her toward the window.

  “Achooo!” Jane sneezed so loud even the shopkeeper heard it.

  “What was that?” the shopkeeper barked over Jane’s phone. “I don’t have time to spend down here looking for an imaginary leak. I have customers upstairs.”

  Carlos heard footsteps on the stairs. He quickly dragged Evie into the window and told everyone, �
��Pose like a mannequin! Quick!” Evie glanced up long enough to flash a smile before she returned to her phone.

  “I think we got it,” Carlos said. The footsteps on the stairs got louder. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  “Two more seconds,” Evie said, typing furiously.

  Carlos urged her. “Evie, we don’t have two more—”

  “Hey!” came a cranky voice. “What are you kids doing in here? I thought I told you to stay out of my window!”

  “Run!” Carlos commanded. Fortunately, both members of his team listened to him this time, and all three of them darted from the boutique with the shopkeeper close on their tails. When they reached the outside, she closed the door behind them with a bang. “I don’t want to see you three scoundrels in my shop again!”

  Carlos breathed a sigh of relief. “Whoa. That was close. Good thing we got the photo.” But then his face fell into a frown when he picked up his phone and clicked on the five photos the camera had taken. There wasn’t a single one that had captured all three of them. Three photos showed Carlos dragging a reluctant Evie into the window, and in the other two, all that was visible was the top of Jane’s head as she sneezed.

  More like keep on rollin’. This is just a small hiccup. Nothing to worry about.

  Carlos decided it was probably best to go back to Belle’s Boutique later in the day, after the shopkeeper had had a chance to cool down. Perhaps after Carlos had had a chance to cool down, too. Carlos was pretty frustrated with Evie. It was all her fault they hadn’t gotten the photo. If she hadn’t been on her phone, and had posed in the shop window with Carlos and Jane, they would have ten more points right now.

  But Carlos told himself to let it go and focus on the next item on the list. Evie had been really apologetic about the whole thing, and he could tell she meant it. Although he was still curious about what she kept doing on that phone.

  Now they were on their way to the Auradon Express train station to try to score a picture of a ticket originating in Charmington.

  Carlos checked the clock on his phone. It was almost noon. They’d wasted nearly two hours collecting ten measly points. But the Charmington train ticket was a big one. It was worth twenty points. Carlos felt confident it would help them catch up.

  Jane had already checked the Auradon Express website (thanks to Carlos’s clever thinking) and discovered that a train from Charmington was due into the station in ten minutes. All they had to do now was wait for the passengers to disembark the train and ask one of them if they could take a picture of their ticket.

  Carlos saw no reason why that would be a problem.

  That is, until they reached the train station.

  Apparently, Carlos wasn’t the only one with the clever idea to check when the next train from Charmington was going to arrive, because the train platform was overflowing with kids from Auradon Prep. They were gathered around the track, waiting for the train with their camera phones ready.

  “Now what?” Jane asked, her eyes widening at the sight of all the students.

  Carlos pushed his shoulders back. He wasn’t going to lose hope. “We’ll just have to be assertive and make sure we’re able to get a picture of someone’s ticket.”

  Carlos glanced around at the crowded train platform. He spotted Jay, Mal, and Lonnie huddled around Jay’s phone, most likely counting up their current score. Carlos was desperate to find out how many points they had. He had no idea where his team stood right then with their ten points. Were they somewhere near the top of the pack? Or near the bottom?

  “Wait right here,” Carlos told Jane and Evie. “I’ll be right back. I just want to…um, check something.”

  “But we’re not supposed to split up,” Jane pointed out. “And the train is arriving any minute.”

  “It’s okay,” Carlos assured her. “I’ll be close by.” Then Carlos darted off to the other side of the platform, where Jay’s team was standing. Along the way, he grabbed an Auradon Times newspaper from the stand next to the display case and opened it up wide, so he could hide his face behind it. He didn’t want Jay or Mal or Lonnie to see him snooping. But he had to know. A good team captain always kept track of the competition. Like how Jay always knew who the best tourney players were on all the other teams and what their signature moves were.

  Keeping the newspaper in front of his face, Carlos inched closer to the group. They were still huddled close together, looking at something on Jay’s phone.

  Jay was speaking in a hushed tone. “Okay, so with the Belle’s Boutique picture, the slipper made of glass, the puppet made of wood, and the yellow rose, that brings our score to thirty-five points.”

  Carlos cringed. Jay’s team had thirty-five points already? And Carlos’s team only had ten? If Jay’s team was any indication of how the rest of the school was doing, Carlos really needed to step up his game. Even if his team was able to score the Auradon Express train ticket, no doubt Jay’s team would, too, and they’d still be twenty-five points behind.

  “We really need to figure out how to get Grumpy to pose for a selfie,” Lonnie said. “That’s a massive twenty-five points.”

  “Not gonna happen,” Mal said. “Doug was telling me that his uncle Grumpy hates getting his photo taken. Like with a passion. There’s a reason Fairy Godmother gave that the max amount of points. It’s because it’s impossible. No one is ever going to be able to convince him to do it, so we may as well just forget that one.”

  “What about the recipe for the gray stuff?” Jay asked. “How hard will that be?”

  “It depends on what kind of mood Lumiere is in today,” Lonnie said. “He doesn’t like giving out his secret recipes.”

  Jay turned to Mal. “You’re dating Belle and Beast’s son. Do you think he’ll give you special treatment?”

  Mal shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”

  Carlos felt dread coating his stomach. Jay’s team seemed so much more on top of things than his team. They were all involved, making an effort, suggesting ideas. Meanwhile, he couldn’t even get Evie to glance away from her phone long enough to take a picture!

  Just then, Carlos heard the whistle of a train and Jay’s team broke out of their huddle and faced the track. Carlos inched back to his teammates just as the lights of the train started to appear around the bend in the track.

  “Okay, team,” Carlos said to Jane and Evie. “We really need this. Let’s not mess it up.” He looked pointedly at Evie when he said this, but of course she didn’t even notice, because her face was buried in her phone again.

  Carlos shook his head and sighed as he stood next to Jane, watching as the train approached the station with an earsplitting screech of tires on metal.

  “As soon as you see a passenger get off the train, run up to them and ask to take a picture of their ticket.”

  Jane nodded. “Got it.”

  But before the train could even reach the station, Carlos was distracted by a strange sound coming from the next platform. It was soft at first, but getting louder by the second. Carlos couldn’t be certain, but he thought it sounded a lot like a child crying.

  What is that sound?

  Carlos glanced anxiously between the incoming train and the next platform. He tried to peer over the heads of all the other Auradon Prep students waiting to bombard the passengers getting off the train, but he couldn’t see what was making that sound.

  “Hold on,” Carlos said, and took a few steps toward the adjoining platform.

  “Carlos,” Jane said. “The train is almost here!”

  But Carlos didn’t stop. He could hear the sound better now. It definitely sounded like someone crying. It was being washed out by the hissing of the incoming train.

  Carlos took three more steps through the crowd, and that’s when he saw the boy. He was huddled on the ground in the middle of the empty platform, sobbing. He looked to only be about six or seven years old. The boy’s hair was white, just like Carlos’s, which surprised Carlos. He had never before seen another child with white
hair.

  Carlos blinked, and for a second, he couldn’t see the boy anymore. He only saw himself. A scared little boy, huddled inside his mom’s fur-storage closet, crying to be let out. He felt a wave of fear pass through him, as though he were back there in that closet.

  “Carlos!” Jane said, bringing him back to the train station. “What’s going on?”

  “We have to help him,” Carlos said dazedly.

  “Help who?” Jane asked, confused. But then she glanced in the direction where Carlos was staring and saw the boy. “Oh my gosh! What’s wrong with him?”

  Carlos shook his head. “I don’t know. But we can’t just stand here.” And then he was moving, calling back to Jane and Evie to come with him. Carlos could hear the hiss of the train from Charmington as it pulled into the station, but he didn’t care. This was more important.

  When he reached the crying boy, he skidded to a halt and knelt down next to him. “Hey, hey, little guy,” he said in a soothing voice. A voice he’d never heard from his mother. “What’s the matter?”

  The boy looked up. His face was tearstained. His eyes were red and puffy. He blinked, looking confused, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “Carlos?” the boy asked.

  Now Carlos looked confused. “Do I know you?”

  In answer to the question, the boy leapt up and threw his arms around Carlos’s neck in a hug. Carlos didn’t know what to do. He certainly didn’t recognize the boy. He patted him awkwardly on the back and glanced up at Jane, who had arrived with Evie.

  Jane threw her hands up, as if to ask, What did I miss?

  But Carlos only shook his head.

  The boy sniffled into Carlos’s leather jacket. “Carlos! I can’t believe it’s really you. Mommy said we wouldn’t see you if we came to Auradon. That it was too big of a city and the chances of running into you were so small. But I knew we would see you. I just knew it!”

  Carlos, still baffled by the exchange, pulled back so he could look into the boy’s eyes. He searched the kid’s face for a sliver of familiarity, but once again, he found nothing. “How do I know you?” Carlos asked.