Descendants 2 Junior Novel

by Eric Geron

  “Are you trying to spell me right now?”

  “Ben, it has been so hard for me—”

  “Mal!” Ben shouted. “Come on!” He stood and dropped the book onto the table. “Yeah, some things are hard! Do you think it’s been easy learning how to be king?”

  “No!” said Mal.

  “I thought we were in this together!” Ben cried.

  Mal bolted out of her seat. “We are in this together!”

  “But we’re not,” Ben said. “We’re not, Mal. You’ve been keeping secrets…and…and lying to me. I thought we were done with this. This isn’t the Isle of the Lost, Mal!”

  Mal was stung. “Believe me, I know,” she said.

  “Then why are you doing this?” Ben implored of her.

  “Because I am not a pretty pink princess! I’m not one of those ladies, okay? I’m a big fake!” yelled Mal. She gestured to her hair and the food on the table. “I’m fake. This is fake.” Sighing, she reached over the table, lifted her spell book, turned to a page, and incanted: “Take this feast, this sumptuous meal, return it back to what is real.” She did a little finger wave and the feast disappeared. The trays, bowls, and plates of food were replaced by a sad peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cookie.

  “That’s who I really am, Ben,” said Mal, gesturing to the glum meal. Her eyes shimmered with tears, and she broke her stare with Ben to move away from him.

  Ben reached out and touched her arm. “Mal,” he said softly.

  Mal shrugged Ben off. “No!” she said, and stomped away, leaving Ben alone.

  Wanting to make her feel better, Ben picked up the sandwich and called out, “Peanut butter and jelly is my favorite!” But she was already gone. He walked back to the rail and gazed over the pond. Across the calm green water, Ben could see the land on the other side. He thought about how he’d spent many times looking out at the Isle of the Lost in the same far-off way.

  Ben felt farther away from Mal than ever.

  Once Mal got back to school, she burst into her dorm room and was relieved to find it empty.

  Mal moved to Evie’s worktable and found a small black box with a blue lid. She took a sharp pencil and stabbed the lid of the box repeatedly to make holes. “I don’t belong here!” Mal cried out. She rushed to her mother’s glass aquarium.

  “Okay,” Mal muttered, opening the top of the tank. She lifted the tiny lizard out of it and placed it into the black box. She looked down at her mother and let out a little laugh through her tears. “Let’s blow this Popsicle stand, yeah?” asked Mal.

  Auradon was not where she belonged—not anymore.

  I knew trying to be Ben’s perfect girlfriend was a bad idea.

  I’m so outta here.

  Mal rode her scooter out of the woods and came to a stop at the shore.

  She looked across the Sea of Serenity at her far-off old home. The magical barrier flickered and shimmered over the Isle of the Lost like it was a memory, beckoning to Mal. She was still sobbing. She flipped her goggles onto her helmet and pulled her spell book out of her bag. She flipped through it and stopped. Then she incanted, “Noble steed, proud and fair, you shall take me anywhere.” She waved her finger.

  The scooter roared to life, bearing a new glittering graffiti paint job.

  Mal put on her goggles and took a breath. “Please work.” Her voice was desperate. She zoomed across the surface of the sea toward the isle of exiled prisoners, gaining speed. She headed toward the barrier, and her eyes grew wide.

  With a flash, Mal’s enchanted scooter disappeared through the barrier.

  In no time, she rolled through a dusty lane filled with disheveled, grubby pirates selling knickknacks at their rotting storefronts. Her scooter was dinged and battered-looking, like it had taken a beating traveling through the barrier. A pirate leaped out of Mal’s way. Another ducked behind the newspaper she had been reading. Mal stopped to scrutinize a vandalized Royal Cotillion poster of King Ben and the new blond version of herself in a pink dress with white lace gloves. It read THE EVENING’S EVENTS TO BE BROADCAST LIVE ON AURADON ROYAL TELEVISION. Over Ben’s face, someone had scribbled a black eye patch and a goatee, and a purple X had been spray-painted over Mal’s face with GOOD GIRL! on her body.

  Mal thought back to a time when she had been the vandal supplying the design, and she felt offended seeing that she’d become the vandal’s victim, and strange that she was part of Ben’s goodie reputation on the Isle. She wanted to shake that good-girl image—fast.

  Mal flipped up her goggles. She ripped the poster down, crumpled it up, tossed it over her shoulder, snapped her goggles back down, and continued along her way. The destitute pirates looked on in her wake, frightened. Mal’s scooter roared down another squalid street. People jumped out of the way. Some shook their fists at her.

  Mal smiled. She was home.

  A short distance later, Mal rolled through an alley infested with grungy thieves, minions, and pickpockets and parked her bike under the stairway of her crew’s old hideout. It was a house perched high on a broken bridge’s dilapidated support. There was a drop-down gate barring a flight of steps that led to the entrance at the top, where a sign read ISLE OF THE LOST in mismatched flickering letters. At the bottom of the hideout was an old-fashioned ship’s call horn, where visitors could announce themselves. Mal removed her helmet, taking in her familiar surroundings.

  She picked up a rock and hurled it at a sign that said DANGER: FLYING ROCKS, and the gate slid up. Mal ducked under it and climbed the steps. She paused on a landing to gaze over the Isle. It was as bleak and dismal as ever. She smirked and kept climbing until she reached the top, and she entered the vacant hideout. Exposed lightbulbs and bits of fabric clung to the ceiling, and graffiti images on the walls said WE SHALL RISE!, REVENGE!, and DOWN WITH AURADON!

  The hideout was just how Mal and her friends had left it.

  In Auradon, Ben reviewed official royal documents in his library office.

  “Deborah, please ask Lumiere to call me regarding Cotillion. Thank you,” he said into the earpiece he wore. He peered at the pile of papers stacked before him on the desk, framed on each side by the Auradon flag. He dipped his quill into an ink pot and took another paper with the Auradon crest at the top to review. The leather chair he sat in wasn’t a throne, but it was the place where Ben performed most of his kingly duties when he wasn’t in his official council meetings. The office was also somewhere to hide away when things got tough, like after the fight with Mal at the pond. Ben shook his head as if to make sense of it and signed the document. The framed portrait of him looked down on him from over the fireplace, as if it judged him.

  Evie rapped on the door and stuck her face into the room. “Ben,” she said softly.

  Ben looked up, and his face brightened. “Evie! Come on in.” He took out his earpiece.

  She pushed through the door, closed it softly behind her, and faced Ben. Her lip trembled, and her eyes glistened. She held a piece of paper in her shaking hands. “Mal’s gone back to the Isle,” she said, “for good.”

  Ben’s expression turned blank.

  Evie walked to Ben’s desk and handed the note to him. She also handed Ben’s shiny gold beast-head ring to him. It had once belonged to his powerful father.

  Ben’s eyes widened. He took the note and read what Mal had written, then crumpled the paper in his hand. “This is my fault. This is my fault!” he roared. “I blew it. She’s been under so much pressure lately. And instead of understanding, I—I just went all Beast on her!” Ben slumped over his desk. “I have to go there and apologize,” he told Evie. “I have to go back! And beg her—”

  “You’ll never find her,” said Evie.

  Ben walked behind his desk to the window to look over the tree-filled lawn.

  “You need to know the Isle, and how it works, and our hideouts….” Evie exhaled. She looked thoughtful, then said, “You have to take me with you.”

  Ben spun away from the window. “Yes!” His fac
e lit up. Then he squinted. “Uh, I mean, are you sure?”

  Evie’s expression hardened. “Yeah,” she said, standing taller. “She’s my best friend.” Evie turned around. “And we’ll take the boys, too, because there’s safety in numbers. And none of us are all too popular over there right now.”

  “Thank you, Evie,” said Ben.

  Evie shifted to face him. “But first let’s get two things straight,” she said.

  Ben stared at her, waiting.

  “You have to promise me that I won’t get stuck there again,” said Evie.

  “I promise,” said Ben.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Evie eyed Ben’s royal-blue suit. “And there’s no way you’re going to the Isle looking like that.”

  I’ve been on the Isle for five seconds and I already feel so much better.

  Now, time to get back in touch with my villain roots.

  What better way than by looking like my bad old self again?

  Mal marched through narrow cobblestoned streets and reached Sorcerer’s Square.

  Around her, Isle ne’er-do-wells ambled to and fro below clotheslines heavy with damp, soiled garments, and merchants tinkered at their run-down ramshackle shop stalls with outdated objects and slop for sale. Mal made her way down the wet, slick street and approached the double doors of a shabby salon. A weathered sign above showed a giant pair of scissors and a perfume bottle bearing the words Lady Tremaine’s Curl Up and Dye. Mal read a clock sign on one of the doors that said CLOSED UNTIL MIDNIGHT. She looked around, and when the coast was clear, she pushed open a door peeling with crusty paint and stole inside, quickly and quietly.

  Mal stepped inside the decrepit building, pushed aside clear plastic panels, and found a girl sweeping a colorful salon. The place had pipes and wires exposed in the ceiling, hair dryers made with botched-together pieces of machinery, and steaming glass vials with colorful dyes percolating and running through a system of pipes over a bathtub. To top it all off, the entire place—from the walls, where cracked mirrors hung, to each janky mismatched salon chair—was splattered with streaks of every shade of bright neon dye.

  Dizzy, Lady Tremaine’s granddaughter, wore large gold-painted headphones embellished with tiny flowers and pearly metallic beads. Dizzy hadn’t heard Mal come into the salon as she swept, moving as if she were ballroom dancing with the broom. She had on a multicolored dress and cat-eye glasses, and each of her nails was painted a different color. Her brown hair was back in a bun, and the ends were neon pink. Dizzy turned and saw Mal standing there, and she pulled off her headphones.

  “Mal!” Dizzy’s freckled face lit up. “Is Evie back, too?”

  Mal let out a little laugh. “Ha. As if.” She put her hand on her hip and looked around the salon. “I, uh, forgot that you guys don’t open till midnight,” she said.

  Dizzy nodded.

  “The place looks really good,” said Mal.

  Dizzy smiled. Even though she was only a few years younger than Mal, she looked up to her and valued her opinon.

  Mal looked at Dizzy’s gloves, her apron, and the pile of hair she had been sweeping. “So what is your deal? Has your grandmother given you any customers yet, or…”

  Dizzy shrugged. “Just a witch here and there. Mostly it’s a lot of scrubbing and scouring and sweeping.” She looked at the pile of hair. “Lots and lots of sweeping…”

  Mal snickered. “The old Cinderella treatment, hey?”

  “Yeah. She’s gone from wicked stepmother to wicked grandmother.”

  “That’s not much of a leap. Hey, Dizzy, you used to do Evie, am I right?”

  Dizzy beamed and nodded. “Yeah! I thought of the little braids!”

  “Ya got any ideas for me?” asked Mal.

  Dizzy sized Mal up and walked over to her. She picked up a strand of Mal’s blond hair. “The washed-out blond with purple tips? The best of no worlds.” She dropped the hair and examined Mal’s face. “Hmmm, you cannot see where your face ends and your hair begins.” She gestured to a nearby chair, which Mal quickly sat in. Dizzy snatched Mal’s hand and peered at her fingernails. “Ugh! What is this? Bored to Death pink?” She spun Mal. “How far can I go?” she asked with a mischievous tone.

  Mal smiled. “Honestly, the works,” she said coolly. “I mean, whatever makes me feel like me but…way worse.” She looked at Dizzy with her green eyes glinting.

  “Yay!” Dizzy cheered and rushed to a table, where she lifted a pair of rusty garden shears. She opened and closed the blades twice, then spun back to Mal.

  A grin spread across Mal’s face. Let the transformation begin!

  Dizzy got to work. First she dyed Mal’s hair purple in the sink, used garden shears to trim Mal’s purple locks, and pinned up soda cans in Mal’s new do. Then Dizzy had Mal sit under a dryer so that her curls could set while Dizzy applied a fresh coat of wickedly black polish to Mal’s nails. At last, Dizzy spun Mal around in her chair for the big reveal. Mal launched out of the chair and peered into the cracked fragments of the shattered mirror on the wall.

  Mal’s long lavender hair reached down past her shoulders, and her sparkling green eyes twinkled below new bluntly cut bangs. She beamed. Mal was the child of a villain through and through. Now it was undeniable.

  Dizzy looked at her work, sporting the biggest smile imaginable.

  “Ah! There I am,” said Mal, delighted.

  “Voilà!” squealed Dizzy.

  “Voilà,” said Mal, turning to Dizzy and holding out a couple of dollars to her.

  Dizzy clutched her chest. “For me?” she asked incredulously.

  Mal nodded. “Yeah! You earned it.”

  Dizzy took the money out of Mal’s hand and marched across the salon to the cash register.

  Harry Hook slipped through the front door and towered over the cash register. “Fork it over!”

  Dizzy froze. Mal stood where she was, unnoticed by Harry.

  Harry smirked at Dizzy with his hand outstretched.

  Dizzy looked crestfallen. She slowly handed the cash to Harry.

  “And the rest of it, Four Eyes,” Harry sneered.

  Dizzy moved around the cash register, opened it, and handed Harry everything that was inside. She leaned over the cashier desk and rested her chin glumly on her hand.

  “Thank you.” Harry turned to leave.

  “Still running errands for Uma, or do you actually get to keep what you steal?” Mal piped up.

  Harry whirled around and grinned when he saw her. “Well, well, well, isn’t this a nice surprise?”

  Mal smiled. “Hi, Harry.”

  Harry strolled toward her and waved his hook. “Wait until Uma hears that you’re back. You know, she’s never going to give you back your old territory.”

  Mal shook her head. “She won’t have to.” She nodded. “I will be taking it.”

  Harry flicked Mal’s new do with his hook. “You know, I could hurt you.”

  Mal grabbed his wrist. “Oh, well…” She spit out the gum she had been chewing and stuck it on the tip of Harry’s hook. “Not without her permission, I bet,” she said, looking up at Harry.

  Harry grinned, strode to the door, and stormed out, but not before he spun to knock knickknacks off the cash register counter and onto the floor with his hook.

  Mal and Dizzy watched him leave.

  Dizzy rolled her eyes. “Great,” she said. “More sweeping.”

  Jay, Ben, Evie, and Carlos crept down a set of stairs toward the royal limo waiting outside. Thanks to Evie’s sewing skills and talent for fashion design, Ben wore his new Isle-inspired outfit, which consisted of a distressed blue leather jacket with metallic studs, a blue beanie, blue fingerless leather gloves, blue pants, and dark boots. In fact, the whole gang was in their Isle of the Lost attire, with Evie stunning in a blue leather jacket and matching skirt; Jay in red-and-blue velvet pants, a leather jacket, and a beanie; and Carlos in red-and-black pants, a leather jacket, and fingerless gloves. They were ready for the Isle.
It was not for the faint of heart. Their feet touched down on the pavement outside the school where the black stretch waited.

  “Keys. Remote,” said Ben, tossing them both to Jay. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait!” said Evie.

  Everyone gathered at the foot of the stairs.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said.

  Everyone looked at her expectantly.

  She stepped in front of Ben, pulled his beanie farther down over his hair, ruffled his jacket, and smiled. “There,” she said, satisfied.

  Suddenly, Dude appeared behind them on the stairs. “Road trip!” he said.

  “Dude, no!” said Carlos. “Stay! The Isle is way too dangerous.”

  Ben, Evie, and Jay gawked at Dude.

  “He just…talked?” asked Jay.

  “Yeah. I know. I’ll tell ya later,” said Carlos.

  Everyone stared at each other for a brief moment and shook their heads.

  “Let’s go,” said Ben, determined to push through the shock of the talking dog.

  In a haze, everyone climbed into the limo. Filled with buttons, gadgets, refreshments, and vast arrays of colorful sweets, it was the same one that had brought Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos to Auradon Prep. Jay and Carlos had tried their first-ever chocolate peanut butter cups in that very limo. But Jay had never driven it before. He smiled devilishly, grabbed the steering wheel, and hit the gas.

  The limo rocketed away from the school.

  Wicked new look? check.

  Up next…taking my old turf back from Uma.

  Night fell over the Isle of the Lost as the limo rolled to a stop in an empty warehouse.

  Jay, Carlos, Evie, and Ben jumped out of the vehicle and slammed the doors. Around them were splintered wooden shipping crates, old sheets in a stinking pile, walls of corroded corrugated metal, and slimy barrels.

  There was also a huge rusty metal pipe turned tunnel going into a rock wall.