Descendants 2 Junior Novel

by Eric Geron

  “Yeah, what other option do we have?” asked Jay.

  “So we give Fairy Godmother’s wand to Uma, of all people—” started Evie.

  Mal held out her hands. “You guys!” she said.

  They quieted down and gave her their attention.

  Mal gestured to Carlos. “Your 3-D printer. Is there any way that you could—”

  “A phony wand,” said Carlos with a snap of his fingers. “In my sleep!”

  “The second Uma tests it, she’ll know it’s fake,” Evie rebutted.

  “Okay,” said Mal. “So then we just get Ben out really fast. We need some kind of diversion!”

  “Smoke bombs!” shouted Jay.

  Mal pointed at him and nodded.

  “Perfect!” said Evie, walking over to Mal. “I can get the chemicals I need at Lady Tremaine’s place.” She stopped in front of Mal. “Oh, and sick hair, by the way,” she said, lightly touching it. “Wicked stepmom’s seriously stepped up her game!”

  “Do you want to know something? Dizzy did this!” said Mal.

  Evie smiled. “Little Dizzy? Shut up!”

  Carlos rested his face in his hand while Jay walked over to join him.

  “I know, and I’m, like, seriously loving it!” Mal ran her fingers through her hair.

  “I’m, like, really proud of her!” Evie said.

  “Right?” said Mal.

  Jay nudged Carlos and cleared his throat.

  “Uhhh, helloooo!” Carlos called out.

  Mal and Evie turned to him and Jay.

  “Right,” Evie said quietly, realizing they should get back on track.

  Mal clapped. “Okay. Jay. Carlos. You meet us at Pirate’s Cove no later than noon. And, guys, losing…Hey!” Mal snapped her fingers to get their full attention. “It’s not an option.” She looked gravely from Evie to Jay to Carlos. “Because we’re rotten…”

  “To the core,” the friends said in unison.

  It feels good plotting and planning with my friends.

  Just like old times. I’ve seriously missed that.

  Mal and Evie entered Lady Tremaine’s Curl Up and Dye and crept up behind Dizzy.

  She was hunched over her table, which was piled with knickknacks, making a colorful headband. Evie snuck up beside her and tapped her shoulder to get Dizzy’s attention.

  Dizzy beamed, jumped up, and hugged Evie. “Evie? Evie! You came back!”

  “Oh, my Dizzy,” said Evie, taking the younger girl’s hands in her own.

  Mal looked on and chuckled. “It’s so great to see you, too,” she said drily.

  “Is it all just like we imagined?” Dizzy asked Evie, wanting to know all about Auradon. “Do they really have closets you can walk into?”

  Evie giggled at her earnest questions.

  “Have you been in real a swimming pool? What does ice cream taste like?” asked Dizzy.

  Evie laughed. “It’s cold and sweet, and if you eat it too fast, it gives you a headache,” she said, stooping low so that she and Dizzy were eye to eye.

  “Really?” Dizzy squealed.

  Evie nodded.

  “I saved your sketchbook for you!” said Dizzy, bolting across the salon.

  “You did?” Evie asked Dizzy, looking at Mal. Evie put a hand to her heart.

  Dizzy raced back to them, carrying a thick blue book that had a red heart topped with a gold crown on its intricately decorated cover.

  “Dizzy!” cried Evie. She sat down in front of the book at the table and beamed.

  Mal stroked Evie’s hair affectionately, and Dizzy smiled over her shoulder.

  “Oh, my gosh,” said Evie as she opened the beautiful book to a drawing of a short yellow-and-blue dress. There was some lacy blue fabric pinned to the page. “I made this dress out of an old curtain and safety pins,” she said, relishing the memory.

  “Yeah! It reminds me of the dress you made for Mal when she met Jasmine,” said Dizzy.

  “I spilled curry all over it,” said Mal.

  Evie and Dizzy laughed.

  “Yeah, I saw that,” said Dizzy.

  Mal left them to inspect another table that boasted an assortment of items. After all, they were at the salon for a reason. They needed smoke bomb supplies.

  Meanwhile, Evie tapped the dress design with her fingertips. “You’re totally right, Dizzy,” she said. “This was totally the inspiration for that.”

  “I knew it!” Dizzy punched a gloved fist up into the air. “You can take the girl out of the Isle, but you can’t take the Isle out of the girl!” She pressed her cheek to Evie’s.

  Behind them, Mal picked up a plastic bowl and began to fill it with shower caps. She had an idea, and she was going with it. This just might work, she thought.

  Evie closed her sketchbook, and she picked up a shiny metallic accessory and a tiny gold crown. She held the crown against the accessory, creating a hair ornament. “Is this too much?” she asked Dizzy. “Or is this fabulous?”

  Dizzy struck a pose and extended her arm. “Hand me the glue gun!”

  Back at Auradon Prep, Jay and Carlos walked down the hallway to their dorm room. Dude bounded toward them, obviously excited that they were finally back.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” Carlos whispered to Dude. “Ben got taken.”

  “Why’s our door open?” asked Jay.

  He and Carlos entered the room and found Chad printing on the 3-D printer.

  “Are you kidding me?” yelled Carlos.

  Chad jumped and looked up. “I knocked,” he explained.

  Carlos held out his hand and looked at Chad until Chad gave him the copy of his room key. Then Carlos canceled Chad’s print job, pulled the object from the tray, and handed it to Jay.

  “What is it?” Jay asked Chad.

  “A Chad action figure,” said Chad. “Minus the head,” he added.

  “Sounds like an improvement,” mumbled Carlos. He moved around the printer and quickly programmed it to make the sparkling silver wand from a photo on his phone.

  As the wand began to appear, Chad peered at it curiously. “Why are you making Fairy Godmother’s wand?” he asked.

  Carlos looked at Jay. “Umm…why are we making the wand?”

  “Ben’s been captured!” said Dude.

  “What?” shouted Chad. He did a double take. “Dude can talk?”

  Carlos looked at Dude. “I was stalling,” Carlos said from the side of his mouth.

  Dude wagged his tail. “I thought you forgot,” he said.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Jay said to Chad. “Ben’s life depends on it.”

  Little did they know that outside their dorm room, Lonnie, who had dropped by to ask Jane about her Cotillion dress, had heard the whole thing. She gasped and sprinted down the hall.

  Chad furrowed his brow. “If something were to happen to him…” He smiled at the boys. “You know…what I’m saying….” He waggled his eyebrows.

  “Something bad, I get it,” said Carlos, rolling his eyes.

  “God forbid,” said Chad, feigning concern. “Who do you think might be next in line to be king?”

  Jay looked at Carlos. “Is it me, or is that in really poor taste?”

  As Chad left their room, Jay made sure to slam the door behind him. Carlos quickly punched some numbers into the printer, and the machine whirred to life.

  Evie is a wizard at chemistry.

  These smoke bombs are almost done!

  Kids, don’t try this at home.

  Night fell on the Isle, and Mal and Evie had transformed the salon into a laboratory.

  They wore plastic gloves and stood beside the dye-streaked bathtub and percolating glass vials. Evie mixed vibrant powders as Mal funneled them into the shower caps, which she tied off. Dizzy sat at her table, crafting her fashion accessory.

  Evie picked up Dizzy’s headband and held it over her head. “M, how amazing would this look with my shredded tee and heart purse?”

  “Very amazing,” said Mal sincerely.

>   “Right?” asked Evie.

  “Yeah,” said Mal.

  “Take it,” Dizzy told Evie, standing. “Take a bunch!”

  “Dizzy!” squealed Evie, overjoyed at her generosity.

  Dizzy grabbed a handful of barrettes, headbands, and wraps from her table and raced to Evie, who held open her red purse.

  “Thank you,” said Evie.

  “It would make me so happy to know you were wearing something of mine in Auradon,” said Dizzy. “Almost like me being there myself.”

  Evie pulled Dizzy in for a hug and sighed. “I wish I could take you with me.”

  “At least one of us had her dream come true, right?” said Dizzy with a smile.

  Mal dropped the last of the shower-cap smoke bombs into her backpack, right alongside her trusty old spell book. “E, we gotta go.”

  Evie and Dizzy looked at each other again; then Dizzy bowed and skipped back to her table. Evie could barely take her eyes off Dizzy. Evie and Mal headed to the door with Mal’s backpack full of smoke bombs and then turned back to look at Dizzy.

  They watched Dizzy open Evie’s sketchbook and lovingly flip through it.

  “She’ll be okay,” Mal assured Evie.

  Evie nodded. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “But she could be so much more.”

  “Let’s go,” said Mal, reaching out.

  “Okay,” said Evie, taking Mal’s hand.

  They ducked through the plastic panels and out the front doors of the salon.

  Mal and Evie made their way through the decrepit alleys of their childhood.

  Her arm linked with Mal’s, Evie smiled at her friend as they walked down a dark lane. “Do you remember coming here while our moms fought over the best way to poison a princess?”

  “Yeah! Apple or spindle? That one was epic. That went on for actual days.” Mal chuckled.

  “Like it mattered, right?” said Evie. “They were both undone by True Love’s Kiss.”

  “Works every time,” said Evie and Mal in unison, breaking into laughter.

  They slowed in front of the entrance to the bridge hideout.

  “I really thought that’s what you and Ben had,” Evie said. She looked at Mal. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Mal’s smile vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “I’m not coming back, Evie.”

  Evie looked long and hard at Mal and unhooked her arm to face her.

  “I can’t,” said Mal. “I really tried to tell you.”

  Evie sighed and leaned against a support beam.

  “I…just…I don’t know,” said Mal. “I saw your face and how it lit up and how incredibly happy you were that first day that we went into our rooms, and I couldn’t—I could not spoil that for you.” Mal remembered when she and Evie had first entered their dorm room at Auradon Prep. At the sight of the room, dappled in sunlight, with the flowery curtains fluttering gently in the fresh breeze, Evie had squealed with delight as she took in their new home. But Evie had tried to hide her excitement to match Mal’s disgust, and the two of them together had closed the frilly pink curtains and plunged the dorm into darkness. Mal knew that if Evie and she were to follow their hearts, what Evie wanted was light, while what Mal wanted was…

  Evie sighed. “Well, if you’re staying here, then I’m staying with you.”

  “No,” said Mal, wincing. “Evie—you are an Auradon girl. And I am, and will always be, the girl from the Isle.” Mal picked up a rock, chucked it at the sign, and gestured for Evie to follow her up into the hideout. They ducked under the gate.

  Evie and Mal climbed the flights of steps. Evie stopped on a landing and looked out over the Isle. Mal stood beside her at the railing. They looked at each other, taking a moment to accept that in the end, they belonged in different worlds. Each girl knew in her heart that they’d always still be with each other in spirit when the day finally came for them to part ways. They’d know then that they’d meet again.

  Even if it was in the space between.

  Carlos and Jay had fallen asleep waiting for the 3-D printer to produce the wand.

  They sat side by side in chairs, and Carlos’s head rested on Jay’s. Jay lifted his head, smacked Carlos, calling out his name, and stood up from his chair.

  “Huh? What?” Carlos jerked awake, saw the wand, and bolted up.

  It looked exactly like Fairy Godmother’s wand. It sparkled as if it were full of all the power of the real thing.

  Carlos lifted it up. “Not bad,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Jay said with a nod. He took the fake wand and turned to Carlos.

  “Let’s go,” they said in unison, moving to the door.

  Dude bolted up from his doggy bed on Carlos’s bed.

  Carlos turned to him. “No, Dude. You stay,” he said. “I’m serious. Stay. I love you, buddy. We’ll be back before you know it!” He followed Jay out of the dorm.

  They ran down the hall and exited into the night.

  As soon as they cleared the front steps of the building, they bumped into Doug.

  Jay hid the replica wand behind his back.

  “Hey! Have you seen Evie?” Doug asked them.

  Jay and Carlos exchanged a long look.

  “She…went camping,” lied Carlos.

  Jay nodded.

  “Evie ‘I Want to Live in a Castle’? Sleeping on the ground with no place to plug in a hair dryer?” Doug narrowed his eyes at Carlos, then analyzed Jay’s poker face.

  Jay and Carlos burst into laughter, shrugging.

  “You know how spontaneous she is,” Carlos told Doug, making light of Doug’s concern. He laughed again, and he and Jay backed away from Doug. They had taken only a few steps when Lonnie stepped out from behind a stone column. She wore her R.O.A.R. uniform and carried a quiver of swords over her shoulder.

  “I’m coming with you guys,” she said confidently.

  “What? We don’t need to have swords at the…Waffle Hut,” Jay fibbed.

  Lonnie raised her eyebrows. “You guys are going to the Isle to rescue Ben, and it’s either you take me or…I’m going to have to tell Fairy Godmother.”

  Jay and Carlos glanced at each other and then gulped. After realizing they had no choice, they slowly nodded.

  Lonnie giggled and threw an arm around each of their necks, beaming her hundred-watt grin. “This is going to be great!” she said as the trio went on their way.

  If only Lonnie knew what they were in for…

  What is it about the clock striking twelve and magic wands?

  We need to hurry and save Ben—before we ALL walk the plank!

  It seemed to be just another bleak windy day at Pirate’s Cove.

  The wharf bustled with patchy pirates, sullied scalawags, and mumbling merchants. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. But despite appearances, that day was different. For at the bottom of the decaying multilevel pier, there was a captive inside the old pirate ship with dark octopus insignia on the sails and young pirates patrolling the deck. It was none other than Ben, who had been tied with rope to the mainmast.

  Harry leaped onto the main deck and landed in front of Ben. He put his face close to Ben’s. “Coochy coochy coooo,” he teased, grazing Ben’s chin with the curve of his sharp hook. Harry laughed. “How’s it feel to be king now, eh?”

  Uma strolled up and pushed Harry away from Ben. “Ugh, give it a rest, Harry. We don’t want damaged goods.” She sat on a trunk in front of Ben and watched him.

  “You said I could hook him,” Harry snarled at Uma. He hung by an arm from salt-encrusted rigging ropes like a monkey, pointing his hook menacingly at Ben’s neck.

  “I said at noon,” Uma corrected him.

  Harry jumped down and stepped beside Ben, pressing his face close to Ben’s again and dangling Captain Hook’s silver clock by his cheek. “Twenty minutes to go,” he said.

  “It says eleven-thirty,” said Ben.

  Harry leered at Ben with his light eyes bulging.

  “You better hope your girlfrien
d comes through,” said Uma.

  “She’s not my girlfriend anymore,” Ben added.

  “Hmmm.” Uma turned to Harry. “Harry, leave us alone.”

  Harry checked his father’s clock and walked up to Ben. “Nineteen minutes to go,” he said. He slid the watch over Ben’s shoulder threateningly, then twirled it on its silver chain as he backed away, leaving Ben and Uma alone.

  “I get that you don’t deserve this—” Ben started.

  Uma cackled. “This? This island is a prison, thanks to your father!” shouted Uma. “And don’t pretend to look out for me, because no one’s looking out for me. It’s just me.”

  “This isn’t your mother’s plan?” asked Ben. “Isn’t that her necklace?” He nodded, indicating the gold shell hanging from Uma’s neck on a chain.

  Uma let out a laugh and shook her head. “She doesn’t care about me, either. Well, not unless she needs someone for the night shift.”

  “Ouch,” said Ben.

  “I don’t need your pity!” yelled Uma.

  “No, you certainly don’t. You’re very resourceful. I don’t see you tied up.”

  Uma stood up and stepped in front of Ben. She crossed her arms. “So, let’s trash-talk Mal,” she said with a devilish grin.

  “I’d rather talk about you,” Ben said kindly.

  Uma laughed. “Oh, funny and a gentleman. I really hope I don’t have to feed you to the fishes.”

  “You don’t,” said Ben. “Set me free and we’ll go back together.”

  “Oh, so now I get an invite?” Uma howled. “Gee, I wonder why.” She brought her face inches from Ben’s. “You know, when you brought Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay to Auradon…that’s as mad as I’ve ever been in my life. And believe me, I’ve been plenty mad.” She tapped Ben’s cheek a few times and turned away from him. She folded her arms across her chest once again.

  “I never thought that I could have hurt the people that weren’t picked,” said Ben, looking at the back of Uma’s pirate hat.

  She whipped around and unfolded her arms. She was all ears.

  “My plan was to start with four kids and then bring more people over, but I—but I guess I was busy being king,” said Ben as he looked at Uma. “That sounds lame. I’m so sorry.”