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“Yeah, I can feel it too.” Mal nodded, still moving forward along the path. “Do you guys?” She stopped and looked at them, shielding her eyes from the rain with one hand.
Carlos looked at her in surprise. “Feel what? This?” He held up his box, and it beeped in her face. Mal jumped back, startled, and Jay laughed.
“Whoops,” Carlos said. “See what I mean? The energy is surging.”
Mal looked embarrassed. “I don’t know for sure. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it almost feels like there’s some kind of magnet pulling me up the path.”
“That is so creepy,” Evie said, stopping to wipe sweat off her forehead with the edge of her cape. “Like, it’s your destiny, literally, calling.”
“Well,” said Carlos, “no, not really. If it were literally calling, it would be, you know, calling her.”
Jay laughed.
Evie glared at him. “Okay, fine. Literally pulling like a magnet, only not really, because it’s, you know, destiny. Are you happy now?”
“Literally?” Carlos raised an eyebrow.
Jay laughed again, which made Carlos feel good, though he couldn’t exactly explain why, not even to himself.
“Don’t you guys feel it?” Mal sounded nervous. Nobody said anything, and she sighed, turning back to the muddy path.
They’d only made it up past the next curving switchback in the path when Mal stumbled and fell, sending a slide of rock down the trail behind her.
“Who-ahh,” Mal yelped, her arms flailing. The dark stones were so slick with rain that she couldn’t right herself, only slipping on the rocks again.
Evie caught Mal before she tumbled headfirst down the stony path. Both girls flew backward into Jay, who almost toppled Carlos behind him.
“I got you,” said Evie, helping Mal to regain her balance.
“Yeah, and I got you,” Jay said.
“Which is great for everyone but me,” Carlos said, barely keeping one arm around his device as the other held Jay off him. “The human doorstop.”
“I am definitely in the wrong shoes for this,” Evie said, wincing at the sight of her own feet.
“We need flippers, not shoes. The rain has turned this whole trail into a mud river. Maybe we should all hold hands,” Jay suggested. “We’ll work better if we’re all together.”
“Did you really just say that?” Mal shook her head, sounding disgusted. “Why don’t we just sing songs to cheer each other up and then weave flowers out of the mud and move to Auradon, while we’re at it?”
“Come on, Mal.” Carlos tried not to smile. He knew that Mal, of all of them, had the hardest time with anything more beneficent than Maleficent.
“Do you have a better idea?” Jay looked embarrassed.
“If you wanted to hold my hand, you know, you could have just asked,” teased Evie, as she offered it to Jay, waggling her fingers.
“Well, now,” Jay winked. “You don’t say.”
Evie laughed. “Don’t worry, Jay, you’re cute—but thieves aren’t my style.”
“I wasn’t worried,” said Jay smoothly, grasping her hand in his firm grip. “I just don’t feel like taking a mud bath today.”
“From a physics perspective, it does make sense. If you want to talk about Newton’s second and third laws,” Carlos added, trying to sound reassuring. “You know, momentum and force, and all that.”
“What he said.” Jay nodded, holding out his hand to Mal.
Carlos watched him, wondering if Jay and Evie were flirting, and if that was why Mal seemed mad. No. Mal and Jay bickered like siblings. And Jay and Evie were just trying to cover up the fact that they were scared. Jay had told him earlier that he thought Evie was cute, all right, but he thought of her like he did Mal, which meant he didn’t think of her at all. Carlos thought that if the girls were had been their sisters, Mal would have been their annoying, grumpy sister while Evie would have been the manipulative, pretty one. And if Jay had been his brother, he’d be the kind who was either laughing at you or punching you when he wasn’t busy stealing your stuff.
The longer he thought about it, the more Carlos decided it wasn’t so bad to be an only child, after all.
