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“Which one?” she wondered aloud, and then she saw it through the highest branches.
One golden apple among all of the red ones.
She clambered up and plucked it from its branch. It was gorgeous, shiny, and perfect. Evie was mesmerized by its beauty. It looked absolutely delicious, and it was practically asking to be eaten, what could it hurt, what if she just took one tiny…
“What are you doing!” Jay yelled from below.
Too late; Evie had already taken a bite of the apple. It was delicious, and for a moment she didn’t regret it. Then her eyelids drooped as she yawned.
“Evie! What’s happening?” asked Mal.
“I feel…sleepy, like the dwarf.” Evie laughed as she sat on the branch she’d been standing on, her head beginning to fog from the poison.
“Don’t! Stay awake!” cried Mal.
“I’ll try!” said Evie. She stood back up, fighting against the urge to sleep. She’d accidentally gobbled a poisoned apple once or twice when she was a kid, so maybe she had some kind of resistance to them. Her mother was always leaving them everywhere.
“I should have known better,” she grumbled, already growing weaker and trying to fight off the sleep that was threatening to overwhelm her. “I’m just going to take a little nap, okay?” she called down.
“No!” Mal cried. “No naps! No resting. Just keep moving!”
“Moving,” said Evie. “Got to keep moving….” She struggled to keep her eyes open, scrunching her face into odd contortions, holding one lid open with a finger, but it fluttered shut. Evie’s knees were wobbling and all she could think of was how nice it would be to lay down her head and take a brief—
“No!” Mal cried, again. Or maybe it was the third time. Evie hadn’t realized that she had sat down once more. I’m in trouble, she thought. Big trouble.
“Get up!” called Carlos.
Jay was getting ready to climb the tree himself, but when he placed his hands on the bark, a force pushed him away and he flew to the ground.
Only Evie could climb the tree. This was her talisman.
“It says here that only by mastering the Fruit of Venom can you counter its poison,” said Carlos, reading from the map. “Evie, don’t give in! Save yourself!”
Save myself, but from what? Evie thought, before everything went black and the poison overcame her.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a room not unlike her mother’s bedroom, on a podium in front of a Magic Mirror.
“Where am I?” she asked. “Where are my friends?”
She was alone. Then she realized—she was alone because they had abandoned her and she had no friends. Every insecure, jealous, and poisonous thought filled her mind.
She was standing before the legendary Magic Mirror, and it looked like it had before it was destroyed—whole and full of evil counsel.
“What’s this?” asked Evie.
She stared at the mirror. It showed her Mal and Maddy laughing at her, pointing and screeching, and mocking her.
Mal was never my friend, thought Evie. She was only pretending. The minute Mal returned to the island, she forgot about Evie.
The mirror showed another image: Mal, Jay, and Carlos leaving her alone at the Poisoned Lake. They had left the minute she’d climbed the tree. They were laughing at her, and they were going to leave her to that awful grunting creature. She was alone and she would always be alone.
Mal’s mother had exiled her and her mother to the Castle Across the Way. Evie had grown up with only spiderwebs for company. She’d never had friends until the three of them, but maybe she’d never had friends at all.
Maybe it was all a lie. No one liked her. Everyone was only pretending, and now that she knew the truth, she would destroy them all. She would make them hurt, she would make sure they never laughed like that again. She would show them what it meant to be alone, and abandoned, and friendless….
Friendless?
Yen Sid’s words echoed in her mind. Evie, remember that when you believe you are alone in the world, you are far from friendless.
