Isle of the Lost (4 page)

Evie checked the hallway mirror one last time and adjusted her blue cape around her shoulders, the back of it embroidered with a crown in the middle. Her poison-heart necklace winked red in between the soft blue folds. Her raggedy black skirt with the splashes of red, white, and blue paint went well with her forest-print-like black-and-white leggings.

“Your hair!” Evil Queen said with despair, tucking a loose strand back into her daughter’s neat V-braid, which swept her hair off her forehead. “Okay,
now
you’re ready.”

“Thanks, Mom,” said Evie, whose only goal was to survive the day. “Are you sure it’s safe to go to school?”

“No one can keep a grudge for ten years! Also, we’re all out of wrinkle cream! Pick up some from the bazaar—I don’t trust the vultures to send the right one.”

Evie nodded and hoped her mother was right.

But when she stepped out of their castle gates, she froze. Maleficent’s curse echoed in her ears. But nothing happened, and she kept going. Maybe, for once, the wicked old fairy had forgotten about it.

When Evie arrived at school that morning, everyone stared at her as she walked through the halls. She felt a bit self-conscious, and wondered if she’d ever fit in. She was supposed to check in with Dr. F, the headmaster, when she arrived. But where were the administrative chambers? Evie wondered, whirling around in a full circle.

“May I help you?” a handsome if somewhat hairy and very large boy asked when he saw her.

“Oh—I’m looking for the headmaster—?”

“Follow me,” he said with a broad grin. “Gaston, at your service…and this is my brother, Gaston.” He pointed to his identical twin, who gave her the same beaming, arrogant smile.

“Thank you, uh, Gastons.” Evie replied. The boys led her down the hall to the administrative-tombs.

“Dr. F, you got a visitor,” Gaston said reaching for the door handle.

“I want to open it,” his brother said, elbowing him away. But the first Gaston punched him without even a backward look. “After you, princess,” he offered grandly, as his brother slithered to the floor, holding his jaw.

“Um, thanks, I think,” said Evie.

Dr. Facilier looked up and gave the three students a jack-o’-lantern smile. “Yes? Oh, Evie, welcome to Dragon Hall. It’s a delight to see you again, child. It’s been too long. Ten years, is it? How is your lovely mother?”

“She’s well, thanks.” Evie nodded politely but hurried to get to the point. “Dr. Facilier, I just wanted to see if I could swap my Wickedness class for Advanced Vanities that meets at the same time?” she asked.

The shadowy man frowned. Evie batted her eyelashes. “It would mean so much to me. By the way—” She pointed to his bolo tie, with its unfortunate silver chain. “That is so cool!” she said, thinking exactly the opposite.

“Oh, this? I picked it up in the Bayou d’Orleans right before I was brought here.” He sighed, and his frown softened into a real smile. “I suppose Vanities is a better fit for your overall schedule. Consider it done.”

“Good, I’m in that class,” the Gastons chorused. “On Tuesdays it’s right after lunch.”

“Lunch!” Evie slapped her forehead.

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot to bring mine!” In all the excitement and anxiety about finally leaving the castle, she’d left her basket at home.

“Don’t worry,” the twins replied. “You can share ours!” they added, holding up two huge baskets of food. A giant block of some particularly smelly cheese poked out, along with two loaves of brown bread speckled with mold and several thick slices of liverwurst.

Evie was touched they had offered to share, even though they looked like they could eat a horse and a half between them, with or without the mold.

They led her down the winding hallway. The stone walls were covered in the same pea-green moss as outside, and seemed to be leaking some sort of brown liquid all over the dusty cement floor. Evie felt something furry circling her ankles and found a fat black cat with a smug grin looking up at her.

“Hi, kitty,” she cooed, leaning down to pet it.

“That’s Lucifer,” said one of the Gastons. “Our mascot.”

Several yelps from first-year students could be heard from inside the rusty lockers that haphazardly lined the corridor. With only a few lightbulbs flickering overhead, Evie nearly walked into a giant cobweb woven over a heavy steel door. A spider the size of a witch’s cauldron sat in its center.
Cool.

“Where does that lead to?” she asked.

“Oh that? That’s the door to the Athenaeum of Evil,” the other Gaston said.

“Come again?”

“The Library of Forbidden Secrets,” he explained. “Nobody is allowed down there, and only Dr. F has the key.”

“What kind of secrets?” asked Evie, intrigued.

“Forbidden ones, I guess?” Gaston shrugged. “Who cares? It’s a library. Sounds pretty boring to me.”

Finally, they arrived at the classroom’s arched wooden door. Evie stepped inside and made her way to the nearest open desk, smiling at those who came to gather curiously around her. Everyone was looking at her with such awe and admiration, she seemed to be making waves.

The desk she’d chosen had a remarkably large cauldron and a great view of the professor’s lectern. She took a seat, and there was a gasp in the crowd. Wow, these kids sure were easy to please.

Evie was feeling pretty good about her first day until she heard the sound of a throat clearing.

When she looked up, there was a pretty, purple-haired girl standing in front of her cauldron, staring at her with unmistakable venom. Her mother’s “mirror” would have had a few choice words about this one, that’s for sure. Evie felt a cold dread as the memory of a certain infamous party came flooding back. Maybe if she played dumb and flattered her, the girl wouldn’t remember what had happened ten years ago. It was worth a shot.

“I’m Evie. What’s your name?” Evie asked innocently, although she knew exactly who was standing in front of her. “And by the way, that jacket is amazing. It looks great on you—I love all the patchwork leathers on it.”

“Girl, that’s her cauldron. You should bounce,” a student Evie would find out later was named Yzla whispered loudly.

“Oh, this is yours…?” Evie asked the purple-haired girl.

The purple-haired girl nodded.

“I had no idea this was your desk, I’m so sorry! But it has such a great view of the lectern,” Evie said with her trademarked bright smile, so blinding, it should have come with sunglasses. Evie finally realized why the students had been staring at her. They had been watching a train wreck about to happen.

“Yes, it does,” the purple-haired girl replied, her voice soft and menacing. “And if you don’t move your blue-haired caboose out of it, you’ll get some kind of view, all right.” She snarled, brusquely brushing past Evie and noisily plonking her backpack down into the middle of the cauldron.

Evie got the message, grabbed her things, and found an empty cauldron in the back of the classroom, behind a column where she couldn’t see the blackboard.

“Is that who I think it is?” she asked the small boy seated next to her, whose hair was black at the roots but white at the tips. Actually, everything he wore was black and white with a splash of red: a fur-collared jacket with one black and one white side and red leather sleeves, a black button-down shirt with streaks of white, and long shorts with one white and one black-and-white leg. It was a pretty cool look. For a bloody skunk.

“If you mean Mal, you’re right, and I would stay out of her way if I were you,” he said.

“Mal…” Evie breathed, her voice trembling nervously.

“Yeah. Her mom’s the Big Bad around here. You know—” He made horn signs with his hands on either side of his head. You didn’t need to have lived on the Isle for long to know exactly whom he was talking about. Nobody dared speak her name, not unless absolutely necessary.

Evie gulped. Her first day, and she’d already made the worst enemy in school. It was Maleficent who had banished Evie and her mother ten years ago and caused Evie to grow up alone in a faraway castle. Her own mother might be called Evil Queen, but everyone on the Isle of the Lost knew that Maleficent wore the crown in these parts. From the looks of it, her daughter did the same in the dungeons of Dragon Hall.

Magic Mirror on the wall, who’s the stupidest of them all?

C
arlos De Vil looked up from the contraption he was assembling and shot the new girl a shy smile. “It’ll be okay. Mal just likes to be left alone,” he said. “She’s not as tough as she seems. She only talks a big game.”

“She does? What about you?” the blue-haired princess asked.

“I don’t have a game. Unless you consider getting beat up and pushed around a game, which in a way I guess it is. But really it’s not that entertaining, unless you happen to be the one doing the beating and the pushing.”

Carlos turned his attention back to the mess of wires in front of him. He was smaller and younger than the rest of the class, but smarter than most of them. He was an AP student: Advanced Penchant (for Evil). It was only right, since the infamous Cruella was his mother. His mother was so notorious, she had her own song. He hummed it under his breath sometimes. (What—it was catchy!) Sometimes he would do it just to send her into hysterics. Then again, that wasn’t so difficult. Cruella’s witch doctors believed she was sustained by pure metabolic fury. Privately, Carlos thought of it as her Rage Diet: no carbs, just barbs—no hunger, just anger—no ice cream, just high screams.

His thoughts were interrupted by his friendly new seatmate. “I’m Evie. What’s your name?” she asked.

“Hi, Evie, I’m Carlos De Vil,” he said. “We met once before, at your birthday party.” He’d recognized her the minute she walked in. She looked exactly the same, just taller.

“Oh. Sorry. I don’t remember much about the party. Except how it ended.”

Carlos nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, I’m also your neighbor. I live just down the street in Hell Hall.”

“You do?” Evie’s eyes went wide. “But I thought no one lived there but that crazy old lady and her—”

“Don’t say it!” he blurted.

“Dog?” she said at the same time.

Carlos shuddered. “We—we don’t have dogs,” he said weakly, feeling his forehead begin to perspire at the very thought. His mother had told him dogs were vicious pack animals, the most dangerous and terrifying animals on earth.

“But she’s always calling someone her pet. I thought you were a d—”

“I told you, don’t say it!” warned Carlos. “That word is a trigger for me.”

Evie put up her hands. “Okay, okay.” Then she winked. “But how do you fit in the crate at night?”

Carlos only glared.

Their first class was Selfishness 101, or “Selfies” for short, taught by Mother Gothel, who took way too many self-portraits with an old Polaroid camera.

The photos were littered around the classroom: Mother Gothel making a duck face, sleepy-eyed Mother Gothel in an “I woke up like this” pic, Mother Gothel in “cobra” pose. But Mother Gothel herself was nowhere to be found. She was always at least a half hour late, and when she finally arrived, she was irritated to find the students there before her. “Have I taught you nothing about being fashionably, annoyingly late to every engagement?” she asked, letting out an exasperated sigh and collapsing dramatically into her chair, one hand fanned over her eyes.

For the next half hour or so they studied Portraits of Evil, comparing the likenesses of the most famous villains in history, many of whom lived on the island and some of whom were their parents. Today’s class just happened to feature Cruella De Vil.

Of course.

Carlos knew the portrait by heart, whether or not he was looking at it.

His mother. There she was in all her finery, with her tall hair and her long red car, her eyes wild and her furs flying in the wind.

He shuddered again and went back to tinkering with his machine.

Class ended, and students began to file out of the classroom. Evie asked Carlos what his next subject was, and looked happy to discover they both had Lady Tremaine for Evil Schemes. “That’s another advanced class—you must have a really high EQ,” he told her. Only those who boasted off-the-charts evil quotients were allowed to take it. “It’s this way,” he said, motioning up the stairs.

But before they could get too far, a cold voice cut through the chatter. “Why, if it isn’t Carlos De Vil,” it said behind them.

Carlos would know that voice anywhere. It was the second-most terrifying on the island. When he turned, Mal was standing right behind him, next to Jay. Carlos automatically checked his pockets to make sure nothing had disappeared.

“Hey, Mal,” he said, trying to appear nonchalant. Mal never spoke to anyone except to scare them or to complain that they were in her way. “What’s up?”

“Your mom’s away at the Spa this weekend, isn’t she?” Mal asked, elbowing Jay, who snickered.

Carlos nodded. The Spa—really just a bit of warmish steam escaping from the crags of rock in the ruined basement of what had once been a proper building—was Cruella’s one bit of comfort, her one reminder of her luxurious past.

How far the De Vils had fallen, just like the rest of the Isle.