(Matilda's POV)

"Veruca? Uncle Nigel?"

"Cousin Maddie?"

"It's Matilda!" I groan.
"Anyway, what in the name of sanity happened to you?"

"I just wanted a squirrel!" Veruca yells.
"I wanted a squirrel, but Mr. Wonka said I couldn't, so I went to get one myself, but then they pushed me down this hole. Now I'm covered in garbage and about to be burnt alive!"

I stand there and watch them.

"What are you waiting for, Matilda?" Dani urges me.
"We need to save them!"

"I mean, do we have to?" I hesitate.
"Like, maybe we should save Uncle Nigel, but do we REALLY need to save Veruca?"

"Matilda! This is exactly what Wonka wants from you!" Sophie exclaims.
"He wants to kill your own cousin. He wants you to reject your own family."

"I mean, at this point, I don't know if I would call her family. She more like an annoying add-on, really, not really family, I would say. She's kinda….kinda like a neon light, you know? Really loud and annoying. Like, would it really be such a loss?"

"Do you WANT Wonka to claim you as his daughter?" Alfie asks.

Honestly, based on this scenario, I'm kind of at an impasse. I mean, I'd get to work with my greatest hero of all time AND I'd get rid of one annoying brat.

Why am I running from Wonka again?

"Matilda, this isn't you!" James exclaims.
"I know you would punch, kick, hit, maybe bite people, but I KNOW you would never want to kill someone."

Don't listen to him, a voice in my head whispers; Wonka's voice.
Let her burn. She made your life miserable. Don't you want to make her pay?

"Matilda, snap out of it!" Billie shouts.
"You're all glossy-eyed and creepy-looking. I don't like it. It's scawwy!"

It's just so easy to let her burn, purrs the voice.
It's just SOOOO easy. All you have to do, my dear, is stand there and watch and smile.

For a few moments, I do; I simply stare at them, transfixed, as I feel a smile creep up my face.

"Matilda!" Violet yells.
"What in Sam Hill are you doing? Go and save her!"

Let her die, let her die, chants the voice in my head.
Let her shrivel up and cry.
Let her burn into a crisp.
Chard and scar and burn and hiss
And then we'll live in total bliss.
I say let her die.

It repeats the chant and I find myself saying it in time with the voice. it just feels amazing. Finally after all the whining and the screaming and the boasting, I'll be able to make her pay for it all—

"Matilda, please help me!" I hear Veruca cry.
"Please! I don't want to die."

All it takes is the word "please," to snap me out of this. After a few moments, I start to look around for a way to help. Suddenly I spy a stack of chocolate bars. And they're not melting.

"C'mon!" I say to the group.

All of a sudden, without me even thinking about it, the chocolate bars begin to rise in the air. I see the tiny hands in my vision again.

"What the heck?" Veruca asks in a state of shock.

I begin to stack them one-by-one into a staircase. I dash up to the top and hold out my hand just as they're coming close.

Wait! the voice exclaims.
Matilda, this isn't what you want. Let her burn. We'll have one less bad nut in our new world, my dearest darling chocolate flower.

"Bug off, Wonka!" I spit as Veruca reaches out for my hand. We grasp on and, with some help, I pull her over the railing. Then when my Uncle Nigel comes by, I hold out my hand to him and pull him over.

"H-how did you do that?" Veruca asks in fear.
"With the-the chocolate bars?"

I shrug.

"I honestly don't know. I haven't used it, at least effectively, since the party."

"Aha! So it was you who wrecked Taylor's dress!"

"Yeah, yeah. But now's not the time to talk about that. We need to turn my friends back to human and then get out of here."

"What are you even doing here anyway?"

"Vonka vants to make her his daughter," Augustus says.
"Something about creativity und IQ level."

"What? I want to be his daughter!" Veruca whines.

Out of nowhere, my hand reaches up and slaps her face.

"Do you wanna know what that has involved so far?" I ask infuriated.
"Wonka tried to hypnotize me multiple times. I got knocked out. I was in a conversion lab. They put IVs into me, and the IVs put chemicals into me. They put me into a simulation. Not to mention, even though he is giving the tour as we speak, he is still able to taunt me and respond to me. Now tell me, Veruca. Do you really want to be his daughter?"

And for the first time ever, I think, Veruca backs down.

"Well," she says sheepishly.
"When you put it like that, no."

"Exactly. Now we're on our way down to a lab of some sorts to find an antidote that will turn my friends back to normal. Then we're gonna get the heck outta here."

"Wait. So your friends are….squirrels?"

"Yeah? Why?"

"I remember something; when I got dragged to the chute, I managed to catch a glimpse of some of the squirrels. They didn't look like normal squirrels. They sort of looked….human, in a way. They could be other transformed people. You think maybe…...we could help them out when we…..find the antidote?"

For a long moment, I am shocked. Like genuinely shocked. Veruca? Putting others first? That's not like Veruca at all. That's like the anti-Veruca.

"Who are you, and what have you done with my cousin?" I ask suspiciously.

"I'm serious," she tells me.
"I mean, if we're gonna get out of here, we might as well help someone else. Plus it'll be revenge towards Wonka for not letting me have a squirrel."

Okay, a bit of the Veruca I know is still in there, after all.

"Yeah," I answer in shock.
"Yeah, okay. We'll free them too."

"Well, I must say, my dear," Uncle Nigel says as he wipes the sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief.
"That's very sweet of you, in a way."

"Thank you, daddy," she beams gushingly.

I feel my stomach begin to churn.

"Euggh. Alright. That's enough of that," I tell them as I lead them down the chocolate bar staircase and to the door.
"We'd better hurry down to that lab if we're gonna get my friends back to normal."