Carlos hesitantly pushes the bathroom door open a crack, glancing back towards the hall to make sure no one's watching. The last thing he needs is to be caught sneaking into the girls' bathroom and labeled a creep.
"Uh, hello? Evie," he calls, trying to peer through the crack between the door and the frame to see inside. "Eves, you in there?"
"Go away Carlos," comes the girl's muffled response.
Carlos throws one last glance to the hallway behind him and pushes the door the rest of the way open so he can step inside. "I'm coming in! Everybody hear that? Boy entering the girls' bathroom! Boy in the girl's bathroom!"
"There's no one else in here," Evie says between sniffles.
Carlos exhales in relief, "Oh thank gods."
Evie stands at the mirror wiping furiously at the stains on her dress with a blue handkerchief, her reflection distorted by the dirt and scratches on the glass. She looks up to check the status of her mascara and catches Carlo's eyes watching her in the mirror.
"You really didn't know what she was up to?" Evie asks sadly. She folds the handkerchief and dabs at her teary eyes, careful not to further ruin her mascara.
"No! Evie, I swear! I wouldn't do that to you!" Carlos assures her with a frantic shake of his head.
Evie turns the sink on to soak the cloth again and takes another go at her tarnished dress. She scrubs the same spot for thirty seconds or so before tossing the handkerchief on the sink with a grunt and shaking her head.
"Ugh! This is going to stain! My mother's going to kill me!"
Carlos's eyes widen as he swallows a gulp; statements like that can't just be chalked up to teenaged hyperbole on the isle.
"Maybe we can get it out," he offers lamely. He moves towards her in hopes of helping, seemingly snapping out of his frozen state.
"Not without soap or warm water," Evie huffs. "Why do these bathrooms even have soap dispensers? They're always empty."
Carlos flounders for words he can say to appease his distraught friend but comes up empty-handed.
"Just forget it," Evie sighs. "It's a lost cause."
Evie bows her head in defeat, furtively wiping away the fresh tears from her eyes as she continues to sniffle.
"Eves."
Carlos feels like a total failure as a friend. He can't help Evie—not with her mother, not with Mal, not with Gaston, not even with her dress—and he has no idea what to say to make her feel better. The air between them grows tense as Carlos gapes forlornly at his friend through the heavy silence.
"Gosh, I can't stand that girl!" Evie cries suddenly, jerking her head upwards and startling Carlos.
"The feeling seems to be mutual," Carlos quips. "All this over a birthday party?"
"Ten years and I'm still being punished for something that happened when we were six years old! Six, Carlos! My whole life has been destroyed over some stupid birthday party!" Evie cries as she starts to pace the bathroom. "And it's not like I had any control over the guest list! I was six! Doesn't Mal realize no one regrets not inviting her to that stupid party more than I do?" she asks with a sharp intake of breath before pitching her head back and closing her eyes. "Like I wouldn't give everything I have just to go back and somehow make my mother invite Mal! I don't care how pissed my mom would have been, I'd gladly suffer the consequences if it meant undoing the last ten years of my life!"
Evie finishes her rant with her eyes wild and her chest heaving with shortened breaths.
Carlos doesn't really have anything to say to all that, and he doesn't think Evie really needs to hear anything at the moment. She said all she needed to and he listened.
"You wanna skip the rest of the day and go throw stones off the docks?" he suggests instead.
Evie laughs, it's a teary begrudging slip of a laugh but it's genuine and it makes Carlos smile wide and feel like for once he might have gotten something right.
"Sure," Evie answers with an easy shrug. "Let me just grab my jacket from my locket. I can't be seen in public with soup stains on my dress."
Evie doesn't care who sees them or what they might think, she hooks her arm through Carlos's and walks through the halls with her shoulder against his. Carlos doesn't pull away or remind her of the unspoken rules of the Isle and simply starts talking loudly and animatedly. Evie suspects he's trying to distract her and she appreciates the effort. He's telling her about the time he dared Jay to eat a maggot-infested apple out of the dumpster behind the school and while she's absolutely repulsed by the thought, she finds Carlos's excited story-telling endearing and can't help but draw him closer in an attempt to block out all the noise in her head.
"…he'll swear he didn't but he totally puked!"
Evie stops abruptly a few feet from her locker, her face falling in shock as a quiet gasp slips from her lips.
"What is it?" Carlos asks as he's forced to come to a stop as well. He unwraps his arm from Evie's so that he can turn slightly and search her face for any trace of what could be wrong. He does a quick scan of her body as if he's looking for sudden injuries before returning his eyes to her face. Evie's expression is a familiar mix of shock and hurt and Carlos follows her line of sight till he's staring at what it is that's caught her eye.
"What the hell! Who did this?" Carlos demands, angrily looking around at the faces of the students who have stopped to point and snicker at Evie's expense.
There, splashed across Evie's newly installed locker door is the word "slut" written in bold green paint for all to see.
"We both know who did it," Evie says quietly.
Carlos shakes his head. "No, Mal wouldn't—" he trails off, knowing better. "Shit, Evie, I'm sorry."
Evie's eyes linger on the painted slur that mars her locker door, the letters blurring together in a mocking mess of green as tears sting at soft brown eyes.
"Why would she…does she—you didn't tell—" she stammers.
"No! Of course not!" Carlos promises. "She doesn't mean anything by it. You know how Mal is. She's just trying to get a rise out of you."
Evie goes quiet, too despondent to speak. She feels as if she's just had the air knocked out of her—all because of some stupid 4-letter word Mal decided to scrawl on her locker.
Recognizing that Evie doesn't have the mental wherewithal to make a move, Carlos strides up to the locker and quickly enters Evie's lock combination. Fortunately, she had shared it with him the other day when he asked to leave some of his belongings in her locker for the day and Carlos has a memory like a steel trap. In fact, his half-assembled radio still sits at the bottom of the locker but he's not worried about that now. Once he gets the door open, Carlos pulls Evie's blue leather jacket from its hook and closes the door, spinning the dial on the lock quickly and tugging on the door once to make sure it's secured.
"Let's get out of here," he says, handing Evie the jacket and physically turning her away from the locker by her shoulders.
Evie turns slowly only to met by the jeering faces of her fellow students.
"Hey babe, can I have a kiss?" a boy grins with an exaggerated wink as he passes the pair.
"Fuck off, Anthony!" Carlos calls back.
Evie feels her cheeks grow hot and her heart race. There are girls laughing at her from across the hall; boys she's never seen before making crude gestures in her direction; not-so hushed conversations about her and her possible exploits being held mere feet from where she and Carlos stand. She feels exposed and vulnerable and wishes she could just disappear.
Carlos attempts to lead her away but her feet won't cooperate so he tugs a little more forcefully until she's stumbling forward and nearly crashing into a tall blonde boy who has stopped to leer.
"Come on, sweetheart, you and me… boys bathroom in ten? You know you want this." The stranger punctuates his comment with a vulgar grab of his crotch that spurs on the laughter of the students gathered behind him.
Carlos shoves hard at the boy's chest, sending him flying into the growing crowd. "Get lost, asshole!"
"Evie, don't worry, we'll clean it off," Carlos tells her, his face flushed from trying to defend her.
It takes Evie a second to register what Carlos is saying to her but when she breaks herself from her daze, she just shakes her head. "I'm sorry, Carlos, I think I'm just gonna go home. I'll see you Monday, okay?"
And with that, Evie slips away from Carlos, who can only turn back to the spray-painted locker with a sigh.
Carlos has rounded up every cleaning solution he could find on school grounds, even going as far as to mix one of his own in the science lab, but nothing seems to be working. He scrubs furiously at the paint on Evie's locker but the bright green letters have hardly faded from his efforts. He's spent the better part of the afternoon trying to wipe Mal's cruel tag from Evie's locker and all he has to show for it are sore arms.
"Hey, Carlos! If you're in the business of cleaning lockers, mine can use a good scrub."
Carlos tosses his rag down and spins around to find Mal smirking proudly at her handiwork.
"The green was an inspired choice, don't you think? Really pops against the dinginess of the locker," Mal marvels, cocking her hip to the side and tapping her index finger against her chin.
"What the hell, Mal!" Carlos demands angrily. "You're taking this thing with Evie way too far!"
Mal just rolls her eyes. "Too far? It's a harmless joke. If Evie can't take a little name-calling then maybe she should run back home to her mommy where she belongs."
Carlos points an accusatory finger at the girl, his forehead pinched in anger. "Labeling someone a slut in this place is not a joke and you know it!"
The Isle had its own rules about sex and promiscuity. Indiscriminate hook-ups were very much the norm and most people indulged in such physical pleasures, but earning a reputation for being easy, whether warranted or not, made you an easy target for the seedier villains on the Isle.
"Oh relax, everyone knows princess is a total prude. That's what makes it so funny," Mal says dismissively.
Carlos reels from Mal's surprising turnaround. Mal has been relentless in her insults and insinuations about Evie's supposed robust sex-life and now she's dismissing it all as a joke and calling her a prude?
"Was your little soup shower not enough?"
Mal flashes her teeth in a grin, her eyes sparkling with a wicked gleam. "Nope. In fact, consider that my opening salvo in a long production of pain and misery I plan to inflict on little miss perfect princess."
Carlos begins to gather up his cleaning supplies, shaking his head at Mal's spitefulness.
"The party was 10 years ago, get the hell over it," Carlos spits scornfully. "Or stay the hell away from me." He levels Mal with a glare, purposely knocking his shoulder into hers as he passes.
Mal is on his heels quick, pushing ahead of him and whirling around in a rage to growl in his face. "You're going to take that spoiled selfish princess's side over mine?!"
"Evie is not the selfish one! She looks out for me, she helps me with my mom, with my chores, she makes me clothes—-"
"And I don't look out for you?" Mal demands.
Carlos takes in Mal's expression, a mix of hurt and outrage, and exhales. He can't ignore that Mal has had his back over the years. There's a reason why he decided to be a part of her crew. Mal may lack Evie's gentle touch but she has her own way of getting things done and protecting her people.
Mal had chosen Carlos as one of "her people" a few years ago after he had inadvertently revealed his affinity for building cool shit from scrap parts and been deemed useful by the daughter of Maleficent. And Carlos won't deny that his life has been better for it— at least at school and on the streets. Carlos knows his association with Mal has kept him from being messed with on multiple occasions, and if some poor unsuspecting fool missed the memo and decided to test him, Mal was always sure to make them pay. Carlos isn't stupid nor callous enough to discredit Mal's role in his life, but he's not going to abandon Evie either, not when she needs him most.
"Find me when you're done being a raging bitch," Carlos sighs before walking off.
