Camilo had come to the conclusion that his sister's gift was definitely more of a curse.

Oh, sure, it had started out great. When the gifts got shuffled, Camilo suddenly found himself engulfed in a cacophony of sounds: Jungle sounds, village sounds, sounds of people talking, sounds of people breathing. It was overwhelming at first, and loud. Very, very loud. He didn't know if it was the magic or his natural ability to adapt quickly to most any situation, but the sounds soon receded into background noise. Their volume didn't diminish, but they became tolerable. And Camilo figured out fairly quickly that he could focus his hearing to bring one sound in particular to the foreground.

Which meant he was ready to have a little fun!

Abuela Alma had given strict instructions to lay low for the day, but Camilo had always been good at moving around town undetected. Even during the months spent rebuilding Casita, Camilo had found he could slip in and out of town unnoticed and unaided by his shapeshifting. And now he had the chance to pick up all the dirt Dolores had on everyone in town. When Alma dismissed the family, Camilo slipped out of the house while his parents were distracted looking for Antonio.

Getting into town was easy enough. But just being in town? That was harder. It was loud there. Camilo winced as the sounds that usually didn't bother him suddenly started to make his ears ache. He decided he would just have to adapt, and set his mind to focusing on some juicy gossip. He slipped into an alley and tried to aim one ear outward, the way Dolores did, with a hand cupped around said ear. And the conversations flooded in.

"Mami, we're out of coffee again!" "I'll pick some up in the market later, mijo." "Juan, are you free to help me bring in wood this morning? Your brother is having breakfast at the Madrigals." "Osvaldo Ortiz, how many times do I have to tell you to stop having candy for breakfast? It's your own fault your gut hurts so much! Stop your moaning and go to Julieta for some real food!" "Did you hear about Carmen and Sergio's date last week?" "Oh, yes, I heard it was just humiliating!" "Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last confession, and I..."

Camilo pulled back. He hadn't meant to focus on the church. Listening in on someone's confession was a line he knew full well he should not cross. He decided to go back to the story about the ill-fated date.

"Come on, where was it?" he muttered to himself as he tired to find that conversation again. But the voices he'd tuned in on were starting to blend together. And try as he might, his ear kept wandering back to the confessional.

"It was innocent enough at first..." "Juancho, honey, please use a clean mug." "We were just holding hands, is all..." "Ugh, the donkeys keep getting out! Maybe I should get Antonio this time." "She kissed me first, and I..." "MAMI, CECILIA TOOK MY FAVORITE HAT!"

Camilo winced and clapped his hands over his ears. Young Carmina wasn't known to be particularly loud, even when complaining about her sister, but Dolores' super hearing certainly had a way with amplifying anything close to a shout. Suddenly he understood why his sister actively avoided little Alejandra, the loudest child in town, and he wondered why he hadn't heard her yet.

"HI, CAMILO, WHY ARE YOU HIDING HERE?"

Speak of the devil, as they say, and he shall appear. In the form of a little girl giving a teenage boy the scare of his life. Camilo yelped and practically jumped out of his skin, tripping over a considerable number of boxes and bags stored in the alley in the process.

"Alejandra!" Camilo chided as he picked himself up. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

Alejandra giggled. "I thought spying was your sister's thing."

Camilo rubbed his finger in one ear, which had started ringing, and straightened his ruana. "Hey, I'm pretty good at the ol' espionage myself, you know. Still, you shouldn't sneak up on people like that."

"Sorry!" Alejandra yelled, and it was certainly a yell. "Hey, none of my friends are out to play with me yet! Do you wanna play?"

Camilo bit his lip. He was generally the town's go-to babysitter, and was a favorite with all the kids. They loved how he illustrated his stories with impressions of the characters therein. Alejandra was no doubt looking for just such a performance.

"Sorry, kid, not today," he said. "New rule in la Casa Madrigal: We can't use any of our powers on the third Wednesday of the month unless it's an emergency or we're Tía Julieta."

"It's Friday," Alejandra pointed out, a pout forming on her face.

"Oh, it is? I mean, yeah, that's...that's what I meant. No powers on the third Friday of the month or on Ash Wednesday. And also some other holidays. We have to be very pious, you know. Abuela's orders."

"So you can't do any shapeshifting today?" Alejandra's lower lip began to tremble, and she gave him her best doe eyes.

It pained Camilo to see that face, but there was literally nothing he could do. Just then, he winced at something completely unrelated and nearly gagged. The confession had thrust itself into the foreground of his hearing, and he did not want to hear what he just heard.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing!" Camilo said, plastering a grin on his face. "Look, I gotta go...do some other stuff. We'll play tomorrow, okay?" He started backing out of the alley and made a break for it. But Alejandra's voice easily caught up to him.

"I'LL REMIND YOU TOMORROW THAT YOU PROMISED!"

"Ahh!" Camilo winced again as the girl's shout set off a new round of ringing in his ears so loud that he could almost hear nothing else. He ducked out of sight again and rubbed his fingers in his ears, trying to stop the irritating tone. He sighed with relief when it began to die down, replaced by all of the other sounds of the village. He tried again to focus his hearing.

"Was that Camilo that just ran past?" "What's this? I've always given you a dozen eggs for three loaves of bread. That was our agreement." "Señora Guzmán should reconsider her efforts to get her youngest boy married into the Madrigals. Why, after all that..." "NO! BAD DOG! GORDO, GET BACK HERE WITH THAT LAMB CHOP!" "Go in peace, my son." "Anyway, Carmen has sworn off men for the time being."

Camilo groaned in frustration. He couldn't stay focused on one conversation for long enough to get anything good out of it. Who was saying they didn't think Mariano should join his family? Camilo couldn't find that conversation again, so he decided to try and listen for any mention of his family at all. He found one such conversation almost immediately.

"I mean, Camilo is a nice boy, and he really is good with kids."

Camilo stood up a little straighter as his ego was stroked. Suddenly it became easy to focus on this one conversation that seemed to involve a few people.

"But it seems to me he's a little too into pranks," said another person. "He thinks he has free rein to do whatever he pleases on Día de los Santos Inocentes, just because it's his birthday, but honestly, he takes it too far."

"It's his shapeshifting," came the reply. "It's given him quite the mischievous nature. I worry he's a bad influence on the children."

"Yes, but even when he's not shapeshifting, he's not doing much of anything at all. You saw how he was while setting up for his brother's party. His idea of helping was just standing around telling others they were doing a good job. His abuela had to make him get up and help. I know he can be a prankster, but when he's not shapeshifting, he's really just being lazy."

"You know Doña Alma doesn't want any of them overworking themselves ever since the magic came back," the third person defended.

"And a teenage boy is going to interpret that to his own liking. That Camilo is no exception. He's been less of a help recently and more of either a nuisance or a goldbrick."

Camilo slumped against the wall of a house. He heard but failed to register the rest of the conversation as the rest of the village came flooding back in.

"You're just upset because he turned down babysitting your own little hellion." "I'll have you know my Angelo is well named!"

Suddenly it was impossible to focus on anything at all. Camilo got up and headed back toward his own home, hoping to leave at least some of the noise behind. But as he trudged on, the sounds of the village didn't seem to diminish. And all he could think about was what had been said about him. And even then, he couldn't actually hear himself think. The voice in his head was being drowned out by the voices in the town behind him.

The various degrees of yelling going on inside Casita didn't exactly make it a refuge either. Someone was making the worst racket in the kitchen, and it took Camilo some time to realize it was Antonio. He heard two of his cousins screaming and laughing as if they were doing so in his ears. Luisa was obviously in the stable, as evident from the ridiculously loud sounds of a very happy mule snorting as a brush was run through its fur. And had Luisa always kept up a running commentary made entirely of grunts under her breath like that? His mother was running around with various loud and obnoxious animals at her heels. Tío Bruno snored exceptionally loudly in his tower. Abuela was chanting a new mantra to herself about not touching anything. And Mariano was audibly trying very hard to keep it together. Thunder began to rumble above Casita, and Camilo was both unsurprised and annoyed at how much louder than normal it seemed. He decided to retreat to the edge of the jungle, where he sat down to relax against a palm.

The sounds of the jungle offered some reprieve, and Camilo once again found himself engulfed in sounds he never even knew existed. There were animal sounds, yes, but he could hear things as distant as the padding of a tapir's hooves, or the chatter of monkeys he was positive were somewhere outside the Encanto. Sounds as minute as the cutting of leaves by ants, and even the sound of a spider weaving its web. The plants made sounds as they fought one another in their race for a patch of sunlight. Even a mushroom near Camilo's feet let out what seemed for all the world like the tiniest sigh as it released its spores on its own breeze.

It was tranquil here. Soothing, despite the noise, or perhaps because of it. Camilo closed his eyes for just a moment.

He opened them again at the sound of his own belly. Had it always been that loud when it rumbled? He noticed the lighting was different, despite his mother's...well, Mariano's clouds. The sun had shifted. It must be lunchtime. Camilo sighed and headed back to the house.

But almost as soon as he set foot outside his refuge of natural sounds, his ears were once again assaulted by human activity. He tried not to focus on anything at all, so as to avoid hearing more negative things about himself, but that only made everything messier and louder.

"That's it, I'm just gonna grab something to eat really quick, then I'm staying in my little hiding spot until sundown," Camilo said aloud, trying to replace the noise with his own voice. It sort of worked.

He had nearly made it to the door when a sudden influx of human voices overtook his hearing. Half his family was in the courtyard, practically screaming about how their day went, each trying to be heard over the others. Even Dolores was being ridiculously loud; louder than she'd been when they were without their gifts. Camilo clapped his hands over his ears in agony.

"Would you all please just SHUT UP?!" he screamed. He shocked himself with his own voice as he dropped to his knees. His head was pounding now, and the ringing in his ears was overwhelming. He clenched his teeth as the noise diminished slightly, ever present, unrelenting. Tears burned in his eyes. How did Dolores live like this?

Suddenly, any sense of adaptation he'd had, he lost. The whole world crashed in on him, unbearably loud. He crumpled in on himself. His head felt like it was going to explode. Somewhere in the chaos, a familiar sound began to poke through.

"...milo...camilo...Camilo!"

Camilo felt a pair of hands cover his own. They tilted his face up, and Camilo found himself looking into his sister's worried face.

"Lola..." he pleaded, his voice almost a whimper. "How do you...make it stop!"

Dolores pulled Camilo's hands down, then wrapped him in her arms, pulling him close. His head rested against her chest as she tucked his curls under her chin, just like their mother often did. She held him like that for a while.

"Deep breaths, Camilo," she said softly, taking a few of her own for Camilo to match. "Focus on my heartbeat. Just my heartbeat."

Camilo shakily inhaled and exhaled. He pushed out the rest of the world as best he could and focused on what was now the single loudest sound in his ears. Dolores' heart had a rhythm to it that reminded him of when their family held music nights. Papá used to always play the tiple, but he moved to a drum after Dolores mastered the tiple and took over for him. Sometimes he'd still play it because Dolores could play several instruments and liked to switch them up. Camilo let the sound of his sister's heart carry him back to the night when Dolores was on pan pipes, Papá was on the tiple, Luisa played the piano, and Tía Julieta and Tío Agustín led the way onto the dance floor. Antonio was just trying out the drum and couldn't always keep a steady beat, but all things considered, he did well. The house was still being rebuilt at the time, and they had salvaged most of their family instruments from the rubble. The priest had loaned a piano for the evening. It was a much needed night off from their labor, and the first time they'd had any kind of party since Tío Bruno had returned. And it had become one of Camilo's fondest memories.

After a while, Dolores pulled Camilo out of their hug. "Better?" she asked.

The noise was still there, buzzing away in Camilo's brain, but it was tolerable again. He nodded. "How do you live like this?" he asked. "I've imitated you, but I've never stopped to think what it must be like to be you."

"It was hard at first," Dolores said. "I touched that doorknob, and all of a sudden I could hear the whole world, and it felt like everyone and everything was screaming. Mamá took me into my new room and Abuela had to entertain the guests until I was ready to face them. It took years for me to even begin to master my gift. But in those first few months, we discovered something. Papá let me lay on his chest one day to calm down after being overwhelmed again, and I just...listened to his heartbeat. He started drumming his fingers. Very lightly, in time to that rhythm. And I hummed a little tune to it. We spent some time talking about heartbeats and natural rhythms, and Papá told me that everyone has a rhythm unique to them, that starts with their heartbeat. Oh, a doctor will tell you all heartbeats are supposed to sound basically the same, but they have to use stethoscopes to hear even half of what I can hear. Well, what I can normally hear."

Camilo's mouth twitched upward just a bit. "Okay, so you focus your power by listening to a heartbeat?"

Dolores nodded. "I learned to recognize every person in my family first and foremost by their heartbeat. That's how I knew about you and Mirabel when you came along, though I didn't realize it at first. I just knew Mamá had two heartbeats, and one of them was very fast and small." She gave a small giggle. "Apparently I ruined her plans to surprise Papá with the news."

Camilo gave a brief chortle. "You were totally in with Mamá when Antonio came along."

"Of course. By then I'd learned how to focus, how to filter out sounds, and how to keep important secrets. And Mamá knew she couldn't hide anything from me. She asked me outright when she was still unsure if she was pregnant, and I got to confirm it for her."

"Wow," Camilo said, his eyes widening a bit. "Mamá sure does trust you."

"The announcement was all her planning, though. All I did was make sure everyone was in place for it."

"I guess part of the reason I botched this whole temporary gift thing is because I can't really be trusted with secrets," Camilo admitted, wrapping his arms around his knees.

Dolores pursed her lips and tilted her head. "Hm? What do you mean?"

Camilo fiddled with his ruana. "I thought it would be great to finally get to hear all of the juicy town gossip you hear on a regular basis."

"Let me guess, you learned pretty quickly that it loses its appeal and becomes mundane or even unpleasant."

"Yup."

"I thought you would."

"How do you not listen in on people's confessions? I mean, come on, that's like, the height of temptation for super hearing!"

"Well..." Dolores tapped a finger thoughtfully on her lower lip. "I've never really thought out the entire process, but...every time I hear the words, 'Bless me, father,' I automatically tune out of the conversation. It was something I started consciously doing years ago, but now it's just instinct. I don't really think about it."

"I tried tuning out. Didn't work. I kept getting distracted. A-and then I got distracted by gossip about our family."

"Oh, yes, that's harder to deal with. Sometimes I have to listen in, because there's important information being discussed. Sometimes I want to know if I need to defend someone, like my little brother." Dolores playfully elbowed Camilo.

"Could've used that today," Camilo muttered. "I overheard a few people complaining about me. They just...they can't be satisfied, can they?" He threw his hands up in frustration. "One minute, they're mad at me for some prank they think I pulled that I probably didn't, because I don't do that as often as people think. Then the next, they're calling me lazy if I'm not using my gift! It's like..." he sighed. "It's like they don't want me to be me. They want me to be anyone else who might be convenient to them. Sometimes...even I don't really know who the real me is. And...maybe I'm lazy because that's...the only form of me I know how to be."

Dolores wrapped an arm around her brother and squeezed. "You're lazy because you're 15. It comes with the territory, especially when you're not the firstborn. And older people in particular always look for a reason to complain about teenagers."

"That doesn't make it nice to hear about."

"It never does," Dolores said with a shrug. "You just have to learn to tune them out. By focusing on something else."

"Heartbeats?"

"The heartbeats of the people you love." She shifted to sit in front of Camilo and held out her hands. "Here, take my hands and close your eyes."

Camilo obeyed. He inhaled and exhaled, figuring that must be the next step in whatever Dolores was about to teach him.

"Now, can you hear my heartbeat?"

"Yeah, I hear it," Camilo said with a nod.

"Good. Next, try to pick out the heartbeat of someone else in our family."

Camilo focused on the characteristic sound of a human heart and allowed his senses to seek the area around them. He heard the heartbeats of the five people in the courtyard of Casita. A sixth joined them. It sounded older. Abuela? No, Camilo could hear her voice. The beat of her heart changed ever so slightly in time with her words and tone. She was worried. It was Mariano's mother. Mariano's own heartbeat was surprisingly steady for someone who had been saddled with mood dependent personal weather.

"Señora Guzmán is here. She was worried about Mariano. He's doing fine, though."

Dolores nodded. "Everything in the courtyard is calm for now. Who else can you hear? Can you hear Tío Bruno?"

Camilo searched for Bruno's heartbeat. He heard the snoring, but the heartbeat wasn't as apparent. There was something...fuzzy sounding obscuring the sound of the person sleeping in the tower. Sand. Falling sand. That must be it. Dolores had said once that she associated Bruno with that sound.

"He's harder to pick out. All that sand, you know. Also, he's not snoring as loud as he was earlier."

"We also have some family in town. See if you can hear them."

Once again, Camilo focused. There was indeed a heartbeat that somehow seemed familiar, somewhere in town. It was a strong, sturdy heart; one that seemed to pump half as quickly but with twice as much power. It had to belong to Luisa. But its rhythm was changing. Its tempo suddenly increased, and Camilo was reminded of the times his own heart would beat in his ears because he'd been so scared. The earlier encounter with little Alejandra being a prime example.

"Luisa's anxious about something. She's...wait, she's with someone. They're talking. She's panicking. Someone...Abuela...is trying to calm her down. Augh!" His eyes snapped open and he rubbed his ears. "Is that what I sound like when I shapeshift?"

"Probably," Dolores said, bemused.

"That's...incredibly disturbing."

"Is Luisa alright?"

Camilo listened again, this time to what Luisa and their abuela were saying. "She's having a hard time with my gift."

"Well, go help her."

"Are you kidding? I'm practically a basket case myself!"

"Sometimes the best way to solve your own problems is to help others solve theirs."

Camilo raised an eyebrow at her. "Where did you read that?"

Dolores shrugged. "Does it matter? The point is, no one knows your gift better than you. And if you focus on helping Luisa, you'll find it a lot easier to tune out all the distracting sounds. You can focus on the sounds of our familia being happy." She gave him a half-hearted shove. "Now, go help Luisa figure out her shapeshifting so she can help Abuela with her super strength."

Camilo gave an exaggerated sigh and rose to his feet. "Alright, alright, I'm going." As he started down the path toward town, he turned back for a moment. "Hey...thanks, Lola. For everything."

Dolores smiled. "Of course, hermanito."

Camilo returned her smile before jogging down the path to find his cousin and grandmother. Suddenly, somewhere in the distance, he heard Alejandra's famous "indoor" voice.

"Hey, it's not the third Friday! It's the second Friday! Camilo's pulling my leg and I'm gonna get him!"

Camilo groaned. "Ah, miercoles!"