"Carlos. Is that you?" his mother yells from the living room.
He steps in through the kitchen door, "Yes, Mother."
"It's about time," she scowls. "Where've you been this whole time? With that Jay fellow again?" Carlos doesn't answer, as he hears his mother getting the confirmation from the stuffed puppy hanging from the neck of her fur coat. "Oh. He did, did he? But he knows he's not supposed to be out with friends when he has chores to do."
"I'm sorry, Mother. I didn't mean— I just thought—"
"If you're sorry, then prove it." His mother gestures for him to go over to her recliner, "Be a good boy and come here." Carlos doesn't breath, as he walks over to the smoke-filled space. The T.V. is nothing but static, as neither of the two channels the Isle receives is playing. "Good. Now kneel." He falls hopelessly to his knees. "And beg."
"Please forgive me. I'm so completely sorry for putting off my chores again."
"And?" his mother prods on.
"And that I spent time with Jay before I took care of you. You are everything to me, you are the best person in the world, and I would be nowhere without you in my life."
"What's the lesson here, boy?" his mother growls.
"To not see my friends before I'm sure you're needs are met." Carlos panics, "I shouldn't have been with Jay. I should have been here for you. I'm so terribly sorry."
"Well, it's a little too late for that, isn't it," his mother surmises. "You kids are being sent off to Auradon, and you've left me with all of the chores you've neglected to do."
Wait. We're going to Auradon? His eyes widen as he's filled with relief, but he doesn't dare speak. Instead, he pulls his sleeve up and over his shoulder. He bends his head down, shuts his eyes hard, and holds his breath, all in preparation of what would no doubt come next, but nothing could have prepared him for this. She's never done this before. There's a hot sting at the back of his neck, and the burn is even more painful than he remembers. His arms must have gotten used to it, but his neck never even saw this coming. And she's holding it. Why is she holding it? Does she always hold it for this long, or have I done something terribly wrong?
"You ungrateful, little rat. Do you know how many of my furs needed to be taken care of? How many of my clothes needed to be washed? I bet you didn't even get us any milk on your way here, did you?"
"I didn't know we needed any," Carlos whimpers. "I'm sorry."
"You would have known if you'd been here." She presses the cigarette harder against his skin as she talks to her coat, "Isn't that right my little precious? If he'd been here for us, then he'd have known."
Carlos watches as a few tears escape his eyes and fall onto the white rug, but he relaxes some has he senses the cigarette dying out. The only good thing about receiving all of this pain is how great it feels when it finally comes to an end. He takes in a few steady breaths and slowly lets them out. This is the best part, the only time in his life when he's truly relaxed. It's ending. It's almost done. It doesn't matter who he spends the rest of his day with or what they do, because nothing will ever relax him as much as this does. At this moment there is no need to feel anxious or afraid of what his mother will do, because she's already doing it and it's almost over. This feeling of security will last a couple hours— but only a couple hours. After that his anxiety and fear will flare up again, because if he messes up, another punishment will be waiting for him.
His mother takes the dead cigarette off of his neck, but it's only a moment later that she lights it back to life, "Go on. Scram. Pack. They will be expecting us."
Carlos does as he's commanded and scurries off to his room, or what he claims to be his room. There's not much here that's his. There's a vanity filled with hair products and skin cream that takes up a quarter of the room, and the closet consists of nothing but his mother's fur coats. All he has are some school textbooks like Weird Science and Evil Schemes, as well as some books that came from Auradon through the trash heap. He knows it's supposed to be a charity thing, but to the villains it's nothing but trash. My mother would be very disappointed in me if she ever found out I had any of these.
He picks up his torn school backpack and dumps the contents out. He won't be needing any of this anymore. If I were to bring my school books, Auradon would probably confiscate them anyway. He finds three shirts, four pants, a couple sweatshirts, and some clean underwear to shove into his bag. He zips up that back pocket, before he opens up the front one and heads to the bathroom. Toothpaste, comb, shampoo and body wash. Oh, yeah. Toothbrush. Duh. He hurries back to his room and finds the couple socks he had also forgotten about, and that's it. That's all he has, or at least that's all he would need.
He slowly steps back through the hall and stands in the space between the kitchen and living room. "I'm ready."
- I did listen to the first book and read part of the second, and although I don't remember it I read some comments on Youtube where people said that in the books Carlos was abused. I guess Disney figured that since hardly anyone bothers to read books that they'd be less likely to be sued but that it would be too tough of a thing to even reference in the movies... Just to be clear, unlike my Harry Potter fanfiction where I based 75% on the book and 25% on the movies, in this fanfiction I will be purely basing it off of the films and will only be referencing something from the books if it seems consistent and good enough... because I very soon realized that the books aren't very consistent with the movies. I mean, in the movies they act like they've been kind of friends for at least a couple years ("kind of friends" on the Isle probably being the only friendship you can trust), but in the books they make it so that Evie and Carlos don't even speak to Jay or Mal until like three days or a week prior to them going to Auradon. In my opinion... just a tiny bit stupid.