See The Light 💜✨

xvi.

"Jay."

I turned to my right to see Carlos, Evie, and Mal staring at me like they had just asked me something and was waiting for a reply as we sat in a circle in the courtyard of Auradon Prep. Unfortunately for me, I had a habit of staring off into space recently.

A couple weeks had passed and it was getting scarily close to Ben's coronation, meaning that Mal had to come up with a game plan to make Ben fall for her and fast. I hadn't really been involved in the planning for the events that had been going on, pretty much spending all my time with Melody and Alex.

The only one who really knew about Alex was Carlos, I hadn't been exactly afraid to tell Mal and Evie but I knew Mal would kill me if she knew I was being distracted by a boy instead of helping the group with overthrowing Auradon.

"What was the question?" I sounded uninterested, not even meaning to but that's how my attitude had begun to sour. I usually didn't have a sour attitude, I tried to be friendly with everyone despite teenage angst running rampant..but something was changing me. I was just too afraid to ask questions.

Mal rolled her eyes,"Focus. We need everyone to have all hands on deck."

She pulled her spell book out of her messenger bag that she carried for class, flipping to a random page. I read the contents and felt my eyebrows raise.

Love potion.

"Well, that would've been nice to know sooner," I let out a slight laugh.

Mal fumed,"I'm assigning you a job, Jay. I just need to know if you can go through with it."

"Name it," my confidence started peaking out, spilling over as I leaned forward,"I can do anything."

"Really?" Mal leaned forward to match my confidence, almost mocking me and, for some reason, it made me upset,"Because I can explain the last twenty minutes I've been explaining my plan and you were probably in another universe during the whole duration."

I wanted to laugh at the irony, but I just stayed silent for about ten seconds before smiling,"Like I said, lay it on me and it'll get done."

Mal's face contorted into something that seemed like...doubt. I could feel my demeanor falter for a split second as my face fell, but I just slapped my grin back on as if it didn't go away. But Mal noticed. Her face continued to look at me with a deep regard for my heart, almost as if she could read my mind.

"I need you to keep a look out while we get the ingredients for this," Mal looked me up and down,"If you can keep your head out of the clouds for more than a minute."

I scoffed, but something inside me knew she had a sense of truth in that,"Easy."

•

Turns out it was not easy. The group decided that we'd all go in the wee hours of the morning as to not draw attention or run into anybody. We found out quick that people liked their midnight snacks...obviously something that was lost upon the Isle as there was no such thing.

I couldn't even count the amount of people that kept trying to enter the kitchen, giving the signal so many times I felt my lips dry from the whistles I kept letting out. Eventually, I could tell Mal was getting more and more frustrated, coming into my line of vision as she gave me a look that was like "seriously?" at one point. I shrugged at her before she went back into the kitchen with a huff.

After a while, people stopped coming. Lonnie had gone in at some point and came back out with a handful of chocolate chips. After her, nothing. I waited about ten minutes before emerging from my post, looking around once more for good measure before seeing a familiar face walking into the light.