If you are still taking prompts (I know you’re really busy!): I feel like we see the core four being weirded out by the amount of food available or hoarding food or binging a lot when they first come to Auradon. I thought it would be interesting to see (for some AK to notice) the ramifications of how often food is bad. Nobody eating the same thing so that if it’s gone bad only one of them will be down, avoiding certain foods that are more likely to make you sick if bad, that sort of thing
@diamonds-and-dynamite I know you submitted this like a year ago, so I hope this is worth the wait!
Warning for mentions of hunger/starvation and child neglect.
Carlos doesn't sit with his back to the door, not in any classes or in the lunchroom. Evie glares at the students who have their hands in their pockets for too long. Jay only wears his hair down when he has one of the others with him, but it's usually pulled back. Mal's colored pencils are always sharp, ready to be used for art or maybe for something more painful.
Lonnie has been watching them for a while, Jane too. They've noticed a lot of weird patterns like those. The Isle kids are exciting, maybe dangerous, secretive and unknown. Lonnie has so many questions, so she finally decides to ask.
"Why do you all always eat different things?"
The idle chatter about tourney and dress designs gets quieted by her questions and five pairs of eyes - the four VKs and Jane - turn to look at her.
"Excuse me?" Mal asks, pulling her tray closer to herself as if she could hide it from Lonnie's eyes.
It's not something that necessarily needs a reason, but Lonnie has noticed it for a while. "You all have different food on your tray, every day. Evie has her turkey sandwich and salad, Jay has his chicken and vegetables, Carlos has his fruit salad and pasta," (pasta without meat, like always for Carlos. How interesting that the son of one of the worst animal abusers in recent history is a vegetarian) "and Mal has her soup and chips. You guys always do this."
"Well duh." Mal snarks back with an eye roll. "It wouldn't do if we all got sick."
Jane looks between Mal and Lonnie. "Got sick? From...eating?" She eyes their trays, all heavier than the normal Auradon student, but not to the point of over-eating. "You don't have that much on your plates."
"Not the quantity of food to make you sick." Evie tells her. "At least, not by having too much," she says quieter, "but the type of food." Which is an answer that raises questions than it answers. "How do you know this is all safe to eat?"
"Yeah, like it all looks okay, but that doesn't say much." Jay speaks with his mouth full. No table manners from someone who likely never had a table to eat at. "Is it something you smell?"
"Why wouldn't the food be safe?" Jane looks horrified at her own lunch, a sandwich and fruit. "What are you talking about?"
Evie gives her a strange look, as if Jane and Lonnie are the ones being odd. "Well, it hasn't happened in Auradon yet." She looks at her friends. "But on the Isle, we never knew what food was too bad, so we just tried our luck with it. Anything that was the green and wasn't supposed to be was usually off limits." She grimaces. "But even then, we may nibble on it to see what we could get away with."
"It's smart." Carlos stabs at his noodles again, looking down at his tray. "If we all ate the same thing and it was bad, we would all be sick. This decreases our chances of all of us being weak."
Sick and weak and dead are all interchangeable words from the Isle kids, Lonnie has learnt.
"But..." Jane looks around with big, wide eyes. "The food you guys had... It..."
"We're in Auradon." Lonnie supplies for her and the words taste as bitter as the food her friends used to eat. "The food here isn't bad. The chefs are professionals and everything is fresh. And everything here is labelled," she gestures to the many lines of food, each with the little cards of the title of the dish and the ingredients, "so you can avoid allergies."
"Allergies?" Mal echoes back.
Lonnie makes a mental note to talk to Ben and get these kids into see the nurse right now, but this topic is making her stomach twist and her eyes hurt and her chest tight. "What I mean is, you guys don't have to take turns...risking getting sick. It won't happen here."
All four of them eye her tray and then Jane's, where they both, thankfully, have a chocolate chip brownie laid off to the side.
"Here." Lonnie pushes her tray toward Jane. "Have some of my fries."
Jane, looking still too pale and sad, slowly takes a fry to munch on.
"See? You guys can just eat what you want." Lonnie smiles at the four of them and waits for the wheels to turn in their heads.
"Can I...try some of your strawberries?" Jay asks Mal softly. "They look really good today."
"They are." Mal tells him. She watches Lonnie for another moment as she thinks. "And they taste okay. They've never made me sick."
Carlos touches Evie's arm. "Try this sauce." He holds his fork out to her. "It tastes kind of like the ones we made for your birthday. But...you know...good."
With each shared bite and small smile, Lonnie feels her chest relax a little bit more. She will definitely be talking to Ben after this, but for now, everything is okay.