13. Chapter 13

If you asked Camillo, at his core, he was an actor. One had to be to get away with anything in his family. He liked to think that he was pretty good at it. Believably filling roles, cleanly delivering lines, being on the mark wherever Abuela as his director blocked him. Although, what he was especially proud of was his improv.

He knew the rules by heart, and if there was one which he lived by, it was “always say: yes, and.” He had mastered the ‘yes, and’ by age five. But, of course, the problem with ‘yes, and’ is that you are beholden to the person you’re acting with. You have to trust them to set up a good role for you and keep things going for the good of the scene. He had been playing off of the town’s prompts at his Abuela’s behest for years.

You need another Jose? Right here, my friend. The Signora needs a break? What do you mean? She’s right here! Any role you need, he could fill it. He had playing understudy for the town down to a science. So, when Signora Mosquera didn’t hand over her baby to her suddenly appearing twin, the world tilted a bit on its axis.

“Sorry, Camillo. I can’t continue taking your help.”

He stilled. How do you ‘yes, and’ a no? YOU CAN’T! That was the reason for the first rule of improv, “DON’T SAY NO!” He took a deep breath and shifted back to himself. Then, he asked in his politest voice, “May I ask why?”

The signora shifted her baby in her arms and gave a slightly awkward sigh, “It’s just… become apparent that having you babysit for me doesn’t reflect well on me or my ability as a parent. You started doing this when you were SEVEN and watching my kids for most of those years! How would it look if people thought it through that I had you watching my baby for me! I just can’t continue in good conscience. Why don’t you go play with one of your friends or cousins instead? Take the time to be a teenager rather than pretending to be a mother?”

It hurt a bit to be turned aside when he had prepared for the role, but he put on a smile and bid the signora farewell.

The scene should have continued, but no one was willing to play ball. No one was with the program. No one wanted him to take over their roles for them. They all just kept the responsibility for themselves while awkwardly dismissing him, saying that having him take over would feel wrong. Feeling oddly listless, he had slipped over to the river near the fields where his usual friend group would probably be.

He didn’t really get to hang out with them anymore, but he enjoyed being around them. He saw five of them sitting around with their shoes off, feet in the water. He gave a sigh of relief and dropped heavily between two of them. One of the two looked next to her and rose an eyebrow,

“That you Milo?” the girl, Leila, asked. Her face scrunched a bit in focus, “You look a bit off.”

Camillo looked in the river and noticed that he was completely unshifted. When faces were like clothes to you, you generally had a handful of faces that you wore for different occasions. He tended to shift himself a bit when he went out of the house. Not a lot, but he changed his features a bit for whoever he was meeting as a way to remind himself what version of Camillo he needed to play. Friend, client, jokester, etc. But he wasn’t wearing the face that his friends currently knew him by. It probably was kind of uncanny valley for them. He blinked, freckles dissipated, hair went from waves to curls, and shortened. His skin tone went from between his parents’ to closer to his fathers and he grew about three inches overall.

“Sorry about that… I was lost in thought a bit….”

“Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t a bad look. You should wear that face more often. It’s nice.” His other female friend, Rosa, replied.

“Yeah man, it would be cool to be the taller one between us for a change.” Aaron joked, tossing an arm over him.

He blinked. Did his friends think that that was just another face he put on? He would have thought they would remember how he looked before getting his gift. It felt odd…

“I suppose it is time for a change.” He mused, playfully adding another foot to throw off Aaron’s arm before letting go of the shift. “Though, I’m pretty sure that this is kinda a boring face.” He joked, feeling a bit naked, but wanting to see if his friends remembered.

“I guess, but it suits you somehow.” Christian replied, skipping a stone, “Can’t place it, but I feel like you’ve used it before. Maybe when you were younger?”

There were some hums of agreement as they all stared at him intently.

“It feels nostalgic almost.” Mateo murmured, “Maybe it was one of the ones you started with? It seems similar to what I remember you looking like before your gift.”

Wow, that stung a bit. His friends didn’t remember that this is what Camillo actually looks like. He honestly wondered why he shifted around them anyway. Did he really feel like he needed a mask for them? Would it change things if he dropped the mask around them? “I’m not shifted at all, dude.” He replied, trying to keep his hurt in.

“Huh, Ok,” Mateo replied.

“Guess I remembered you being taller. Weird.” Christian replied.

“Yeah, I forgot that you had freckles. They’re kinda cute, honestly.” Rosa remarked with a light blush and smirk.

“Coulda swore that you had curly hair. Guess that’s just preference or something?” Aaron said, tilting his head a bit.

Actually, that was his abuela’s preference. He guessed from the man’s picture that he looked a bit too much like Abuelo Pedro at a glance. He didn’t want to make his Abuela sad or angry, though, so he supposed that he just subconsciously shifted it curly for her. His door seemed to agree since the waviness of his carved visage changed to match after a while. Camillo just gave a grunt of acknowledgment.

“Sorry. I guess that we just got used to you wearing a different face each time we got to see you.” Leila apologized before continuing with a shrug, “Kind of hard to remember a face when you’re constantly changing it.”

That just made Camillo wonder further. If the entire point of his gift was changing his face, did he actually have one at all? Was this actually his face, or was it just another mask Camillo kept solely to fool himself? His life was full of so many unique roles, but he wasn’t sure if he was the actor playing them anymore.

Mirabel wasn’t really all there to help Antonio explore his room. She held herself together for the most part after Cassie had dropped the news of her possibly terminal situation on the girl. Mirabel had relatively silently accepted the information, foreign swearing notwithstanding, and gone to bed before the whole situation could really sink in. Then, waking up, she had ridden out the morning haze to its fullest to ensure that she was presentable for the day. The mental screaming and flailing started when her brain woke up after she was almost run over by her Hijo riding his friend, Parce. The meltdown had continued in the back of her mind, only taking a breath when she had heard Antonio ask her to help him explore his new room.

A small part of her brain, which was still a sad, lonely, five-and-a-half-year-old, pleading for her relatives’ love and acceptance again, screamed at her to decline and try to fix all the problems ASAP. The more mature part of her brain, the one she had developed to raise the child in front of her, which was currently taking a break from its screaming fit, promptly smothered the smaller part’s screaming. It then cleanly reasoned that it would be better to bolster the connections that were already strong while coming up with a solid plan rather than running around like a freshly slaughtered chicken.

However, once Mirabel went through that course of action and asked Antonio to tell her if he noticed any problems their family may be having, that mature part quickly devolved into the flailing fifteen-year-old that she actually was. She had stayed that way all through breakfast. The only change was that the mental flailing turned into a supremely controlled tantrum for a bit when she heard Alma say something about putting her hijo’s gift to good use. Like he was some sort of tool or something. The tantrum subsided back to flailing when Pepa actually acted like a mother for once and stood up to Alma for Antonio. Perhaps that was a bit uncharitable of Mirabel. Still, she was currently freaking out about the possibility of her mother dying due to her relatives’ stupidity, so she felt like she got a pass here.

She had finally snapped out of her doom spiral when Dolores snuck up on her as she was detachedly watching Antonio wander by the freaking river that ran under his treehouse. “Something’s the matter today. Everyone’s uneasy, but you and Casita especially. You two know what’s the matter, and you’re the only one I can fully understand. So what’s up.” Dolores asked gently, placing a hand on Mirabel’s shoulder and turning the girl to face her.

Mirabel jumped a bit and cringed (“Nothing’s the matter, Dolores.”) She prevaricated, knocking slowly so Dolores could understand while backing from her Prima’s grasp. An eyebrow raised questioningly caused her to nervously repeat, (“Nothing’s the matter. Mama’s fine, I’m fine, the Magic’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”)

Dolores snorted quietly, “I’m sure. But I didn’t say anything about the Magic. Try again, please.”

Mirabel tilted her head a bit and debated cluing Dolores into the problem. Dolores knew about almost everything in the Encanto. She had always been kind to Mirabel, even if she couldn’t really show it. However, her prima was showing some new backbone here by asking her what was the matter, rather than just letting it be when she saw that Mirabel was worried about something. Plus, she could keep a secret if Tio Bruno’s situation was indicative of that ability. And what clinched it for Mirabel was that she wanted to rebuild their relationship, or at least seemed to if what she said last night was the truth. That and the bonding trying to solve this would cause should help the magic. So Mirabel decided to trust her.

The younger cousin huffed, (“The magic isn’t actually fine, as you probably guessed.”) she began, (“A very long story short, Candle’s magic is tied to the family’s togetherness. Closer bonds and better general mental health mean more potent magic. But Candle, the magic’s representative, has been strained for a while and is finally showing it. After giving Antonio a gift last night, he has at minimum two weeks left in him. So he asked Mama and me to try and fix it. Of course, we don’t have a choice, since Mama would die if Candle’s magic does.”)

Dolores hum-squeaked and slumped to the ground. A few moments and another silent freakout, this time on the part of the older cousin, later, “So, the magic’s dying. And if it does die, we lose our home and gifts. And you lose your mother….” Dolores sucked in a breath and pivoted her train of thought to avoid crashing into that emotional wall. “At least we know why it's dying and can do something about it.” She quietly sighed, “How do we fix it, though? Togetherness needs communication. Mental health requires breaks, self-awareness, AND talking things out. Our family isn’t good at any of that, especially communication!”

Mirabel sat next to her, (“Tell me about it, you’re the first relative to have a discussion with me in about six years. Everyone else talks at me like I’m another part of Mama. I don’t think anyone other than you have noticed that I don’t speak at home anymore.”)

Dolores’ eyes bulged slightly, “I didn’t know it was that bad. Doesn’t Tia Julietta talk to you? Tio Agustin?”

(“Agustin tries, but Alma doesn’t let him. I don’t know why she’s so stuck on isolating me, but she’s succeeding. He stopped trying a few years ago; I think he’s been focusing on Luisa and Isabella to cope. I don’t necessarily blame him, but I don’t love the feeling either. Julietta is overworked without a third child to mother. That isn’t even considering that this third child would be the ‘giftless madrigal’ and need even more of her time to properly mother. Something always drags her from interacting with me. At this point, I’m pretty sure that her ignorance of my existence is a coping mechanism.”) Mirabel snorted (“And even then, she’s practically one bad day away from a total mental breakdown.”)

Dolores nodded, “I think today will be a bad day for everyone….” She trailed off a bit, deciding whether to relay something to Mirabel or not. “There are a lot of rumors suddenly floating around town about la familia. Especially Abuela, Mama, Tia, and Isabella. I don’t know how well the four of them are going to handle it.”

Mirabel sighed and threw herself back onto the plush moss carpeting (“Pepa is probably going to be inconsolable, what with Antonio already trying to avoid her. Alma and Isabella are going to have fits, and then the two of them will just double down to try and make up for whatever the rumors are about. The wild card is Julietta. She’s just as likely to go Pepa’s route as Alma and Isabella’s. Worst case, she does both and leaves a large mess that she can’t cover. Of course, the universe couldn’t make things easy for me.”)

Dolores gently laid back with her, arms spread with the tips of her one hand resting on Mirabel’s splayed ones, and whispered to the air, “I’ll help you as much as I can. You deserve that much. I’ll help you make things right, whatever that entails.”

Two soft knocks rug in the open space as one hand grasped another like a lifeline.

The townsfolk had been expecting Julietta’s mental breakdown for a while. But they had banked on her going with a whimper. For her to be handing out Arepas with that tired smile and just crumple on herself. For her to one day just not show up, and for them to find out later that she had passed out in the kitchen or gone on strike. Something reasonable. They had not expected the Bang that had actually happened.

Their first hint had been the … unconventional… filling choices. One person got a mouth full of cilantro in his Arepa; another got sugar. Yet a third had raw fish somehow. It was odd, but many had thought that was just a mistake.

Then came the nasty ones. One person got peppers: seeds, stems, and all. Another found their mouth full of coffee beans. Then there was the ball of lard. Then sugar cane. And finally. Soap.

Before these dangers had been discovered, Julietta had just wandered off to god knows where. So now there was just a crowd of injured people staring at the cart with arepas waiting for those who wished to try their luck at culinary Russian roulette.

Thus started the apocryphal events which would go down in Encanto folklore surrounding the healing cook’s café del diablo, as the townsfolk began calling it. Unfortunately, the actual events were almost too disparate to be pieced together later. Still, it was generally agreed that the arepas from hell were the first of the many strange occurrences that surrounded Julietta Madrigal that day. And that should such arepas ever be found at the cart again, the townsfolk were to immediately bring the woman back to the house and ensure that she was contained to her room until she fell asleep.