Your destination is approaching, sooner than you thought possible. It comes without pause, and refuses to take into consideration that fact that you might not be entirely ready for its arrival. Already, you can see the town popping up on the horizon, and although the threat of returning has been vague up until now, you're suddenly confronted with the reality that you are about to go home.
Home. It doesn't feel like home to you, not now. You haven't been to Seabrook in ten years, although it feels like much longer. This is where you were born, where you spoke your first words and learned to walk, but not the place you'd go if you were dying, nor where you've spent some of the most formative years of your life. Is it a home, then, or just a place that used to be yours?
The purple-haired girl sitting next to you nudges you in the side. "Are you ready for this?"
You grimace. "I thought I was, but I'm having second thoughts now. I mean, what if it's nothing like what I remember? I could change for the Isle of the Lost, even for Auradon, but this is an entirely different playing field."
Mal sighs, leaning back against the seat of the car currently ferrying you towards Seabrook far faster than you'd like. "Either it's going to be the same, which will be fun, or it'll be totally different, which will be fun as well. Change isn't the worst thing to happen, Y/N. I mean, look at all of us. When we first heard Ben was coming to take us away to Auradon, we thought it would be the worst thing in the world, but we ended up loving it."
The golden-haired prince in question pretends to frown from his seat on Mal's other side. "Yeah, I'd hope so. If I find out now that you've been despising me all along it would really put a damper on this whole trip."
Evie, one row up, just laughs. "Oh, we would have let you know way before this. If we hated it, we would have stolen the car the second we started on this trip."
Ben frowns. "That doesn't make me feel any better."
Mal does her best to hide a smile. "We're happy here, Ben. No matter how many jokes we make."
The question, then, is whether or not you are truly happy. You only found out that you would be returning to Seabrook a couple of days ago. Ben, Jay, and Lonnie are all playing in the upcoming game against Seabrook High, and so the rest of you are driving down with them to cheer them on.
Hearing that you'd be going back to your supposed hometown was both a blessing and a burden. You grew up in Seabrook on the zombie side of town, and made as many friends as a green-haired kid could hope to have. You still remember some of them; Zed, Eliza, and Bonzo being your best friends. You haven't heard from them in years, ever since you left.
Leaving wasn't your intention, either. The night you fled Seabrook is etched into your mind in perfect clarity. Seabrook wasn't great for zombies, although it wasn't like you could go anywhere else, or so people thought. A big group of zombies were caught out in the streets after curfew, and they sent in a bunch of non-zombies to try and "keep the peace," or so they called it.
In the resulting chaos, your parents tried to defend the zombies who'd been breaking curfew. Before they ran to help, though, they told you to hide, to get as far away from the city as you could. You can still hear the shouts echoing through the town, mirrored in intensity only by the pounding of your heels against the ground.
You hadn't intended to go that far, but you were a kid, scared of what would happen if humans found a young zombie disobeying curfew and trying to run. You ended up going a great distance into the forest, and in the dark, you managed to lose your way. You tried to go back home, but you could never figure out how to make it back to Seabrook.
That wasn't the end of your story, though. A couple of hours after dawn, you noticed something strange. The very air around you was starting to shimmer, turning a strange blue in the early morning light. A few moments later, a woman dressed all in pink and white appeared, offering to take you back to her home. She was just visiting the forest to gather up a few magical ingredients, but she didn't like the thought of some kid wandering the woods alone.
