The Rise of Renegade X (18 page)

“Truth or dare,” Sarah says. We’ve been playing for the past fifteen minutes or so to pass the time, and Truth or Dare is apparently Sarah’s favorite game, because no matter which one someone picks, it results in good data. I’d never played before, but I can already see plenty of ways to use it to make people uncomfortable. Sarah tells me girls play this game a lot, especially at get-togethers. I can’t wait until Thursday night when Amelia has what she calls “one of her famous slumber parties.” And people on the train thought I was evil.

“Truth.”

Sarah takes a deep breath and thinks about it. She slips on a patch of mud on the ground, but luckily I grab her arm and keep her from falling. I’m quite the hero. “What’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?” she says.

“I caught my girlfriend making out with my best friend.”

Sarah’s spine stiffens. “Your girlfriend.”

“At my birthday party. On my bed. We’re not together now,” I mutter, thinking about how Kat and I are friends, nothing more, and about how I keep having to remind myself that’s a good thing. “It was a year ago, and she’d just gotten her shapeshifting power—”

“Shapeshifting?” Sarah raises an eyebrow and scrunches up her nose. “What is she, a
supervillain?”

“Ha. Ha. No.” I rub the back of my neck and wish I hadn’t said anything. “What I meant was, she thought she wanted to be somebody else. To be
with
somebody else, I guess.”

“You’re using the past tense.” The way Sarah says that, I feel like I’m in an interrogation room, with the hot lights shining on me. “She
thought
she wanted to be with somebody else. That implies she doesn’t think that anymore.” If Sarah’s tone didn’t sound so accusing, I’d think she was trying to help sort things out between me and Kat. “So she wants to be with you.”

“Uh …” Oh, how I miss the simple times when I saved Sarah from getting her pants muddy. Those were the days, thirty seconds ago, before I mistakenly opened up this can of worms. I can see that this Truth or Dare game has more potential to make people uncomfortable than I thought. “Yeah, well, she realizes what she missed out on, now that it’s too late.”

I shut up after that, and Sarah doesn’t ask any more questions about my love life. Instead she purses her lips and looks deep in thought. Neither of us says anything until we reach the middle of town, where there’s a helpful sign that says Vilmore is another twenty miles away. Which is just wonderful. I already want to die from fatigue, and it’s getting dark. So much for getting home for dinner.

Sarah sags against the sign and rubs her shoulders where the straps of her backpack dig into her. “Easy peasy, right? No problem?”

“Right. Because now that we’re in town, we should be able to find some kind of transportation. A ride, if you will.”

We’re standing next to the town police car. I peer in the window and notice it has the keys in the ignition. I guess nobody worries about it getting stolen. Maybe nobody here would know what to do with it anyway. “A ride,” Sarah says, sounding doubtful.

“Maybe a bus comes through here or something. These people have to have some way of leaving. …” As I say it, I think about those stories you hear where someone’s car breaks down in some nowhere town, and they don’t have the money to fix it and leave, so they end up living there. Until they die.

I shudder. “Come on.” I lead Sarah across the street and into a nearby diner called May’s. The diner is half full with the dinnertime crowd. The locals sit hunched over their food, but they all turn and stare when we come in. It’s a small town with no tourist attractions—they must not get very many visitors. I ignore them and stride up to the counter. The woman behind it has a pot of coffee and a rag glued to either hand. Her scraggly brown hair hangs in stringy clumps around her face. I can’t tell how old she is. Her body says she couldn’t be much more than thirty, but her wrinkled and haggard face says nothing under fifty. Her name tag reads, DELORES.

I slide onto an empty stool, and Sarah sits next to me.

“What can I get for you?” Delores asks. She has hard, beady eyes that look over me and Sarah with curiosity.

“We’re a little lost,” I say. “We got separated from our field trip. The bus stopped for everyone to go to the bathroom, and then they …
left without us.”
I hide my eyes with the back of my arm and shake my head. “We’re looking for a way to get to Vilmore. That’s the closest train stop.”

Delores’s jaw moves like she’s chewing actual food, even though I’m pretty sure her mouth is empty. Her eyes wander from me to Sarah and back again. “It’s polite to order first before asking for information.”

“Yeah, fine.” I was hungry anyway. I point to the nearest pie display. “I’ll take a slice of that.”

“Two,” Sarah says.

Delores shuffles over to the pie and shovels out two pieces of lemon meringue. She dumps them on a couple of plates and slides them in front of us.

“Great,” I say, digging in. I grin at her, doing my best to look lost, scared, and unbelievably charming. “Can you tell us when the next bus leaves?”

The whole diner busts up laughing. Even dried-up old Delores cracks a smile. “Kid,” she says, “a bus hasn’t come through here since I was five years old.”

One side of my face twitches. I exchange a glance with Sarah. “I’m guessing I was right about Vilmore having the nearest train stop?”

Delores nods. “I could give you a ride, but I don’t get off until two in the morning. And you’d have to order a lot more food first.”

Sarah eats the meringue off her pie before cutting into the lemon. “Easy peasy,” she mutters.

“I’ll take them,” a woman in the far corner says. “If you two help me clear out my truck, you can ride in the back. Your parents will be wondering where you are, no doubt. I remember when Angela didn’t come home from a field trip once. I was
so
worried, I just about died.”

“Thanks,” I say. I smile at Sarah.
See? No problem
.

Delores scratches out a bill on a pad of paper and slaps it down in front of me. “That’ll be five dollars even.”

I feel around my back pockets, but apparently I don’t have my wallet on me. It must have fallen out in Sarah’s bag. She digs around in her backpack, reaching farther and farther into it, until I think she’s going to disappear inside it altogether. She frowns and checks the outside pockets. “I can’t find our wallets,” she whispers. “We must have lost them on the train.”

I lean over and talk out the side of my mouth. “Write them a check.”

“I don’t have checks!”

Delores is getting suspicious by now, squinting at us and shaking her head.

“It seems we have a slight problem,” I tell her. “You see, we must have left our money on the bus, with our schoolmates.”

Delores’s lip lifts in a snarl. “You mean you can’t pay?”

I swallow. “Yeah. That’s about it.”

“But,” Sarah says, getting out a pen and one of her notebooks, “we’d be happy to mail the money to you. Just give me your address.”

“This ain’t no free lunch,” Delores growls.

“No, no, it’s okay.” I hate myself for what I’m about to do. I hold up my right hand and stick out my thumb, giving her a good look at my X. “I don’t have an
H
right now, but I’m a superhero in training, see? My dad’s the Crimson Flash. You can trust me—”

Delores slams her coffeepot down on the counter, shattering it and spraying hot coffee everywhere.

I notice out of the corner of my eye that the other patrons in the diner are no longer hunched over their meals; they’re on their feet and creeping toward us.

“Superhero.”
Delores’s eyes glaze over and her face twists in rage. Her arm shoots out across the counter. She grabs the neck of my sweatshirt with her gnarled claw. “Superhero,” she repeats, as if it’s the most disgusting phrase she’s ever heard.

Her grip tightens. I struggle to get away. Sarah reaches over and unzips my sweatshirt, and I slip out of it, leaving it in Delores’s clutches.

The customers are closing in behind us. They all chant, “Superhero,” under their breath.

“It was only a concoction of basic ingredients,” Sarah wails. “Mostly flour and eggs and lemon juice!”

“In other words,” I say, “it was just pie!”

The goodly diner patrons grasp at us with their hands. Sarah reaches into her bag, pulls out the gun, and pushes a bunch of buttons on the side. “Here!” she says, shoving it into my hands.

I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it, so I point it toward the ceiling and pull the trigger.

“Close your eyes!” Sarah shouts.

I do, just in time to see the super-bright light that flashes across the room from the safe side of my eyelids. When I open my eyes, I see spots, but I’m doing better than everyone else, who can only blink and run into each other.

Sarah and I seize our opportunity to get the hell out of there.

“It won’t stop them for long,” Sarah says, hurrying out of the diner.

We don’t bother to look both ways as we run across the street. Already I hear the chant of “Superhero!” behind us.

I make a beeline for the cop-car look-alike. “You drive!”

“Are you batty? I can’t drive!”

“Neither can I!” What would I need to drive for? Traffic in Golden City is awful, there’s nowhere to park, and Mom doesn’t even own a car.

Sarah rolls her eyes at me. “Get in.” She tosses me her bag.

It’s heavy. I grab it and scramble into the passenger side, slamming the door shut behind me. I hurry to roll up the window and lock the door.

Sarah jumps into the driver’s seat. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, holding her hands out flat, waving them over the steering wheel, then the radio, then the parking brake. She looks more like she’s having a séance than getting ready to drive the stupid thing.

The mob is already plowing through the diner door, lurching across the street toward us like zombies. “Sarah. Now would be a good time to start the car.”

“I’m getting there.” She opens her eyes and buckles her seat belt. Then she carefully adjusts the rearview mirror, then the one on the side.

“That’s not going to be very useful if the lynch mob tears us apart.”

Sarah switches on the headlights. She puts her foot on the pedal, testing the distance. She purses her lips in a frown and moves her seat forward a couple notches. Then back one. Then forward again.

“Sarah!”

“Okay,” she says. “I’m ready.”

Just as she says it, a superhero-hating diner customer snaps our antenna off. He pounds on the window. I hold the gun and point it at him, but I don’t dare shoot it. You never know what it’s going to do.

Sarah takes more deep breaths. She turns the key. The engine sputters and dies. “Hmm,” she says, peering at the dashboard.

More diner zombies pound on the door. Their nails screech against the window. Pretty soon they’re going to start rocking the car. Delores jumps onto the hood, splaying herself against the windshield. She presses our bill against the glass and points at it.

“Oh, wait,” Sarah says, in a “silly me” voice. “I have to hold the gas in.” She does and the car starts and we move backward with a jerk. “Oops. Reverse.”

I cover my eyes as Sarah makes the car go forward and Delores leaps off the hood. The car lurches a couple feet. Then a couple more. Sarah presses her foot in all the way, and the car takes off, speeding down the road. The dust we raise behind us blots out the mob.

Every time Sarah moves the wheel at all, the whole car swerves to the side of the street. She grazes a telephone pole and knocks off my side mirror.

She cringes. “Sorry!”

“Maybe you should slow down!” I shout over the roar of the engine.

We pass a sign that says, NOW LEAVING RUTHERSFORD! and has a smiley face graffiti-painted over the o. The name sounds familiar, and I wonder where I’ve heard it before.

Sarah holds her arms out straight, her hands frozen on the wheel. She doesn’t take her foot off the pedal. “It’s under control.”

My stomach disagrees. And so does the tree zooming up in front of us. “Sarah!”

“Got it!” She turns the wheel. We skid into a 360-degree turn. And another one. We’re both screaming. And then we’re not spinning anymore, but racing downhill, backward. Sarah slams her foot on the brake. We slow, but not enough. I look behind me, then forward again, not wanting my neck to be twisted when we crash.

I remember to keep my muscles relaxed as the car smashes into a tree, rear end first. There’s the sickening crunch of metal and a horrible, jarring feeling as the back of my head hits the headrest.

I’m shaken
and
stirred, and I have to fight the urge to puke up my lemon meringue pie, but otherwise I’m okay. My heart pounds as I look over to see if Sarah’s all right. I hold my hand out to her, but she doesn’t notice. She’s too busy poking at the contents of her bag, which spilled open during the crash. She reaches down and picks up her wallet off the floor. “Look at that,” she says, beaming at it. “I guess we had them the whole time.”

“What did I tell you?” I say, secretly thinking about strangling her. “Piece of cake.”