The Rise of Renegade X (31 page)

I’m locked in what looks like an old guest room but has recently become a storage space for all the stuff that was in the gardening shed, which got knocked down in a bad storm last winter. All the furniture’s been pushed against the walls, and there are various gardening tools leaning against the closet and getting dirt all over. God, Pete’s an idiot; who leaves their victims in a room with a pickax? It doesn’t take me long to find a screwdriver to take the doorknob apart.

I try all the other doors in the hallway until I find Sarah. I know it’s her because I hear her sobbing, and because the door is locked. I run to the kitchen and check for spare keys and find a whole drawer full of them. Taylor’s mom must have kept every spare key she ever owned. I take the drawer with me, which makes it hard to creep around quietly, and sit in front of Sarah’s door, trying key after key.

“Let me out of here!” Sarah screams. She pounds her fists on the other side.

“What do you think I’m trying to do?”

She sniffs. “Damien?”

“Yeah, be quiet, will you? I’m not exactly supposed to be here.” Key number seven is yet another dud. I throw it on the floor with the other failures.

Sarah goes silent. I don’t know if it’s because I told her to, or if it’s because she said she never wanted to talk to me again. It takes me a while to work up the courage to ask, “What did they do to you?”

She starts sobbing again. “They made me fix it for them. I couldn’t … They said …” She chokes and I only hear more crying until she gets ahold of herself. “They said Heraldo got hit by a car.”

Key number fifteen is the last key. I close my eyes and pray that it works.

“They said he was lying in the street, dying, and … still twitching, and if I did what they wanted, maybe I’d get out of here in time to go save him. So I did, but they still didn’t let me go!”

Fifteen is a dud. Damn. I look at the pile on the floor, then at the drawer, which is full of rubber bands and ten-year-old Post-it notes and expired film, but no more keys. “Who told you that? Was it a blond, middle-aged guy with a scraggly beard?”

“It was a boy. About our age. A little taller than you. Please,
hurry.”
That last part comes out a squeak. “He’s going to die!”

I can retry all the keys, I can go look for a different one, or … I dig through the drawer again, hoping to find something. “Sarah, Heraldo’s fine. He’s at my house.” At the bad guys’ headquarters. No problem.

“He’s …” She draws in a sharp breath. “If you’re lying to me—”

“I’m not.” Cold metal scrapes across my fingertips as I grope at the bottom of the drawer. I grab another key and hold my breath as I fit it in the lock.

It turns. A click later, the door is open. I look Sarah over, still not sure that Pete wouldn’t have hurt her. But she looks okay. The dog story must have been enough to make her give in. I could hug her, I’m so relieved, but I don’t think she’d appreciate it.

“Wow,” she says, poking the area around my eye with her finger. I wince. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks for the update. Are you talking to me again? Because my mom and her fiancé are about to use
your
hypno device to take over the city, and we’re the only ones who know about it.”

I
didn’t think I’d ever be back at the Tines house, but this is important. Amelia is sitting at the dining table, doing her homework. Helen is chasing a naked Jessica across the living room, trying to get her to take a bath.

Everybody looks when I come in, and I can practically hear them stop breathing. Amelia’s eyes go wide and she mouths
Damien
, then quickly goes back to her homework, her eyes darting back and forth between her English book and her notes.

Helen grabs Jessica while she’s conveniently too busy staring at me to run off.

“I thought Heraldo was here,” Sarah whispers.

“My other house,” I say. I take a step inside, not sure if I’m welcome here.

“Gordon!” Helen calls. “Someone’s here to see you!” She lugs Jessica off to the bathroom.

Gordon comes out of Alex’s room with Alex right behind him. Alex starts to smile when he sees me, and then he notices how terrible I look and gasps.

Sarah tugs on my arm and points to Gordon. “I
told
you you looked like him.”

Gordon’s face gets really ugly when he sees me, all twisted up and angry. “Alex,” he says, “go back to your room.” Alex drags his feet, taking as much time as possible.

Amelia holds her book in front of her face, like she hopes Gordon won’t notice her and make her leave.

“Amelia, you, too.”

“I’m doing my homework—”

“You can do it upstairs!”

Amelia cringes and grabs her stuff, hightailing it out of here and up to her room.

Gordon marches over to me, studying the bruises on my face and my split lip. “I’m so angry with you right now, I could …” He clenches his fist and doesn’t finish. “You weren’t supposed to leave this house, and then you wander off to God knows where—”

“I took my stuff,” I say. “It’s not like you couldn’t guess I wasn’t coming back. Listen—”

“Is that supposed to make it okay? What happened? Don’t tell me it didn’t work out and now you’re back.” He tilts his head toward Sarah. “Do you really want your friend to have to hear all this?”

That’s my cue to kick her out, so Gordon doesn’t have to embarrass me by chewing me out in front of her. “You don’t understand. Something really bad is going down tonight and—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Gordon folds his arms. “Do you know how worried we’ve been? I called your mother about a million times, but the line was always busy. Finally I got through and she said you’d come home.”

“Mom and Taylor Lewis are spreading some toxic formula through the sewers. It’s going to turn everyone except villains into their personal slaves. They’re taking over the city!”

“Damien, shut up!” Gordon’s face is red and mean. “I’ve had it with you! You leave for good without even
telling
us, you make us worry all night, and then you show up looking like
that
. Like you just—”

“Got beat up? I told you, something bad is happening.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you.” He rubs his forehead and turns away. “If you want to live with your mother, fine. I’ve failed. We clearly don’t need another three weeks to figure that out. You win. If your mother can handle you, then—”

“Dad!”
That gets his attention. It’s the first time I’ve called him that.
“Listen
to me! You have to stop them. You’re a superhero—you have to stop Mom and Taylor, or the whole city’s going to be theirs by tomorrow morning!”

He looks at me like he’s considering it. Then he just looks exhausted. “I can’t trust you anymore,” he says. “Bringing you here was a … Just do what you want. I don’t care.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Sarah says.

Gordon glares at her. He squeezes my shoulder. “I’m sorry it worked out like this.” He gives me my phone. I guess he doesn’t need to punish me, now that I don’t live here. Then he turns his back on me and wanders off into the kitchen and that’s it.

My chest feels heavy, and not just because the Crimson Flash refused to save Golden City. Sarah and I leave, with me dragging my feet.

“I can’t believe I met the Crimson Flash!” Sarah says once we’re outside. “It must be so cool that he’s your dad.”

“Yeah, real cool.” I lean against the front of the house. The cold air feels good on my bruises. My mom’s about to take over the city and enslave everyone, and all I can think about is I just got kicked out of a house I thought I didn’t want to live in.

The front door opens and Amelia clomps over to us. “I believe you,” she says, looking really proud of herself.

“Great.”

“If you were lying, you’d do a better job.” Amelia twists her thumbs together, fidgeting and scuffing her foot against the ground. “Alex is going to be really sad if you go,” she says. “He’s gotten used to you living in his room.”

“Tell him I’ll never sleep on another floor without thinking of him.”

“The attic’s kind of big,” Amelia goes on. “Dad could probably put a wall in it. It could be two rooms. Alex could live up there, and then—”

“You guys would have a guest room that smelled faintly like cheese. Sorry, Amelia, but I know when I’m not wanted.”

Amelia was right about one thing. If I was lying, I’d do a better job. Just because I’m telling the truth doesn’t mean there’s any reason I shouldn’t get results.

I crowd inside the phone booth as Sarah calls up the Crimson Flash on his emergency hotline. She talks a little deeper than normal, disguising her voice in case he remembers it from five minutes ago, and tells him there’s a fire at Taylor’s address, and people are trapped on the top floor of an apartment complex.

She hangs up and says, “I hope you’re happy. Now you’ve got
me
lying.”

“It’s for a good cause. Now to get Heraldo.” I dust my hands off as we leave the phone booth and make our way toward Mom’s house. I remember the twenty bucks Mom gave me and ask Sarah if she’s hungry.

She gives me a funny look. “How can you think of food at a time like this?”

“Like what? The Crimson Flash is on the job—problem solved, right? He’s a
real
superhero. He’s got experience with this sort of thing. He’ll get there, realize there’s no fire, and figure out what’s really going on.”

“And see that you were right,” Sarah adds.

I shrug. “Listen, Sarah, about what happened earlier, in the park …”

“When you were with that girl?”

“I thought I was over her.” Only kind of a lie. I wanted to
believe
I was—that’s close enough.

“Clearly you’re not.” Sarah holds on to the edge of her glasses and looks down her nose at me.

“But I should have told you first, as soon as I realized it wasn’t going to work out. Between you and me.”

Sarah’s quiet for a minute. Then she clears her throat. “I … I liked you, Damien. I
do
, I mean. I should have told you that from the beginning. Guys aren’t usually into me, and I thought it would be easier if you were my science experiment instead of my boyfriend.”

“I’m sorry we won’t be going to any dances. It could have been fun.” I want to tell her she’ll find somebody. Somebody awesome—not awesomer than me, of course, but still cool—but I think it would just make things worse.

“Not as fun as with her, though.” Sarah hooks her thumbs in her pockets and scuffs her shoe against the pavement. “It’s probably better we keep things one hundred percent professional anyway. To avoid awkward situations.”

Like this one? I don’t have the heart to tell her we don’t have a professional relationship, either, and that she’s still not my sidekick because the superhero thing isn’t going to stick. I let it go for now, thankful that she accepted my apology and things are going to be okay between us.

We get to my house about half an hour later, opting to go straight there instead of getting dinner. I tell Sarah to wait outside while I get Heraldo. He leaps up on me as soon as I open the door, giving me a face full of dog, licking my cheek and pounding me to the ground. When he’s done, I pick myself up and notice a note on the table from Mom. She says not to worry about dinner because she and Taylor are already busy with their plans and won’t be back until morning. P.S., she can’t wait until I’m her little prince of the city, yada, yada, yada.

Great. At least the Crimson Flash is on the job and we don’t have to worry. Plus, with Mom and Taylor gone all night, I don’t have to leave Sarah standing in the cold.

I tell her she can come in. She shoves past me and throws her arms around her dog. “Heraldo!”

I crumple up the note on the table before Sarah sees it. She doesn’t need to know that Mom is one of the bad guys and has big plans for me. Plus, being called her “little prince of the city” is kind of embarrassing.

I’m home. Finally. I flop down on the couch while Sarah glomps Heraldo and he licks her hair. No wonder it’s so poofy all the time. But at least she’s safe, and the Crimson Flash is going to put a stop to Mom’s plans. And I’m out of the Tines house, back at Mom’s where I belong. Where it’s quiet and I have my own room and nobody freaks every time I move a muscle.