The Rise of Renegade X (9 page)

Helen steps out of the kitchen, stirring a bowl of pancake batter.

“I can’t help it if I’m entranced by her beauty,” I say, managing to do it without gagging, which I think should earn me some kind of award.

Amelia looks like she’s going to be sick.

Helen scowls at her. “Amelia,
be nice.”

“But,
Mooooom!”

“Amelia!” Helen forgets she has a spoon in her hand and accidentally flings batter across the floor when she points it at her daughter. Helen jerks her chin toward me in an effort to be discreet, like I won’t notice they’re talking about me. In a tight voice, her teeth clenched, she says, “We already discussed this.”

Helen seems to be under the impression that I was “rescued” from my awful life of living in a filthy den of savage and immoral supervillains. She was not as forgiving of Gordon, however, who had to sleep on the couch, even though they weren’t together yet when he sired me. (Almost, though. I’ve only got an eight-month lead on Amelia.) Helen thinks I’m some sort of deprived refugee and is careful not to hurt my feelings or make me feel unwelcome. Which she would probably not be doing if she knew the truth, that I’m a supervillain at heart and thoroughly despise everything hero related.

“Are you going to learn to fly?” Alex asks, leaping onto the seat next to me.

“No!”
Amelia and I both shout at the same time. I squint at her.

“Alex, don’t stand on the furniture!” Amelia glares at him, then at me.

Alex doesn’t listen to her. “You
are
going to,” he says. “Dad told me last night.”

I laugh. Just a little chuckle to myself. “Sorry to disappoint you, Alex, but that’s not going to happen.”

He doesn’t look at all convinced. “How do
you
know?”

Because I’m going to spend all of my time praying I get laser eyes or pretty much anything but Gordon’s awful ability
. “I’m going to be a supervillain,” I explain, “and no self-respecting supervillain
flies.”
Unless it’s in a cool jet or rocket pack, but even so, that’s not going to be me. I’m not leaving the ground anytime soon.

“Who cares if he doesn’t want to fly?” Amelia asks Alex. “Flying powers are for superheroes only, and he’s clearly not one of us, no matter what Dad says. I’m still going to be the first.” She sounds pretty proud of that and twirls a lock of her hair around her finger.

The idea of leaving the ground makes me sick. My chest constricts and my stomach flops. I push my bare feet against the floor to remind myself I’m on solid ground. “It’s getting kind of late—I’m already sixteen.”

Amelia scowls like I said it to rub it in.

“All my friends got their powers months ago. Maybe I’m a dud. I’ve got this stupid
X
, and mixing both viruses could mean I’m not going to get a power.” I could live with that if it meant getting out of flying. “Or maybe I won’t get one until I turn this into a
V.”

“Or an
H,”
Alex chimes in. So helpful.

“Either way, flying isn’t my ability. I’m sure of it.”

“You don’t know that,” Amelia says, sounding sympathetic for once.

But one thing I do know? I’m
not
flying.
Ever
.

“Dude.”
Some guy grabs my arm as I go to sit down, apparently thinking he’s doing me a favor. “You don’t want to sit there. That’s Kink.” He points to the girl sitting in the desk next to the one I was heading for. “She’s a freak.”

I look around the classroom. There’s a group of four kids off to the side wearing black spandex with black jeans over it, chains around their waists like belts, and gloves. Their gloves look a lot like the ones I’m wearing, except that I’ve got both of mine on, and they only wear one on their right hand. Like they’ve got something to hide—kind of like me—only I’m pretty sure they don’t, because according to Amelia, she’s the only superhero at this school. A fact she didn’t sound too upset about.

Unlike everybody else, the black-spandex kids sit on top of their desks. Then there’s the teacher, Mrs. Log, who’s wearing a plain, flower-print dress and scribbling some equations on the whiteboard. Most of the other kids plowing into the room sit in the middle rows of desks and don’t make eye contact with the spandex kids. But nobody sits anywhere near “Kink,” the girl in the back.

Kink has crimped, sandy-blond hair, with a hair band pulled over the top of it. It does nothing to stop it from looking wild and poofy and unkempt. A long braided strand of hair runs down the side of her face, with a couple of silver beads woven in that go with the choker made of tinfoil gleaming around her neck. She doesn’t seem to notice that nobody wants to sit by her, her nose shoved in a paperback about the world’s most notorious jailbreaks. By the looks of it, it’s a real page-turner.

Hmm. Supposed freak, or the boring rest of the class? I shrug off the guy who thinks he’s doing me a favor and sit down next to Kink. She doesn’t look up at me or acknowledge my presence in any way.

It was Gordon and Helen’s idea for me to go to high school. When I told Helen I’d never been before, she almost cried. Then I explained that I’d been homeschooled, but that didn’t help. She must have been picturing cavemen-like supervillains in capes grunting and showing me how to rub two sticks together to make “the pretty fire stuff.”

There are high schools specifically for heroes, but thankfully Gordon doesn’t believe in sending his kids there. He thinks going to a school full of boring old regular kids brings you closer to the people you’ll be saving later. I asked him why, with that line of thinking, he didn’t send us to an old-people home so we could get closer to the people we’re going to help cross the street. His face kind of twitched, like he wanted to get mad at me, but instead he smiled and said I could volunteer at the senior center after school if I was concerned. Fat chance. But even if I won’t be saving anyone, I’m glad he didn’t try to send me to hero school. Regular school is going to be bad enough, and so is living with a bunch of superheroes—I don’t need to be surrounded by hundreds of them every day. Ugh.

Gordon and Helen made Amelia walk with me on the way here, but once we set foot inside the building, she gave me instructions not to talk to her, called me a freak for good measure, and walked off. I will be, as they say, paying her a visit at lunch today. I look forward to it.

“Class,” Mrs. Log says once “school” has started, “today we have a new student.” She beckons me toward the front of the room. People turn their heads as I pass by, making pointed looks at my gloves, and coughing the word “Poser” into their hands. Maybe word hasn’t gotten around that Amelia and I are related, and they think I’m pretending to be a hero. Or a villain. Or this school isn’t as hero-friendly as Gordon thought, and they’re pissed because I’m not ordinary enough to go here.

Mrs. Log introduces me. “Kids, this is Damien Locke.”

I take a bow, which earns me some snickering from the black-spandex kids, who are now sitting behind their desks like everybody else.

“He’s, uh, coming to us from another school. Is that right, Damien?” Mrs. Log’s brow furrows as she checks over a piece of paper that must have my information on it.

The Mistress of Mayhem’s Institution for Underprivileged Boys. “Eastwood,” I say, because that’s the school Amelia keeps telling me I
should
be going to. Eastwood is apparently where they send kids who can’t handle normal society. You know, delinquents, the insane, and pregnant girls.

Saying I came from Eastwood gets me the reaction I wanted. Half the class looks away from me in a mixture of fear and revulsion. The spandexes laugh derisively and whisper amongst themselves. Kink still has her nose buried in her book.

Mrs. Log tries to very casually take a step away from me. Then another. “Eastwood, is that right? Oh, my, that’s …” She wrings her hands together, her attention swiveling to the whiteboard behind her, like she’s just remembered she has some very important math to teach. “Well, class, shall we get started?”

That’s my cue to sit down. I take my place next to Kink, but she continues to read her book, unfazed by my confession of being either insane or a delinquent, or else unaware of it, too busy learning about breaking out of prison and not paying any attention to the math Mrs. Log is trying to teach us. I don’t blame Kink for not listening, because it’s boring anyway. We’re learning advanced algebra, but I covered this with Mom three years ago.

I learn at roll call that Kink’s first name is Sarah, and that Kink is actually her last name and not something people made up. Her hand shoots up when Mrs. Log calls her name, but she doesn’t say “Here!” like everybody else, and she doesn’t look away from her book.

Mrs. Log doesn’t try to call on Sarah or on me, I notice. She gives the black-spandex kids all the really easy questions and even then has to walk them along, feeding them hints about the answers. Everyone else in the class gets normal treatment.

I tap my fingers on the desk. I catch myself playing “Poisoned Lipstick in My Heart,” and that puts a stop to that. I’m beginning to think my investment in Sarah was misguided, since she hasn’t done anything but read her book, when she suddenly slams it down, looks over at me, and gasps. Her glasses make her brown eyes look huge, and her mouth slips open as she continues to stare.

She stares at me for the rest of class. At some point she takes out a notebook and scribbles in it. She chews the end of her pen. She laughs quietly and shakes her head while she writes, and she doesn’t seem to care when I stare right back at her. I try staring at her boobs, which are buried under several layers of clothing, including a wool sweater and a denim jacket. I know she notices, because I hear her mutter, “Drawn to female characteristics of the species,” as she writes, but that’s the only reaction I get out of her.

She doesn’t say anything to me until the bell rings and class ends. While Mrs. Log is reminding everyone to do their homework tonight, Sarah quickly stands up, nods at me, and says, “You look just like him.” Then she hurries off, the first one out of the room.

I have to push my way past everyone to catch up to her, the rest of the class now clogging up the doorway. I run after her in the hall and grab her arm.

“What did you mean, I look just like him?”

“Like the Crimson Flash.” She points at me with her pen. “You have his jaw and his ears. And you
didn’t
go to Eastwood.” She laughs, as if she’s sharing an in-joke with some invisible person. “They never transfer them in the middle of the semester.” Then she takes off.

“Wait!” I grab her arm again. “I do
not
look like him.”

Sarah glances over her shoulder, her eyes darting back and forth, like she expects something bad to happen. “I really have to go,” she says, pulling herself free from my grasp. “But you do, you look just like him.”

“What are you, in his fan club?”

“No, but I used to watch his show. Now I really,
really—”

Somebody shoves me hard from behind. I stumble and fall forward, landing in a heap on the dirty hallway floor.

“Kink’s got herself a boyfriend.” It’s one of the spandex kids, a tall boy who seems to be their ringleader. He slams his hand into a nearby locker, pinning Sarah between him and it.

Three other kids stand by and jeer.

“What’s the matter, Kink? I’m not good enough for ya?” He makes kissing noises at her.

Sarah tries to dart past him, but he blocks her with his other arm.

In the middle of hauling myself to my feet, someone else stomps on my back and knocks me down. They laugh. They sound like hyperventilating chickens.

The girl of the group jerks Sarah’s notebook out of her hands, the one she was writing about me in.

“Don’t!” Sarah shouts, reaching out to stop her.

The girl holds it away from Sarah and flips through it, but I guess she can’t understand enough of it to make fun of it, because she just goes, “Blah, blah, blah. Don’t you ever do anything
interesting
, Kink?”

“Give it back, Jill!”

“Leave her alone,” I say as I get to my feet.

“God, you’re weird,” Jill says, ripping off Sarah’s tinfoil choker.

“I said leave her alone!” I glare at them, my fists clenched. I don’t have any lasers or poisoned invitations or anything, only sheer force of will. My heart beats wild in my chest and adrenaline surges through my veins. “Let her go.”

The hallway’s empty by now, though nobody tried to stop them even when it was full. It’s just me and Sarah and the four spandex kids.

“Uh-oh, Marty,” one of the other ones says, addressing the ringleader, who still has Sarah pinned to the locker. “Scrawny poser boy’s mad at you.”

“You’re
so
scared,” Jill says sarcastically to Marty. She says it to him, but she waves her hands around, making “Ooooh” noises like a ghost, at me. Like I’m the one who
should
be scared. Then she nods toward my gloved hands, her face twitching in disgust. “Both gloves? That’s lame.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about. Maybe if I’d only worn one glove, like them, they’d think I was cool, but somehow I doubt it.