The Rise of Renegade X (20 page)

I thump down on the bench next to her. I rub my arms, feeling the cold after being inside for so long. It’s the middle of March, so it’s not exactly winter, but it’s not exactly warm out yet, either.

“Was it easy peasy?” Sarah asks.

“Just like everything else.” I hand her one of the passes. We have to call an 800 number to activate them, but then they should get us wherever we want to go, as long as it isn’t into one of the dorms. Which is fine by me.

We use the guest cards to get into the main building and head up to Taylor’s office. I pretend to be really tired to hide my, er … reluctance to go up the stairs at a normal pace. It’s not hard to fake. I stick close to the wall and cling to the inside railing—they have it on both sides here—and act like I have to haul myself up out of fatigue. Sarah thinks I’m cool, even if she also thinks I’m some kind of wannabe superhero. How awesome would she think I was if she knew I can barely get up the stairs? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

We get to the office door marked T. M. LEWIS, DEAN OF VILMORE UNIVERSITY, and go in.

Taylor’s office smells like spiced apple cider. I wonder if my house will smell like that when he moves in.
If
he moves in. What if he expects us to move to his house when he and Mom get married? No way. Mom would never move her lab. Course, she’d never sleep with a superhero, either.

There’s a bookshelf on one side of Taylor’s office, a large desk in the middle, and a coat rack over in the far corner, along with three filing cabinets. A large book lies open on the desk, next to Taylor’s laptop. It looks like a logbook, with a list of names of all the supervillain kids who applied to go to Vilmore. Some of the names have stars by them, depending on how likely they are to get in. It’s getting late in the submissions process, and Taylor should be making the final decisions and sending out notices soon. Some of the names have already been stamped with
ACCEPT
or
REJECT
. My name is at the top of the page. It only has three out of five stars, and it doesn’t have an acceptance stamp yet, which is odd. Next to my name, it says,
Very smart, shows much aptitude for success in villainy, but might not be Vilmore material
.

What?! I double-check to make sure I read the note next to my name and not someone else’s. I can’t believe it. Taylor’s dating—no,
marrying—
my mom. That means he’s not allowed to say I’m not Vilmore material. I’m excellent material. Has he been drinking Mom’s punch? Think of the strain it’s going to cause on their relationship if he doesn’t let me in. And if in their selfish marital bliss they’re too distracted to care that I’m miserable? I’ll make them care. I’ll have plenty of time for it.

There’s another note scrawled in the margin of the page, explaining the first one. It says:

Damien is clever but lacks a certain ruthlessness. I believe he has potential, but Vilmore may not be the place to harness it. Marianna tells me he once freed all twenty of her lab rats when he learned she was going
to inject them with a possibly fatal concoction. This Weakness on its own is not enough to condemn him. However, if he wishes to do well at Vilmore, he’ll find there’s no place for that kind of sympathy here. On the other hand, he’s committed several villainous acts that I find quite interesting—the three-day Black Plague scare at City Hall, the moths in the butterfly exhibit—all ambitious for his age, but ultimately small-time and frivolous
.

I take quick, deep breaths. That’s not fair. That’s
so
not fair. The lab-rat incident was years ago. Okay, only two, but if Mom didn’t want me to get upset about her murdering them, she shouldn’t have made them out to be my pets. Did she mention that little fact when she was sharing embarrassing anecdotes about me? The other applicants could have freed thousands of lab rats, only Taylor doesn’t know about it because there wasn’t a check box for that on the application. And I think I learned my lesson when one of them crawled into my bed and nibbled my toes. I mistakenly thought the rats and I were friends. What’s wrong with that? Taylor said I was ambitious—that has to count for something. And if he thinks my villainous acts are too frivolous, I can kick it up a notch. Bigger, better, more … ruthless. Either way, Taylor and I are going to have a talk. Hopefully it will involve me showing him a thorough list of my villainous exploits and explaining to him why I’m Vilmore material incarnate, instead of me getting on my knees and begging him to let me in, because if I don’t get into this school, I will die. End of story. And if I have to, I’ll explain to him that if he wants to keep doing my mom, he’s going to find a place for me at Vilmore, because I’m not as sympathetic as he thinks.

“Are you okay?” Sarah’s staring at me, her forehead wrinkled in concern. “Your breathing definitely sounds off.”

“I’m fine.”

She comes closer and points at the book. “What’s that?”

I slam it shut before she can read my name on the list. The last thing I want right now is Sarah finding out I applied to go to school here. “Santa’s naughty-or-nice list. Nothing about your dad.”

She chews her lip and stares at the floor when I mention him. She jumps when I put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll find him. No problem.”

“Right.” Sarah nods, mumbles something about checking out the coat rack, and slips out of my grasp.

I sit down at the desk, shoving the admissions book farther to the side and pulling Taylor’s laptop closer. I flip it open and push a button to wake it up. “Hey, Sarah,” I say, “what exactly did you do that got your dad in trouble?”

Sarah turns pink. She wrings her hands together. “Oh, that. Well, I made this invention and published some articles about it—”

Footsteps echo in the hall, cutting her off. They come closer and stop in front of the door.

Sarah and I look at each other. I shut the laptop and motion that we should hide, and we glance around the room, frantic, but there’s nowhere to go. I duck down under the desk and Sarah crawls in beside me just as the door opens.

I know it’s Taylor because I hear him humming to himself. My heart beats too hard and too fast in my chest. The laptop spins down and goes silent, and I will Taylor not to notice the sudden change. I feel a little dizzy at the thought of coming all this way and getting caught. Sarah bites her thumbnail, cringing every time Taylor takes a step nearer to our hiding place.

He picks up a coffee mug, then sets it back down. He mutters to himself about working too much. His footsteps come around the side of the desk.

I don’t know about Sarah, but I’m holding my breath. And praying. Everything about tonight has been anything but easy, and now Taylor’s going to settle in for a rousing bout of late-night paperwork and find us. And then we’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Taylor pulls out his desk chair. Sarah breathes in too sharply, too audibly. I’m sure this is it. Taylor starts to sit down, and then …

His phone rings. He answers it. “Hello, sugar lemon.” “Sugar lemon” is my mom. And totally nauseating. “Ah … just about to do some paperwork.”

Just about to decide I should get into Vilmore, he means. If he knows what’s good for him.

“No, I got the message and took care of it—Ruthersford is back to normal. I brought the raging mob out from under the mind control. I guess we were wrong about no one saying our trigger word.”

Ruthersford? As in the town full of crazies Sarah and I just escaped from? Now I know why it sounded familiar—it’s the same place Taylor was talking about testing Mom’s hypno potion on. Whatever bugs Mom’s still trying to work out with her potion, it’s obviously pretty powerful.

Taylor sighs. “You’re right, Marianna, I work much too hard. No, I won’t this time—I’ll be home in less than an hour. I promise.”

Home? He’d better mean his home, not ours.

He hangs up and shoves the chair under the desk, almost crushing my hand. He stomps off, then comes back and grabs the admissions book. So much for marking my name with an
ACCEPT
stamp while he’s not looking. How would that be for a villainous act? The door slams shut, but neither of us can move until we’re sure he’s gone.

I feel like I woke up from a bad dream. I take a deep breath.

“Damien,” Sarah says, leaning over me, “I have a very important question to ask you.”

She’s shaking. I probably am, too. I raise an eyebrow, thinking tonight can’t get any worse.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” She says it so intensely that I think it must have something to do with our mission.

Do I have a girlfriend? Let me think. …
No
, no I don’t. Not after I told her I only wanted to be friends and then she made out with some guy at a party. “No, why?”

Sarah kisses me. On the mouth. Her lips meet mine and I close my eyes and put my arms around her without thinking about it. She smells like vanilla and sweat. I lean back, pulling her closer and trying not to think about all the more important things we should be doing, like saving—er, liberating—her dad. But Taylor’s obviously going “home” to sugar lemon, not off to harass anybody. I figure Sarah’s dad’s safe enough and we’ve got time.

Suddenly everything seems so simple. Sarah’s kissing me, and I’m kissing her back and wondering why I didn’t think of this before. This is the girl who came up with a name like Renegade X, and her tongue is touching mine, and she’s not like Kat at all. She wouldn’t ever change herself to be what people want—I’ve seen her at school; I know these things. And she
likes
that I have an
X
on my thumb, even if I hate it. She—

I pull away from her. “Sarah, what are you doing?”

“Taking notes.” She has her notebook spread out on the floor beside us, and she’s writing like mad in it. While making out with me. “I’m getting good data.” When I stare at her, she says, “You’re obviously more experienced than I am, and you seemed like a good candidate to try this experiment with. Since I’d never kissed anyone before. And now seemed like an ideal time for results—I’ve read that human beings feel a heightened sense of passion after narrowly escaping danger. And this time we don’t have any zombies chasing us.” She pushes her glasses farther up her nose and kisses me again.

I don’t kiss back. “Experiment?” That sounds awfully cold and not like she actually, you know, wants me or anything. Like I’m just a bunch of numbers for her to crunch and put in her database.

Sarah gives up and writes more in her notebook. “That’s what I said. I don’t have anyone to compare you to, but you seem pleasing enough. If this session goes well, I might be interested in trying more complicated experiments with you. As long as I’m getting good data.”

I’ll give her good data all right. “Experiments? Like dating? There’s a place on Twenty-sixth Street, downtown, with the snottiest waiters. I’d be happy if the lady could join me in some troublemaking and snarking back at them. I’ve even been known to make the chef cry, on very special occasions.” I hold my arm out, like I’m going to escort her there right now.

“Oh, well, um …” Sarah takes shallow breaths and counts on her fingers, finding an excuse not to meet my eyes. She grabs her pen and focuses all her attention on her notebook, but doesn’t write anything. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She forces out a laugh and shakes her head. “We can’t go out.”

“We can stay in, then.” I picture bringing her over to the Tines house. And Amelia making fun of me for having a girlfriend, but that’s only because no boys will ever touch her.

“Damien.” She sighs. “We can’t get involved.”

“What do you call this?”

“If we’re going to work together, we have to maintain a professional relationship. As sidekick and superhero—”

I glare at her. “You’re not my sidekick. I’m not a superhero. There’s nothing professional going on. You
like
me, right?”

Her whole face turns pink, and she avoids the question. “This can never be more than an experiment.”

“So, you’re only interested in me as a human lab rat?”

“No! I didn’t say
that.”

If she says she wants me because I look like the Crimson Flash, I’m going home. “Do you like me or not?”

She doesn’t answer, lost in thought or at least pretending to be. She taps the back end of her pen against her chin. “I planned to lose my virginity on top of the Empire State Building, but you’re afraid of heights.” She sucks air in through her teeth and makes a face. “I suppose I can make an exception, because I’d rather it was with y—” She clams up. Her cheeks redden and her voice gets shrill and she talks really fast when she says, “I mean, there’ll be plenty time for landmarks later!”

“Whoa, you want to …?” My mind spins—did she just say she wanted to do what I think she said, with
me?
And did she also say I was afraid of tall buildings? Anger and a sense of betrayal push away any thoughts about what Sarah wants to do with me in the name of good data. How long has she known? Was it that obvious? And was she just going to let me think my secret was safe while really she knew? “Who said I’m afraid of heights?!” I move to stand up, forgetting I’m under a desk and bonking my head.

“Don’t pretend—it’s obvious.” Sarah hurries after me as I crawl out from under the desk, not even stopping to grab her notebook first. “You’re always late for all of your classes that aren’t on the ground floor because you wait until the halls are clear to go up the stairs. I know, because I have PE when you have English, and I see you trying to go up them when I’m going from the locker room to the gym. You demonstrate classic signs of fear. Sweating, trembling in the extremities, and difficulty breathing.”

“Maybe I’m that out of shape. Maybe I have asthma. Did you ever think of that?” I grit my teeth and open up Taylor’s laptop again.

She shakes her head. “I’ve also seen you in
your
PE class. I sit next to the window in Japanese, and I have a good view of the track. You seem fine then. So what day works for you? I think if we meet regularly, we can be at the final stage in another two months. Maybe less.”