The Trials of Renegade X (11 page)

“And that,” Mr. Fitz, our fourth-period history teacher, says, “is how the Daring Do-gooder defeated the evil Professor Doomsworth. With a matchbook and a pair of safety scissors.” He shoots the class a smug grin as he flips the book shut.

Everyone laughs. Ha ha ha. It’s so hilarious that a superhero defeated a supervillain. Even if that’s not how it happened. I don’t know what it is about superheroes that makes them all idiots, but I hope my supervillain genes cancel it out.

Not for the first time today, I raise my hand.

“Oh, my God, stop,” Amelia hisses next to me. She transferred into this class today after dropping some study hall for superpower practice that she said was a waste of time. Read: she didn’t like being reminded that she can’t fly. Especially since she told me last summer that she was basically going to become super fit once she could fly, since it’s an athletic power or something—I haven’t noticed, what with not using it—and that everyone would be jealous of her. And then she got a power that’s not only
not
athletic, but encourages laziness. Something I have pointed out to her many times over the past few weeks.

Her dyed black hair is frizzed out from walking with me in the rain this morning, and she tries to straighten it with her hands while she glances around at everyone, worried they might be judging her for knowing me. Which they probably are. “
Let it go
.”

Mr. Fitz’s nostrils flare. He’s a short, balding man with bushy eyebrows and a mustache that looks like it’s trying to eat his nose. I’m pretty sure throwing his authority around in this class is his only joy in life. “Oh, look, everyone. It seems Mr. Locke has something to say.
Again
.”

Damn right, I do. “Well, for one thing,” I tell him, “Professor Doomsworth was one of the most brilliant supervillains of our time, but he wasn’t evil.” A stereotype I’m
so
sick of hearing. I swear, if one more superhero tries to tell me that supervillains are evil, I’m going to burn their house down.

A murmur runs through the class. A couple kids snicker.

Amelia covers her eyes with her hands. Like she might be regretting sitting next to me. Or siding with me this morning. Or ever having met me.

Yesterday, which Amelia wasn’t here for, was mostly an intro day. Mr. Fitz only hinted at all the really biased, hero-centric history lessons he’d be programming us with. But today he’s actually trying to tell us stuff that didn’t happen. Or at least that didn’t happen the way the book says.

“Well, Mr. Locke, supervillains are generally considered evil.” He shares another little laugh with the class at my expense. Like the fact that they’re dumb enough to put such a giant blanket statement on every supervillain who’s ever lived is some kind of hilarious in-joke.

I ignore him. “And Professor Doomsworth was never defeated. Especially not by some idiot with a couple of matches and some safety scissors. That’s just some story, probably made up by the Daring Do-gooder to impress people. Who I’ve never even heard of, by the way, so ...” I shrug. “He couldn’t have done anything that important. And everyone knows Professor Doomsworth went crazy. He was just, you know,
too
brilliant.”

“Too brilliant,” Mr. Fitz repeats, stunned.

“Yeah. So if he was defeated at all, it was by his own mind. He had a lot of phobias. The guy spent the last month of his life in a recliner. He never got up—not once. He thought the recliner was the only germ-free place in the universe.” Which probably wasn’t true, considering he spent a whole month in it. But that’s where the crazy comes in.

Mr. Fitz nods. “Driven to madness by his loss at the hands of the Daring Do-gooder.”

“Uh, no.” And what the hell kind of name is the “Daring Do-gooder”? How daring could he have been with a lame-ass name like that? “Maybe that’s what you want to think happened, but it’s not—”

The bell rings, interrupting me. Everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief.

“I think that’s enough ’enlightenment’ for today,” Mr. Fitz says. “Read chapters two through four in your books tonight. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Except you, Mr. Locke. I’d like to have a word with you.”

I sigh and slide down in my seat, letting my legs stretch out past the edge of my desk.

“Don’t sit with me at lunch tomorrow,” Amelia says, almost tripping over my foot before hurrying out of the room with everyone else.

So much for solidarity. Not that I was planning to sit with her two days in a row. I have much better things to do than watch her inhale a turkey sandwich, like annoy Riley. I’m learning all sorts of fun things about him, like that he has a really hard time eating when someone is narrating everything he does. And that when he goes invisible, forcing me to start making things up in order to continue my narration, he gets
really
embarrassed when I get past a PG-13 rating.

Mr. Fitz puts his hands on my desk and leans forward, his beady little eyes meeting mine. “This is a classroom, Mr. Locke. Not a joke. I realize you’ve had a
different experience
than the rest of the students, but when you’re in my class—”

“I wasn’t joking. The book was wrong.”
He
was wrong. “I was correcting it.”

His eyebrows dart up. “Are you seriously trying to tell me you know more than the textbook?” He laughs.

“I know Professor Doomsworth was pretty crazy toward the end of his life. My girlfriend’s mom’s hairdresser used to date his cook. They almost got married, but then she found out he wanted her to quit her job and have, like, ten kids, so she said no way.”

He blinks at me. “Fascinating. And you think this person is more reliable than the textbook, which was written by
experts
?” He says the word
experts
like no one could possibly rank any higher, especially not some hairdresser, even though she was there.

“The textbook was written exclusively by superheroes. You have to admit it’s biased. Maybe they got some of it right, but I’ve been looking through it, and the stuff they said about villains was pretty much made up.”

“Or perhaps you’re the one who’s biased. This is a superhero school, Mr. Locke. I don’t know how you failed to notice that, considering you’re enrolled here. But if you want to pass my class—and you have to pass my class if you ever hope to graduate and join the League—you will stop wasting everyone’s time with your ’corrections.’ There will be a test next week, and I can assure you it will be based on the textbook, not on your personal anecdotes. I suggest you study it. Understood?”

“You want me to lie. On the test. Doesn’t the League Treaty frown upon that?”

He clenches his fists. “You are not in this class to fill everyone’s heads with your colorful perversion of history. You’re here to learn what I tell you. So either you will mark down the answers from the textbook, or you will fail.”

“So, if I write down the truth, then I don’t pass the class?”
That
makes sense.

He shuts his eyes, putting a hand to his forehead in exasperation. “Let me put it in terms hopefully even you can comprehend. There’s a right way to get through this class and a wrong way. The textbook is the right way.
Do you understand?
”

“Yes,” I tell him. “I understand perfectly.”

“Good.” He straightens the collar of his shirt, seeming pretty pleased with himself for supposedly putting me in my place.

“You want me to lie, and I’m not sure I can do that.”

His back stiffens. His nose twitches, his mustache quivering and threatening to eat his whole face. “Then I’m not sure I can give you a passing grade.” He says it in a “just you think about that” tone, like passing this class should be my most important goal in life.

“Well,” I say, “at least we understand each other.”

Chapter 8

“SO,” SARAH SAYS SATURDAY night, while we’re out patrolling, “I heard you failed your poster.” She says it very matter-of-factly and pushes her glasses up to the bridge of her nose, or at least as far as they’ll go with her blue eye mask on. Sarah’s costume is blue and black spandex with a big silver Theta symbol on the front, marking her as the Cosine Kid. My costume is similar, except it’s green and black and has a big silver X. They’re her own designs, ones she came up with last spring when she decided she was going to be my sidekick or else. Back before Riley ever entered the picture.

And, okay, back before I mentioned I wanted to get a
V
instead of an
H
. But things have changed since then. Now I
want
to be a hero—sort of—and I don’t know what I’d do without her as my sidekick.

I roll my eyes at the mention of the poster. And since I know I’m not the one who told her, and she’s not exactly chummy with Amelia, that leaves only one other person. “So, I heard Riley’s been talking about me.” Probably trying to convince Sarah that I’m not hero material and that she should ditch me and start being his sidekick instead. As if he knows anything about it. He can’t even fall off a bed properly. Whereas I have fallen off a bed plenty of times without injury—just ask Kat.

We pass by a bunch of shops, making what are fairly usual rounds now in downtown Golden City. Sarah puts on a pair of homemade heat-vision goggles and peers into all the storefront windows, checking for any bad-guy activity.

“Don’t blame Riley for your failure,” she says, glancing over at me. Her goggles obscure her eyes, making her look kind of like a robot.

“It wasn’t a failure. I got a
D
.”
D
as in
didn’t care.
Alex’s class made posters last year, and he was in second grade. Plus, I’m pretty sure Kat and her classmates aren’t sitting around at Vilmore obsessing over getting their magazine cutouts just right. They’re too busy, like, actually learning how to defeat superheroes and stuff. It’s as if the teachers at Heroesworth
want
us to get our asses kicked.

Sarah tilts her head, giving me a knowing look, or at least what I assume is a knowing look behind her goggles. “You’re not going to get your
H
by getting
D
s.”

I sigh. “Don’t worry. I’m supposed to redo it. Since Miss Monk thinks I didn’t understand the assignment.” Which I
did
. She just didn’t understand my vision.

“Riley said the poster was supposed to be about what heroism means to you.”

“Right. I made a big collage with kittens in trees. And it’s not like there are just pictures of cats in trees in magazines. I had to splice them together, using the technological magic of scissors and glue. It took effort.” Okay, about half an hour of effort, which I spent mostly watching an episode of a new detective show Kat and I got hooked on over the summer. It’s about a superhero detective who solves all his cases by teaming up with a supervillain on the sly. It’s really popular, even if all the reviews say it’s unrealistic. Because a hero and a villain could never be in the same room, let alone work together for the greater good.

“That’s what heroism means to you?” Sarah asks. “Kittens? In trees?”

“Don’t sound so shocked. It’s how I met my dad, remember? And it’s not like it’s the only thing I put on the poster. There were also old ladies crossing the street and a burning building.” Though now that I think about it, the way I structured it, it might have looked like the old ladies were crossing the street
into
the burning building. Oops.

Sarah wrinkles her nose. “We never do any of that stuff.”

Well, I did run into a burning building once, to save a supervillain kid, but Sarah wasn’t there for that one. And I almost got myself killed and my dad had to rush in and save me, so I’m not sure it counts.

“Is that really what heroism means to you?”

“Of course not.” I try to slip my hands into my pockets out of habit, but my Renegade X costume doesn’t have any. “But it’s what they want to hear.”

“Obviously not if you got a
D
.”

“I forgot to label the burning building as an orphanage.”

“I don’t think that’s it. I saw Riley’s poster, and—”

“It wasn’t that great.” Okay, it kind of was that great, but I don’t like the way her face lights up when she mentions him. And I don’t like how many times his name has come up already, even though this is supposed to be
our
time together.

Sarah gapes at me. “It was a breathtaking watercolor tribute to his dad, who sacrificed himself saving all those people during that bus bombing a couple years ago. There were kids on that bus.”

I swallow and don’t look at her. “See? That’s practically a burning orphanage.” And who told him to use watercolors, anyway? It was supposed to be a
collage
. But you don’t see him getting docked any points. It’s letterist, I tell you.

She puts her hands on her hips and stares at me through her goggles. And even though I can’t actually see her eyes, I’m pretty sure she’s glaring at me. “His was from the heart. Yours was just some cheap imitation of what you
think
people want to hear.”

I feel my ears heating up, and I hope she can’t see anything that detailed with her heat vision. “Fine. So I tried to fake my way through the assignment. But it’s not like I would have done any better with the truth. I’m not exactly the typical hero, and you should see the way they all look at me, like I’m some kind of criminal. Riley included.” Though, to be fair, he is the only person in the class who I’ve so far caused any bodily harm to, so I
suppose
he has legit reasons, even if he’s still a douche. “They don’t want to know what my actual opinions are.”

She shakes her head. “You really think you’re going to get your
H
by faking your way through Heroesworth? It’s your body, you know. You’re not going to be fooled by that crap. And,” she adds, “neither is anyone else.”

As if I can just wish my thumb to be whatever letter I want. If it was that easy, I’d have gotten rid of this stupid
X
months ago. Though I can’t help noticing how disappointed she sounds in me, or the little ache that seeps into my chest because of it. “Good thing I’m going to redo it, then.” Probably.