The Trials of Renegade X (3 page)

“But it does mean you don’t have a right to be jealous.”

I clench my fist. “I am
not
—”

“You only want to spend time with me because you can’t have me. That’s kind of the definition of
jealous
.”

“You’re my sidekick. How am I supposed to get my
H
if you’re spending all your time making out with some guy?”

“You say that, but every time I have a mission for us, you’re too busy with Kat. Slipping certain parts of your anatomy into certain parts of hers.’”

“
Language
, Sarah.” The mouth on her. Seriously.

“Those were
your
own words, Damien. And besides, who says we’re making out?”

“Great, then you won’t mind if I—”

“We could be doing
much
more than that, but you know what? It’s none of your business.”

“Come on, Sarah, don’t be like that.”

“I have to go—Riley’s here with the movie. Good-bye, Damien.” She hesitates, then adds, “Don’t call back,” before hanging up.

“I’ll watch a movie with you,” Amelia says. She’s sitting on the edge of my bed, idly kicking one leg against the mattress.

This is what it’s come down to. Spending Friday nights watching movies with my half sister, who will always be free because she has no life. This is what I have to look forward to now that Kat’s moving to Vilmore without me and Sarah’s preoccupied with the Invisible Douche.

“Or I can go make sure Sarah’s not doing anything I wouldn’t do.”

Amelia snorts. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do?”

I pause, thinking it over. “Homework.”

She rolls her eyes, then brightens. “Have you started it? I bet you haven’t. You’re going to be
so
behind.”

“On what? School hasn’t even started yet.”

“Um, hello? Didn’t you get Miss Monk’s email? We already have a project assigned in Intro to Heroism, and it’s due
Wednesday
.” She says
Wednesday
like it’s the day the world’s going to end.

Did I mention that it’s not just me who’s starting at Heroesworth next week, but also Amelia? Even though she’s eight months younger than me and was a grade below me at our high school, she applied for early admission to Heroesworth this year, since she’ll be sixteen in October. They let her in—a decision that probably had more to do with her dad being the Crimson Flash than it did the ten-page essay she wrote them—which she bragged about all summer. At least until I got accepted, too, and then she said they’d let
anybody
in.

“I don’t even know what classes I’m in yet.” What with us not being allowed to choose any of our classes our first semester, plus I was kind of a last minute addition, thanks to Gordon pulling some strings with a friend on the admissions board. But I’m going to take a shot in the dark and guess that my classes are all, how you say, really stupid?

Amelia gapes at me. “Didn’t you read your intro packet? New students have to take Intro to Heroism. That means both of us.” She narrows her eyes a little, as if waiting for me to argue. Then she clears her throat. “If you want, I could help you start the assignment.”

Work on an assignment before I’ve even started school? For a class I may or may not even be in? “Yeah, that’s exactly how I want to spend my Friday night. Don’t you have flying lessons to get to? Oh, wait, that’s right. You
don’t
.” Amelia spent months telling me how much better at flying she was going to be than me when she got her power. Then a few weeks ago she discovered she could teleport items to her, but only if she’d touched them before. It was apparently her great grandmother’s power on Helen’s side, meaning she didn’t inherit “the family power” like I did. And after enduring months of her being a snobby bitch about it, I’m taking every chance I can get to gloat. “It’s too bad, really. I wanted to see him push you off a building.” Like he did to me, no thanks to her.

She flicks a piece of fuzz off her shirt. “You’re such a jerk.”

“Yeah, I am. But you, Amelia, you’re
delightful
. A real pleasure to be around.” Just thinking about falling from the tallest building in Golden City still makes me sick, especially as I remember the pavement rushing toward me, which I
still
have nightmares about. My fear of heights was bad enough, and then Gordon had to go and make it worse. This from the guy who supposedly teaches safety lessons to kids. Good thing my flying power kicked in at the last second, or else he’d have had a lot of explaining to do.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Amelia pouts. “I’m
not
going to help you with your assignment. And you’ll be sorry on Wednesday.”

Sure I will. And pigs will sprout wings and Gordon will sleep with a supervillain. Oh, wait, that last one already happened.

“You’ll be the only one without a poster to present.”

A poster. Yeah, I think I can make a poster in two days,
if
I’m even in that class. “I’ll manage.”

“Okaaaay,” she says, drawing it out to convey just how skeptical she is. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Chapter 2

MY FIRST CLASS AT Heroesworth on Monday morning is Intro to Heroism.

Fine. So Amelia was right for once.

All the new students have to take it, and there are enough of us that there’s more than one session. And even though we have the same teacher, Amelia has it in the afternoon. Meaning that when I walk through the door, the one person I know in this school isn’t here. It’s just me, a half villain, alone in a room full of heroes. My least favorite people. And, judging by the looks they’re giving me, I’m
their
least favorite person, too, though obviously only because they don’t yet know how awesome I am.

Wait. Did I say I only know one person in this school? Because I counted wrong. I know
two
people, and even though his seat is empty, I recognize Riley’s backpack slumped on the floor next to it. It’s pretty hard to miss, what with having a big silver Theta—the symbol for the Cosine Kid, Sarah’s sidekick alter ego—drawn on it. His notebook’s also splayed open on his desk, and I catch a glimpse of some scribbling in Sarah’s handwriting that says,
Sarah <3s Riley
.

Barf. Sarah only “<3s” Riley because she’s too blinded by the
H
on his thumb to realize what an epic jerk he is. Or at least what an epic jerk he is to
me
. Which he was even before I broke his finger. I mean, before I innocently knocked him off Sarah’s bed and he, all on his own, injured himself by not falling to the floor properly.

I glance around the classroom, hoping for better seating prospects. Two girls who were whispering to each other look away guiltily when I make eye contact. And not because they were discussing my amazing hotness levels, but like they already know who I am—or, more accurately, who I’m
not
. My face gets a little warm, and I can’t help making a fist with my right hand, hiding the
X
on my thumb.

A couple of guys “accidentally” bump into me on their way into the room, not even pretending to apologize. They catch me off guard, and I stumble a couple steps into a desk, which makes a loud screeching sound as it scrapes across the floor. Then
everyone
turns to stare at me.

“Just rearranging the furniture,” I tell them.
Nothing to see here.

Hushed conversations carry on throughout the room. I make out words like
villain
, X, and
shouldn’t be here
.

Great. Five seconds in, and I can already tell my list of people who need dealing with—that is, my list of people who tried to mess with me and are going to get what they deserve—is going to be a mile long this year. And by
this year
, I probably mean more like
this month
. Or maybe even
this week
.

It would be so easy—and probably safer for my classmates—for me to turn around, go home, and tell Gordon I want to go back to my old school with Sarah. Where the kids don’t have superpowers or
V
s or
H
s. Or, you know,
X
s. I might have been one of a kind there, too, but at least if people whispered about me in the halls, it was because I switched all the ketchup in the lunchroom with hot sauce or because I rigged the school intercom so when the principal made the morning announcements, he sounded like a chipmunk.

But I picture how red Gordon’s face was and how tongue-tied he got when he was trying to tell his parents why he suddenly had a sixteen-year-old half-villain kid and where I came from. He got
that
worked up just telling them about it over the phone. Big surprise, but they didn’t want to meet me. Which is fine with me—I already have grandparents, and they rock—but Gordon moped around for days like someone had spilled chocolate ice cream on his favorite cape. Which, er, might have actually happened, but I can neither confirm nor deny my whereabouts that evening.

And I remember, in contrast, how happy he was when I said I wanted to go to Heroesworth. “My oldest son, following in my footsteps,” he said, then ruffled my hair and went on and on about how great Heroesworth was and how much I was going to love it.

Love it. Right.

I take a deep breath and force myself not to leave. Because as much as I really don’t care about following in Gordon’s footsteps, it was pretty cool seeing him beaming with pride at me. And, as an added bonus, witnessing Gordon’s fatherly love for me made Amelia practically choke on her cereal.

Ignoring all the stares and whispers, I take the seat next to Riley’s. Everyone else in this class might
think
they don’t want to sit by me, but Riley
knows
he doesn’t. If I have to sit by someone who hates me—a mutual feeling, of course—it might as well be the person who’s going to be the most annoyed by it.

I drop my backpack to the floor and stretch out my legs like I own this place. Then I hear a dramatic sigh next to me and Riley appears in his seat. Which I guess means he was there the whole time, what with being able to turn invisible and all. Which, according to Sarah, is cooler than being able-but-not-willing to fly. Whatever. I told her invisibility was a lame power and that she just has bad taste in guys. Me excluded, I mean.

“I didn’t pull my disappearing act because I
wanted
you to sit here,” Riley says. He’s got short light-brown hair that he styles to look casually messy all the time, which, according to Sarah, makes him “really cute,” though, according to
me
, it just makes him really douchey. He’s also wearing a T-shirt covered in quotes from the League Treaty, the superheroes’ code of honor they all have to sign to be considered legit. And even though he’s sitting down, I know from past encounters that he’s taller than me. “It’s called avoidance. Can’t you take a hint?”

“I
can
. I just choose not to.” I lean over and snatch the notebook from his desk. He makes a grab for it, but I turn my shoulder to him and start writing in it before he can stop me.

“Like you choose not to take the hint about me and Sarah?” He gets a grip on the notebook and yanks it away from me, but not before I’ve written
Riley + Damien = BFFs
in a style that matches his handwriting. He makes a face when he sees it and slams the notebook down on his desk. “I heard about you trying to weasel your way into our movie night. Why can’t you leave us alone?”

“Sarah’s my best friend.” Well, besides Kat.

“Right.” Riley rolls his eyes at me. “If you were really her friend, you’d want her to be happy. And face it, X,
I
make her happy.”

I try not to show how annoyed I am. I hate it when he calls me X. And I hate how there’s an implied “not you” at the end of his sentence. “Good for you. She has a thing for heroes, and you’re her latest phase. You might have the
H
, but she’s
my
sidekick.” Sidekicks are forever. Mr. Perfect is only a temporary problem.

He snorts. “Not exclusively.”

“
What?
”

He grins and looks like he’s about to open his stupid jerk mouth to say something else when our teacher walks in the room. Or at least I’m assuming that’s who she is, since she goes and stands in front of the whiteboard, where it says
Mikayla Monk
in big letters. Other than that, though, she doesn’t really look like a teacher. She’s probably in her mid-twenties, blond, and has on this glittery, pink spandex superhero outfit. And she’s painted on an eye mask with dark-blue makeup that looks like it’s about 50 percent sparkles. Her thigh-high boots are bright pink and so glossy, they look like you could use them as a mirror. The only thing she’s wearing that isn’t pink is a blue cape that matches her face paint and only goes about halfway down her back.

The whole class shuts up and stares at her as she struts to the front of the room. She puts her hands on her hips and surveys the class, her gaze moving up and down each aisle. I might be imagining it, but I think there’s a pause as she gets to me, and a slight tightening of her jaw.

She pulls a tube of lipstick out of a small pouch on her belt and twists the end, bringing it to her lips like she’s going to redo her makeup right here in class. But at the last second, she gives it another twist, two red lights start blinking on the side, and she hurls the tube into the middle of the classroom.

Right next to me.

My muscles tense. I have no idea what’s going on, and before I can figure it out, the lipstick tube beeps and flashes a blindingly bright light. I throw my arms over my face and turn away as fast as I can. I’ve spent enough time with Sarah to know not to stare directly into any flashing gadgets unless I want to go at least temporarily blind. The tube must have a speaker in it, too, because I hear a tinny
kaboom
sound.

I guess that’s supposed to be it blowing up, but it sounds super fake and nothing like the real thing. Which I have experience with, also thanks to spending time with Sarah. But this was just a simulation.