The Trials of Renegade X (32 page)

“Wow. You’re right. You running off
is
selfish and cowardly.”

“
You
won’t be better off, but Gordon and everybody else will. It’s actually pretty selfless of me, if you think about it.”

“Except for the part where you leave me devastated and unable to go on.”

“Yeah, but you’ll forgive me.” She actually, like, still loves me and stuff. “He won’t.”

Jess tugs on my sleeve and shoves another picture at me. This one is ... I can’t actually tell what this one is supposed to be, but it might involve an alligator and a zebra. Which probably makes it a crocodile, except it might also be a picture of a snake and an oddly striped cow. Who knows?

“Good work,” I tell her. “Now draw something for Kat. It’ll be my going away present to her.”

“You don’t get to have someone else draw me a going away present from you. And I should be the one giving you something, since you’re the one leaving, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m thoughtful like that.”

“Uh-huh. And your dad’s not going to forgive you if you run away.”

“He’s not going to forgive me if I stay, either. Not for this. The best I can do is minimize the damage.”

“That’s the best you can do?”

I shrug. “It’s not the worst.”

She takes a deep breath, watching me. Her eyes search my face, and I stare at her, and in my mind I hear Sarah accusing me of being a villain and telling me to stop using my lightning power all over again.

“Don’t do that, Damien,” Kat whispers.

“I’m not doing anything.” Just remembering what it felt like when I thought I might lose her. When I had a gun pointed at my chest and was worried I might accidentally fry a bunch of people, Kat included.

There are footsteps on the stairs. Kat’s eyes go wide and she shimmers and turns into a pillow right before there’s a knock on the door. And it’s a good thing she does, because Helen doesn’t wait for me to answer—or to hide any girls who aren’t supposed to be in my room—before opening it and saying, “It’s time for Jess’s nap.”

Jess stares at the pillow at the foot of my bed. “Kat,” she says.

“Does she have to go? She’s kind of my secretary.”

“She’s going to get really cranky in about five minutes,” Helen says, coming over and picking her up from the bed. “And, Damien, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. About that video—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I can’t help glancing over at Kat. Or at least at the pillow that’s secretly her. She must have seen it by now. She must have seen what happened after Sarah shot her.

“Well, we’re
going
to talk about it. I saw what you did. When you were covered in electricity. When Kat was hurt and you used your power to sa—”

“No, you didn’t see!” I don’t mean to yell at her—it just bursts out of me. Because it’s not just her that doesn’t understand, but
everyone
. And Kat is
right there
, even if Helen doesn’t know that, and I don’t want her dredging up everything that happened or talking about how she thinks all supervillains are evil, including me. “You saw what you wanted to, like everybody else!”

“
Damien
. Don’t raise your voice to—” Her eyes go wide. And kind of scared.

Sparks of electricity fly between my fingertips. And along my arms. Because it feels like everybody in the world thinks they know what happened, that they know
who I am
, and who I’m
not
, and I’m sick of it. And maybe I could make the sparks stop, but I don’t. “I know what you said about me! You told Gordon I was a bad influence on
your
kids. You said I was going to fail at Heroesworth and disappoint him. And now you’re right, and you don’t get to gloat about it. And you don’t get to talk about that video of us—of me—because you weren’t there!”

She winces and gets this mixed look of hurt and guilt on her face. Hurt because of all the awful things I just said, and guilt because of all the awful things I know
she
said. Her eyes don’t leave the electricity on my hands as she takes a step back, wrapping her arms tight around Jess. “You need to calm down.”

“Then you need to leave me alone.”

“Damien, I just wanted to—” She takes a deep breath and holds up a hand. “Fine. We’ll talk about this later, when you can control yourself.”

“No, we won’t!”

She backs out of the room, and I get up and slam the door behind her. I wait until I hear her angry footsteps creaking on the stairs before flopping back down on my bed. I bring my knees up and take deep breaths, trying to make the sparks die down.

Kat shapeshifts back into herself and crawls over beside me. “Wow,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know you had that in you.”

“Me, neither.”

“So ... what’s our circus act going to be? Because there’s no way I’m letting you go without me.”

I smile. “I thought I would be part of the freak show. People could pay twenty bucks to look at my
X
. It’s going to be called
X-Rated
.”

“Twenty bucks? For twenty bucks, it better actually
be
x-rated.”

“Fine. Ten bucks.”

“There’s only one problem with that. Well, two, because I said what’s
our
act going to be, not yours. But your
X
is going to change someday, right? And then you’ll have an
H
or a
V
and you’ll be out of a job.”

“Right. Well, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“You
so
need me.”

“Plus, maybe it won’t change, because I don’t know what I am. I mean, I have two powers, right? And I’ve kind of screwed up as both a villain and a hero.” I used my villain power to save Kat. But also to blow up part of the school and kind of ruin everybody’s lives. So what does that make me?

Kat shapeshifts her thumb to have an
X
, just like mine, and holds it up. “Or I could take over your act.”

“Don’t cheapen it.” But I smile at her and we press our thumbs together. “I bet our act would do a lot better with you in it. What with being called
X-Rated
and all.”

She punches my arm. Right on my burn.

“Ow!” I wince and hold my hand there.

“Oops. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. It only hurts when you hit me.”

She rolls her eyes at me. Then she lies back with one arm under her head. “You know you can’t really join the circus.”

“I’m sure I can think of a better act.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” I slide my hand over hers. “But I don’t know how to fix this.”

“Maybe you can’t. Sometimes bad things happen. Like when Mr. Wiggles died and we couldn’t put him back together and he came back as a zombie.”

Mr. Wiggles was her old dancing flower toy she gave me for my birthday. He got broken—no thanks to Amelia snipping him in half—and no amount of duct tape could fix him or make him dance again. And he didn’t really come back as a zombie, though he kind of looked like one after all the duct tape. “It was
Dr.
Wiggles, Kat. I didn’t put him through grad school for nothing.”

She laughs. Then she whispers, “You can’t fix everything, Damien.”

“No, maybe not,” I admit, squeezing her hand. “But I can sure as hell try.”

Chapter 24

IT’S NOT PARTICULARLY HARD to break into Sarah’s house on Tuesday. In the middle of the day. Which might not be the best time for covert operations, but it
is
the best time for no one being home, since Sarah has school and her dad has work. And Heraldo has ... running around in the backyard and barking before I even step foot on the front porch.

It helps that I have a key. I had to dig it out of the back of the drawer I shoved it in when she gave it to me a couple months ago. She said it was in case there was ever a superhero emergency and I needed to either grab some of her gadgets or save her from bad guys who’d taken over the house. I told her that second one was pretty unlikely, since I didn’t exactly think I could win a fight with someone who could take her on and live to tell about it.
Ha
. I also told her there’s no way I’d be randomly taking some of her gadgets, either, unless I already knew what they did. You never know when one of them’s going to explode or try to chop off your finger. And then she said I should still take the key, because she needed me to walk Heraldo while she and her dad went out of town that weekend.

And since I have a key, I’m not even sure if this is breaking and entering. Entering, sure, but there’s no breaking involved. I simply unlock the door and step inside. And I’m still Sarah’s friend—the real Sarah, before I screwed her up—and this is all for her own good, so there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t be here. Though I’m not sure that would hold up in court if I get caught.

The house is quiet, except for Heraldo barking his head off in the backyard. I can’t tell if he knows I’m not supposed to be here, or if he’s expecting me to let him in, so he can slurp me and knock me to the floor again. Either way, I leave him where he is and hope the neighbors aren’t home, or at least that they don’t get suspicious. This will only take a minute. I just need to grab the personality enhancer, which we left here last time because it was broken and we didn’t need it anymore, and then I can get out of here.

I creep down the hall to Sarah’s room. Her door is closed, and there’s a moment where I worry maybe she’s not in school. What if she stayed home today? Not that Sarah ever stays home from school, but she could be sick or something. Even Sarah is susceptible to germs. And if she’s in there and I come waltzing in ... I’m going to have some serious problems. Like a laser to the chest or a gentle explosion to the head.

My palms are sweating. I wipe them on my jeans and try not to think about how convenient it would be to be able to go invisible right now, because that might be like admitting invisibility isn’t a lame power. Which it is. Even if it might come in handy sometimes.

I put my hand on the knob and turn it slowly, listening for any sounds of movement on the other side. Nothing. I turn it all the way and fling open the door, and—

Still nothing.

I breathe a sigh of relief and look around, spotting the personality enhancer in a pile of other non-working gadgets that Sarah keeps for spare parts. Luckily, she hasn’t dismantled it yet. I grab it off the pile. Mission pretty much accomplished. I’ll be home before Helen gets back from the store and even has a chance to realize I’m gone, since I’m grounded and not supposed to leave the house, like, ever again. And I didn’t even need Riley’s help. Nobody had to get hurt, not even me, and ...

A piece of paper on Sarah’s desk catches my attention. I walk over to it and get a closer look. It’s a drawing of what looks like a tall rectangular cage. Which seems kind of weird, since what would Sarah need a cage for? And there’s a list of parts off to the side, like she’s actually building this thing. Whatever it is, it must be more complicated than just a bunch of metal bars stuck together, because she’s got little diagrams of wiring drawn in one corner.

I have no idea what it could be for, but I’m pretty sure it can’t be anything good.

I’m still trying to figure out what it might be when I hear footsteps in the hall. And then Sarah’s voice, saying, “I’m going to need part number 5A31 and also three of R34. Industrial strength.”

I feel a jolt of panic and my heart pounds in my chest. She’s home after all, and she’s heading for her room. I didn’t even close the door, not all the way, and she’s going to see me if I don’t do something. I consider hiding under her bed, but I happen to know that she keeps a bunch of shoe boxes full of nuts and bolts under there, plus some spare tools and other parts for her gadgets. All that junk doesn’t exactly leave a lot of room for someone to hide. So instead I choose the closet and manage to close the doors behind me just as Sarah comes in.

Her closet doors are the kind with the tilted slats in them, so I can still kind of see out. Though I hope for my sake that she can’t see in. I also hope she doesn’t notice that her personality enhancer is missing and not still in the to-be-dismantled pile.

She has her homemade cell phone up against her ear and listens to the person on the other end for a few moments before saying, “I need them as soon as possible. I’ve got to get this done by Friday.”

She pauses, listening again. Then she glances over at the closet and frowns.

Uh-oh.

She comes over, and I shrink back as far as I can, which isn’t nearly far enough, since there isn’t a whole lot of empty space in here. I’m pressed up against the wall, clutching the personality enhancer to my chest and praying she hasn’t actually spotted me.

“Why is this open?” she mutters, tugging on one of the closet doors, which I guess I didn’t close all the way. It’s not the one directly in front of me, but she’ll still see me when she opens it.

If
she opens it. I can hope, right?

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, like not watching will make her not see me.

The closet door creaks a little. She starts to pull it open, and I am
so
dead. I hold up my hand, letting a few sparks come to life, even though I don’t really intend to use my power on her. I don’t think I could make myself hurt Sarah, though I know she’s plenty willing to pull the trigger on me. But maybe it will be enough to scare her. I mean, she saw what happened to the roof at Heroesworth.

But then she stops. She only opens the closet door a few inches, just enough to kick a shoe that was wedged there back inside, and then she closes it.

She didn’t kill me. I blink, hardly daring to breathe, and marvel at the fact that this didn’t just go horribly wrong.

“Okay,” she says to the person on the phone. “That’ll work great. I’ll come down right now.” Then she thanks them and hangs up.

She grabs her backpack off the floor, stuffing the phone inside it, and leaves.

I wait until I hear the front door close before letting myself exhale. I open the closet, ready to get the hell out of here with the personality enhancer, but before I can step outside, I notice a red laser beam in the air in front of me. Lots of them, actually, criss-crossing the room like a security system in a spy movie.