The Trials of Renegade X (4 page)

Slowly, I open my eyes and pull my arms away from my face. Everyone else is blinking, a lot, but they’re not blind. And they can see plenty well enough to know I’m the only one who thought it could be real. Most of them are laughing. At me.

Yeah, well, they should try being the only villain in a room full of heroes and see how trusting
they
are.

Riley smirks, like he’s just one-upped me somehow but is too good to laugh in my face, which only makes me hate him even more. I don’t get what Sarah sees in him.

Miss Monk isn’t laughing, either. She’s not even smirking. “You’re all dead,” she says, her voice so serious that the laughter dies and an uncomfortable silence settles in the room. “How many of you didn’t take me seriously because of my costume?” She gestures to herself and her skintight glitter suit. “You assumed I was a superhero because we’re at Heroesworth. And you assumed because I’m dressed like this you didn’t have to take me seriously.”

I lean toward Riley and whisper, “What did you mean about Sarah?”

“She hasn’t told you?” He fakes surprise. “I guess you’re not as close as you thought.”

I feel like I’m falling off a building again, the world rushing by me, unreal and out of place. He’s lying. He has to be.

Miss Monk paces the front of the room, continuing to stare us all down. “It doesn’t matter what color someone’s wearing or if they have a pretty face. I wanted you to let your guard down, and you did. If you’re going to be that easily fooled, you’re all dead.”

“Sarah and I are a team. She wouldn’t—”

“Let’s take our resident half villain as an example,” Miss Monk says, suddenly directing everyone’s attention to me. “You’d never know what he is by looking at him. Rumpled T-shirt, worn-out jeans, muddy shoes. And it looks like he didn’t even comb his hair this morning.”

Wow. The way she says it, you’d think I was dressed in rags. “I didn’t have time—I had to stand in line for my bowl of gruel.” For the record, I
did
comb my hair this morning. It was just with my fingers.

A couple kids laugh, maybe with me this time instead of at me. Not that I’m keeping track.

Miss Monk’s eyes narrow. “I want everyone to look to the person to your left. Now look to the person to your right. Statistically speaking, one of those people will be killed by villains because someone else slipped up. Because someone on your team underestimated the enemy. Because one of you didn’t follow the moral code laid out in the League Treaty. Don’t let that person be
you
. You all have your
H
s.”

“Well,” Riley whispers, “most of us.”

“This isn’t pretend anymore, this is life and death. How you act now, how you handle your studies here at Heroesworth Academy, will determine what kind of hero you’re going to be. The decision of whether you’re going to be a liability or an asset starts now.”

She pauses to let that sink in, then turns to write something on the board. I’m pretty sure I fall into the “liability” category, since I could care less about their stupid League Treaty. I’m going to get through Heroesworth and get my
H
, but I’m going to do things my way. I might want a place to fit in, but I don’t need to fit in
that
badly.

“Sarah’s my sidekick,” I tell Riley. “She wouldn’t betray me like that.”

“Yeah, but come on, X, you’re not really a hero. No
H
, essentially no superpower ...” He shrugs. “You can’t blame her if she’s tired of playing around and wants to get serious.”

“You and her. You’re fighting crime together now, is that what you’re telling me?” My insides feel like they’re too heavy and too light at the same time, and there’s this awful ache creeping up my throat. Even though I know Sarah would never betray me like that. Even if she’s right about me ditching a bunch of our hero missions this summer to spend more alone time with Kat.

Riley claps me on the shoulder in mock camaraderie. “Face it. You’re only half a hero. A gadget goddess like Sarah needs the real thing. You might have been an okay starter, but, well ...” He shrugs. “Looks like you were just a phase.”

Chapter 3

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” I ask Sarah that afternoon after school. I’m waiting for her on her front porch as she hurries up the sidewalk, her backpack slung over one shoulder. “I’ve been calling you all day!” You’d think my phone calls weren’t important enough to, say, drop everything for. She was only at school—it’s not like she was doing anything that mattered.

“What is it?” she says, trying to catch her breath and rushing past me, fumbling to get her key in the door. “I have my costume in my bag—I can be dressed and ready to go in two minutes.” She pauses. “Five minutes. I haven’t been to the bathroom since lunch.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

She looks me up and down. “Why aren’t you in your costume? We’ve got to hurry, and ...” She blinks, my last sentence sinking in. “There’s no emergency?”

“I needed to see you about something.” Something involving the Invisible Douche and all the stupid jerk things he said to me today. Which Sarah will no doubt confirm as a bunch of big fat lies and then finally realize what an idiot he is. She’ll dump his brittle-boned ass, and then I will be here to console her. And to find her a new boyfriend—I’m not heartless, after all—one who has no chance of ever upstaging me, probably of the ordinary-citizen variety.

Sarah pulls what amounts to a homemade cell phone out of her backpack. It looks more like an inside-out walkie-talkie with wires, buttons, and microchips sticking out all over.

“I didn’t hear it ring. Or maybe it’s malfunctioning. Plus, you
know
we’re not allowed to use cell phones at school. It could have been confiscated!”

“Uh, Sarah? Trust me when I say you wouldn’t have gotten in trouble for using a cell phone.” For having a contraption that looks like it’s some kind of explosive, on the other hand? Definitely.

Sarah scowls at her phone, her forehead wrinkling in deep thought. She shakes the phone a little. Something inside makes a rattling noise. She smacks the side of it pretty hard, and for something that looks so delicate, I’m surprised pieces of it don’t go flying off. It stays intact, though, and the screen blips to life.

“There,” she says, sighing in relief. “See? It works great.” She stuffs it back in her bag and opens her front door, motioning for me to follow. “So, if there was no emergency”—she sounds really put out when she says that, like she’s disappointed about the lack of disasters in the world—“what was so important? Because I have to walk Heraldo, and then Riley’s coming over, so ...”

I clench my jaw, breathing in slowly through my nose. “So you don’t have time for me. I get it. And I suppose whatever you two are meeting about is none of my business?”

“Do I ask you details about
your
love life? I know about your checklist, and that’s already too much information.” She makes a disgusted face at that, pausing with her hand on the back doorknob. Heraldo, her Great Dane, barks outside and jumps at the door, scraping his claws against it.

“I’m not talking about your love life.”

“Then what are you—” She opens the door, and Heraldo comes bounding in. His tail wags back and forth, smacking into my shins as he greets Sarah with a huge slurp. Then he turns around and tries to jump on me. “Down!” Sarah commands.

Heraldo slams his front paws into my chest and knocks me to the floor. Probably
not
what Sarah meant. At least, I hope not. Unless she’s training him to take down bad guys, and then it might be kind of cool. If it hadn’t happened to me, and if my head hadn’t thudded so hard against the floor, I mean. Whether he meant to knock me down or not, Heraldo slimes my face with his tongue, seeming pretty pleased with himself, then notices the stern look on Sarah’s face.

“Time out,” she says, pointing to his dog bed in the corner of the living room. Heraldo slinks off to do what he’s told, but not before giving me another quick lick in the face, getting his dog saliva up my nose.

Yuck.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Sarah asks, hovering over me with her hands on her hips.

I groan. Mostly, I just want to lie here in my defeat. I pat the spot next to me, indicating she should join me down here instead of looming like that, but she ignores me. “I know what you’ve been doing with Riley.”

“
What?
” Her face goes red. “We haven’t—I mean, I don’t know how you—”

“Not like
that
. I’m not talking about what you and him ...” I wave my hand, dismissing it. “But I know you’ve been moonlighting as his sidekick.”

“Damien, that’s crazy.” She squints at me and tilts her head in disbelief, like maybe she heard wrong. “And not very accurate. I don’t know where you get your information, but it’s not true.”

“So, you’re not replacing me?” I shut my eyes, letting the huge wave of relief I feel sink in. “Also, I think I should tell you I can see up your nose from here. Which I wouldn’t be able to do if the lady would join me on the floor.”

She sighs, giving in, and lies down next to me. “I’m not Kat. You can trust me.”

I glance over at her, not sure how to take that. “What’s
that
supposed to mean? I trust Kat just fine.”

“
Right
,” she says, and her sarcasm isn’t lost on me. “That’s why you’re freaking out because you think I might be doing something with another guy behind your back.”

Okay, so, once upon a time, back when we hardly even knew each other, Kat did cheat on me. She mistakenly thought I was just stringing her along and made out with my former—and now deceased—best friend. We broke up, and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive her, but while I was busy not forgiving her, we kind of became best friends. And while we were becoming best friends, we kind of really got to know each other and fell in love. And when it came down to me being miserable for the rest of my life because I was holding a grudge about a stupid mistake that happened in the past, or letting it go and admitting I was totally in love with her, it turned out the choice wasn’t that hard to make.

“Even if it’s not on a romantic level,” Sarah goes on. “I mean, Riley and I
are
doing things on a romantic level, it’s just not behind your back. I mean—well, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, so maybe I was freaking out, just a little. But if you say it was for nothing, then I guess it was. It’s just, when Riley said you weren’t exclusively my sidekick, I—”

“Wait, he
said
that?” Sarah sits up, suddenly on edge.

“Yeah, crazy, right? I shouldn’t have listened to him. I should have known he was just making things up to piss me off.” Poor innocent me, the victim in all of this. That Riley should really stop antagonizing me, what with me being Sarah’s best friend and all.

“Because we’ve talked about it, but it’s not like I committed to anything.”

I feel like someone just knocked all the air out of me. I push myself up into a sitting position. “Sarah, what do you mean you’ve been talking about it?!”

“He asked me if I’d ever consider doing some crime fighting with him. As in, like, ever, hypothetically. And it’s not like you and I have an exclusive contract—”

“We don’t have
any
contract.”

“Right, so I said I’d think about it. If the situation ever came up. I never said I’d do it.”

“I thought our partnership meant something to you.” As in, more than her relationship with Riley. Since I’ve known her longer and am obviously superior to him in every way.

“It
does
.”

“But someday you might jump ship and leave me for him, is that it?”

Sarah grits her teeth. “Why do boys always have to be such babies about everything? You’re jealous of Riley—”

“Uh, I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m not.”

She makes a
psh
sound of disbelief. “Was this in an alternate universe or something? You’re jealous of him, and he’s jealous of you. That I’m your sidekick and we spend so much time together in dangerous situations. Both of you need to grow up. I told him if the right scenario came along, I’d consider it. But that’s all.”

“And what, exactly, is the right scenario?” I need to know so I can make sure it never happens.

“Well, you know.”

“You mean if I suffer an untimely death?” And what if Mr. Perfect were to have an unfortunate “accident”? Well, besides the one he already had. But this time I’d make sure no one could prove it was me.

“That’s one possibility.”

“And another one is ...?”

She swallows. “Well, you kn—”

“
Don’t
say that I know, because clearly I don’t.”

“I’m sure this situation won’t ever happen, okay?” Her voice is getting kind of high-pitched, like it does when she’s really nervous. “But I have to think about my future. Or at least be willing to re-evaluate my future in the future, which will be the present. I mean, the future of the present, which will be in the future. Is it hot in here? I should turn on the air conditioning.”

“Sarah. Please, just tell me.” Not knowing is ten times worse than whatever she’s about to say. Well, hopefully.

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “But, just so you know, it’s not like I
like
thinking about this or having to plan for it. But Riley asked, and I—”

“
Sarah
.”

“Right. Well, you see, there’s a chance you won’t get your
H
. Scientifically speaking, it could go either way. Do we really know how accurate this virus is? And it’s not like there are a lot of people with
X
s to do tests on, and you won’t let me draw your blood, even though I told you I practiced first on an orange. Plus, your future’s not decided yet. As long as you have an
X
, it could still turn into a
V
.”

“Based on the choices I make.”

She peers over her glasses at me and raises an eyebrow, giving me an “and your point is?” kind of look.

“Yeah, okay, fine. So I’m not perfect.” She’s got me there. “But I’m going to get my
H
.” Probably.