The Trials of Renegade X (45 page)

“I don’t really want you to go to Vilmore,” Sarah admits.

“It’s all right, Sarah. I know where I want to go.”

“Where?”

“Back to Heroesworth.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not an option.”

“Then I’ll make it an option.”

She pushes her glasses farther up on her nose and tilts her head, looking at me like I really am crazy. “Damien, you got
expelled
. For blowing up part of the school. With your
lightning
power. Millions of people saw it on YouTube. You got arrested for it. And your dad—the
Crimson Flash
—went on TV and said you were dangerous. One heroic act, especially one where you saved a bunch of supervillains, doesn’t make up for that. So, even if you want to go to Heroesworth again, you can’t. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Come on, Cosine. Do you really have so little faith in me?”

“My faith in you doesn’t factor into this. It’s impossible, that’s all.”

“Well,” I tell her, “we’ll see about that.”

Nobody stops me when I march into Heroesworth on Monday. It helps that it’s the middle of third period, so the halls are empty. I go right to the dean’s office. His secretary practically has a heart attack when I walk in, obviously recognizing me. Her eyes dart back and forth and she puts a hand to her chest, like she’s afraid I’m here to blow up another chunk of the school.

“You can’t go in there,” she says when I walk right by her, not bothering to ask if the dean is in or if I can see him. Her hand hovers over the phone, as if she thinks she might need to call the police and wants to be ready.

I ignore her and go in anyway.

Dean Harold Scott—a middle-aged man with graying reddish-brown hair and about five used coffee mugs on his desk—looks up when I come in. So does Mr. Fitz, my former history teacher, who’s apparently in a meeting with him. Or just chatting, but I can’t imagine why anyone would ever willingly talk to him.

They both go silent as soon as they see me. Dean Scott gets to his feet and says, “You can’t be here.”

I’m not sure if he means in his office or in the school in general, but I’m guessing both.

Mr. Fitz’s mustache twitches on overtime. “Mr. Locke,” he says, looking kind of pissed, but also kind of amused, like he thinks he’s going to get to watch me get arrested this time, “I believe you were expelled from this school over a week ago.”

“Didn’t you see the news?” I tell him. “I’m a hero now.”

He glares at me. “I think we should skip calling the police and go right to the League. There’s a dangerous supervillain at Heroesworth. One we apparently need a restraining order against.”

God, I hate this guy. And if it wouldn’t completely ruin my plans here today, I’d totally zap him. Not enough to kill him. Just enough to make him think twice about being such an ass. But since I can’t, I ignore him and put my hands on the desk, looking right at the dean. “You want me back in this school.”

To his credit, he doesn’t laugh in my face. Though he does look annoyed. “I find that
extremely
hard to believe.”

Mr. Fitz chuckles to himself, shaking his head. “Did you forget
why
you were expelled?”

“You know what happened Friday night,” I tell Dean Scott. “There’s no way you haven’t heard about it.”

“You stopped a rival school from getting destroyed, after blowing up part of this one. I’m not hearing a case.”

“That’s because that’s not
why
you want me back.”

“The boy’s a little slow,” Mr. Fitz says. “He doesn’t understand that we don’t want him back at all.”

I clench my jaw and restrain myself from telling him to shut up. Which only goes to show just how heroic I am, since it’s not exactly easy. I mean, look at me not killing this guy. That should get me reinstated right there.

“You look like you’re pretty smart,” I tell Dean Scott. Smarter than Mr. Fitz, anyway. “You look like you know a good deal when you hear one. And like you just said, Vilmore’s a rival school. One that offered me admission and a full ride.”

“Good for you,” he mutters.

“No, good for
you
. I’m the guy who millions of people watched blow up part of Heroesworth. And now Vilmore’s made a big deal over giving me this offer. They think I can’t say no, and they’re expecting me to take it. They need me to. Because if I do, it’s like saying they’re better than you. That you couldn’t handle the half-villain son of the Crimson Flash, but they can.”

Understanding flickers in his eyes. “And if you don’t?”

“If I don’t take it, then that kind of sucks for them.” I shrug. “But if I don’t take it
and
I go back to Heroesworth?
That
would be throwing it in their face. And after they made such a public spectacle out of it, it would make them look like idiots, because everyone would know I turned them down in favor of their rival. I got expelled from Heroesworth, but if I still choose it over Vilmore, when they’re offering me a free education, it would really be sticking it to them.” Not that I care about sticking it to Vilmore or anything, but it’s my best bargaining chip. My only one, really. “And I’d never be able to go there after that. It’s a permanent win for Heroesworth.” Which makes me a little nervous, actually, but I’ve made up my mind. I meant what I told Sarah—Vilmore doesn’t feel like the right place for me anymore, and I don’t want to leave everyone behind.

Mr. Fitz rolls his eyes. “Oh, please. You expect us to listen to this?”

“Why don’t you have a seat?” Dean Scott says.

I can’t help shooting Mr. Fitz a smug grin as I take the other chair in front of the desk.

Dean Scott sits down, too. He presses the knuckle of his thumb to his mouth, thinking over what I said. “
If
you came back to Heroesworth, that would certainly look bad for Vilmore. Especially since, as you said, they made such a big deal out of this. But you haven’t told me why it would look good for
us
.”

“It wouldn’t,” Mr. Fitz snaps.

“You’d be stealing me away from them. The whole world thinks I’m this delinquent half villain—”

“Which you
are
.”

“—but you’d be showing them that that doesn’t matter. That you can take the least likely candidate and still make them a hero.”

Mr. Fitz makes a
hmph
noise. “Just because he saved some supervillains doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”

“I’m
not
dangerous. I mean,” I add, when they both look at me like I just said I live on the moon, “I can be, when people threaten to hurt me and my friends. But what happened at Homecoming was a one-time event. So, unless you plan on trying to kill me, I don’t see the problem.”

Dean Scott nods, though his mouth is a thin, skeptical line. “Your father went on live TV and told the world that he endangered the lives of our students by enrolling you here. If I let you come back, then that would look like we didn’t care about them, like we were knowingly putting our students and faculty in harm’s way.”

Or it would look like they made it up in the first place and that Gordon never did anything wrong. But I keep that thought to myself and instead say, “
Or
you could admit that I’m not a danger to them. I never hurt anybody. And don’t pretend there aren’t any hero powers that are dangerous. You’ve got to have kids here with light beams and freeze rays and super strength. But you don’t worry about
them
walking the halls.”

“They haven’t given us a reason to.”

“I panicked at Homecoming. What I did was an accident. One that won’t happen again. But what I did at Vilmore, when I got in the way of that lightning beam, that was on purpose. And I would have done it whether I was saving villains or heroes or just regular people. It didn’t matter who they were, only that I couldn’t let them get hurt. So, by my count, I’ve prevented a lot of people from getting killed, and I never actually hurt anybody. Maybe those other kids haven’t given you a reason not to trust them, but they haven’t given you a reason why you
should
, either. I have.”

Mr. Fitz shakes his head. I think a piece of crud falls from one of his giant eyebrows. “Dangerous or not, you don’t belong here. You were purposely failing my class. It was only a matter of time before you flunked out of school completely.”

“Yeah, I was
purposely
failing it. That means I didn’t have to. And don’t pretend like you weren’t going out of your way to make that class hard for me. You wanted me to fail, because I’m half supervillain, and because you can’t admit I might know some stuff that you don’t.”

“Are you hearing this, Harold?” Mr. Fitz asks the dean.

“Yes,” he says, giving him a cold, thoughtful look, “I
am
.”

Mr. Fitz swallows. “My class wasn’t the only one you were failing,” he adds nervously. “It wasn’t just me.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t do better. It doesn’t mean I
won’t
. I’m ready to come back.”

He scoffs, not buying it.

“Henry,” Dean Scott says, addressing him, “can you give us a minute?”

It takes him a second to realize he’s being dismissed. Then he glares at me really hard, as if I was the one who just told him to leave.

I smile angelically at him as he storms out of the room, which only makes him glare even harder, until it looks like his mustache is going to climb up his nose and suffocate him.

Dean Scott sighs once he’s gone and takes a sip from one of his coffee mugs. Several of them are half filled and look a couple days old, but I’m going to assume this one is fresh. “You make a good argument. And I believe you about not being a danger to the other students. Or at least I believe you enough to give you a chance.”

“You do?” I try not to sound too surprised when I say that—or too hopeful—but I think it comes through anyway.

“
But
,” he adds, peering down his nose at me, “that doesn’t mean I’m going to. As much as I would love to ’stick it’ to Vilmore, as you put it, if you fail here, then Heroesworth is the one that ends up losing face. An awful lot of it. If we steal you from Vilmore and it becomes obvious that this
isn’t
the right school for you, that there’s no hope for you as a hero, then we look like fools.”

“If I fail here, I won’t have anywhere else to go. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“You’ve proven you’re heroic in the field—I’ll give you that. That stunt at Vilmore should have killed you. But that’s not enough to succeed at Heroesworth. You can promise not to fail all you want, but I don’t have a reason to believe it. I think it’s obvious you didn’t try very hard while you were here.”

“So, the only way for me to go is up. I can’t possibly do worse than I did.”

He shakes his head. “Your poster on heroism was blank.”

“It was just a poster.”

“It’s one example. And, like your other ’work’ here, it leaves me with nothing to go on. You say you’re going to try harder, but that alone won’t ensure your success. And until you give me a reason to believe you can take your assignments seriously, and that your best effort might actually
mean
something, I’m afraid my hands are tied.”

“And what if I did? Prove it, I mean?”

“Then I’d think about it. But you’d really have to impress me.”

I grip the edges of my chair and squeeze my eyes shut, not liking what I’m about to say. But he was probably going to see it anyway. The whole world is. “The new episode of my dad’s show is on this afternoon. At four thirty. You should watch it.”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “I’m a little old for it, don’t you think?”

“You’re never too old for safety,” I tell him. “But, seriously. Just watch it. I think”—I
hope
—“that it will change your mind.”

Chapter 33

I PACE IN THE kitchen, not sure if I’m hungry or if I’m going to throw up. The numbers on the microwave say it’s four thirty-five. Gordon’s show has already started. And assuming Steve, the tech guy I talked to down at the studio, really did what I asked him to—which he said he would, after I made a convincing argument about this being a chance for the show to, like,
not
get canceled and for everyone there to
not
lose their jobs—then a whole lot of people are about to watch that video I made. Probably any minute now.

And I don’t care how many people see me blowing up part of Heroesworth, but the idea of
anyone
watching this video, let alone the whole city, makes me want to die. And that’s not including the fact that I’m sure it will end up online, too. And then absolutely everyone will see it, and I will probably have to move to Siberia after all.

But, on the bright side, no one here is going to be watching it, at least not right now. Gordon doesn’t watch his own show, and Amelia’s over at Zach’s house. So, even though Gordon’s going to find out about it eventually—or, like, really soon—
I
don’t have to see it.

Which is good, because then I think I really would throw up.

I hear Alex’s footsteps in the living room, and then he turns on the TV. I run in there and see him changing it to Channel 12, the channel
The Crimson Flash and the Safety Kids
is on. Thankfully, there’s a commercial playing.