The Trials of Renegade X (6 page)

Gordon laughs. “I’ll pass that on. Where are you?”

“I’ll be there soon,” I tell him.

There’s just one thing I have to do first.

I get to room 214 and knock on the door before I can chicken out. Because seeing my mom after all this time, when she didn’t even call me to tell me she was having a baby—let alone that I have a new brother—doesn’t exactly make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It’s more like it makes my skin crawl and my stomach want to turn inside out.

There’s a slight pause after I knock, so that I’m thinking maybe she’s not here, maybe the hospital made a mistake and I should just go find Gordon and go home, but then my mom’s voice says to come in.

She sounds tired but happy, and when I go in, she doesn’t even look up at first, too busy gazing lovingly at the baby in her arms, all wrapped up in a light-blue blanket.

“Hey, Mom,” I say, and
that
gets her attention. “Long time no see.”

She stares at me, her mouth gaping open. “Damien.”

“Hey, look at that. You remembered my name.”

“What are you doing here?”

“No, Mom, what are
you
doing here? Can I still call you Mom, or would you prefer Marianna?”

“Damien, don’t be ridiculous. Come here so I can look at you.”

I stay where I am. “So. I have a new brother and you weren’t going to tell me.”

“I wanted to call you. I thought about it a thousand times.”

“But you didn’t.” I shrug.

“I didn’t know how you’d react. You were the one who chose to leave, to go and live with
that man
.”

“That’s not how I remember it. You kicked me out.”

“Based on the choices you made.”

I swallow back a bitter taste in my mouth. “So you replaced me. What happened to making a name for yourself? I was some kind of burden to you, but I guess it wasn’t having a kid that was the problem, it was just
me
.”

Her eyes fill with tears, and I’ve officially made my mother cry. But I deserve some answers, and I’m not going to back down.

The baby—Xavier—makes fussing noises, and Mom holds him closer and tries to soothe him. “Damien,” she says, keeping her tone falsely pleasant, “you’re upsetting your brother.”

“Yeah, well, he’s upsetting me. I guess we have that in common. And it’s been five months since you kicked me out, and he doesn’t look like he was born early.” I’m no expert, but he looks like a normal baby. Not like one who was born several months too soon. “So that means you were, what, four-months pregnant the last time you saw me? You had plenty of time to tell me then, and you didn’t. So what does that say?”

The baby starts full-blown crying, despite Mom’s efforts to calm him down. She glares at me, her lasers flashing in her eyes—did I mention her superpower is shooting lasers from her eyes?—and grits her teeth. “Damien, if you insist on making your brother cry, then
you
are going to hold him. So get over here. Now.”

Fine. I do what she says—though only because I
do
want to see him up close, and this is probably the only chance I’ll get—but I drag my feet about it.

“Here,” Mom says, transferring a screaming Xavier into my arms. “Just make sure you support his head.” She leans back against her pillows and watches me. Us. “Look at you. My two boys.” Her eyes are watering again, but this time at least it’s not because I’m pissed at her. She grabs her phone from her nightstand and snaps a picture of us.

“
Mom
.” I roll my eyes at her and sigh, so she knows how ridiculous she’s being. For a moment, it’s like nothing ever happened between us. Like I never got my
X
or went to live with Gordon.

Xavier’s mostly calmed down now. He squirms a little in my arms, but he’s stopped crying. I don’t think I did anything to make him stop, other than not yelling at his mom. I look him over, trying to see if there’s any family resemblance. He has a few little wisps of red hair on his head. So I guess he takes after Mom.

I have dark hair, like Gordon. And my eyes are green like his, too, and, according to Sarah at least, I look a lot like him. I disagree on that front, but I guess I can admit I look more like him than like Mom. I feel a little stab of jealousy, knowing Xavier’s going to grow up actually
belonging
. He’s going to grow up knowing who his father is and that both his parents are villains. He’ll get his
V
when he turns sixteen, go to Vilmore, and have the life I was supposed to have. He’ll probably have a girlfriend that goes there, too. And he’ll have laser eyes, like Mom, or maybe be able to shoot electricity from his hands, like my grandpa.
Our
grandpa, I guess.

I shut my eyes, not wanting to think these things. He’s just a baby—it’s not his fault he’s going to have everything I should have had, but couldn’t.

“So,” I say, “are you still with Taylor? I mean, is he—”

“He’s Xavier’s father, yes. And we’re still together. We’re getting married this Christmas. Taylor wanted to get married before the baby was born, but things happened so fast. And I wanted to be able to wear a dress that actually
fit
. Just because I’m almost thirty-five—”

“You’re thirty-nine, you mean.”

She clears her throat. “Just because I’m of a certain age doesn’t mean I don’t want to go all out for my wedding.”

“So, I suppose you weren’t going to invite me to that, either.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to come. You were never enthusiastic about Taylor’s proposal, and after everything that happened ...”

“I get it.” I do. Not that it doesn’t still hurt. “You weren’t going to tell me about any of this stuff before you kicked me out—”

“Before you
left
, dear.”

“—so why would you tell me now? Did Taylor know? About the baby—is that why he proposed? And what was all that crap about you making a name for yourself and me being some kind of burden on you if you
knew
—”

The baby starts crying again, and I shove him at Mom and turn away from them, because I can’t even look at her, knowing all the ways she’s betrayed me. How much she obviously didn’t want me. The last thing I want is for her to look at my face and see how much all this hurts.

“I never said you were a burden, sweetie—”

She tries to put her hand on my shoulder, but I pull away. “
Don’t
.”

“And Taylor proposed to me because he loves me. Not because of the baby—I wasn’t even pregnant then, so, you see, I didn’t lie to you.”

“You mean you didn’t know you were having a baby.” I remember when Taylor proposed and how much champagne Mom was drinking that day. She wouldn’t have if she’d known she was pregnant, right? Even she’s not that irresponsible.

“No, that’s not what I said. Damien, come here. If you’re going to accuse me of something, at least have the decency to look at me while you do it.”

I turn around to face her. She looks me over, studying me, as if she’d forgotten what I look like and is trying to memorize it for later. “You’re taller, you know that? You probably need new shoes. I don’t suppose
that man
keeps up with these things—”

“
Mom
. I’m fine. I got shoes last month. And my father’s name is Gordon. If you can let him violate you in a subway bathroom, I think you can say his name.”

She flinches and ignores what I said, changing the subject. “Anyway, Damien, I wasn’t pregnant back when you were living with me. Xavier didn’t come along until another month after that.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I think your math skills are slipping. That would mean he was born after only four months. You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”

“Well ... Maybe you should sit down before I tell you.”

“Before you tell me what?”

“Nothing. It’s just, you remember that growth formula I was working on a few years ago?”

“That was for plants. But I thought you learned your lesson after those man-eating vines grew like crazy all over the house that one time and almost killed us. If we hadn’t had that extra-strength herbicide to use on them—”

“Which I also invented, of course.”

“—then we’d probably both be dead right now. So, yes,
I remember
. I also remember telling you to not to experiment with anything like that ever again.” Not that she ever actually listens to me.

“Well, I modified it. So it would work on more than just plants. And don’t look at me like that—I wasn’t going to use it on myself. It was for cows. To make them grow faster. With faster gestation rates, they could get to the milking stage that much quicker. And of course the cows themselves would grow up at more than twice the normal speed, so you can see why dairy farmers would pay through the nose for this kind of thing.”

“And did they?” I can’t believe it. She wanted to make a name for herself as a villain and
this
is what she’s been doing?

“They would have. I had an offer on the table, Damien—I’m not stupid. But I couldn’t get it working quite right. The milk from these cows wasn’t exactly something you’d want to drink. And the meat was inedible.” She makes a face. “No one was going to pay for that. And then I found out I was pregnant with little Xavier here, and, well, I had to shut down my experiment. At least for the time being. But I guess I must have already had too much exposure to the formula, because here we are, four months and one healthy little baby later.”

Healthy? I gape at her. Then at the baby in her arms. “You mean, he’s some kind of experiment?”

“No! Of course not. He was exposed to one of my experimental formulas by accident, which is not the same thing. I was thinking maybe I could market it to busy women. Why take nine months to have a baby when you can do it in four? Or possibly three?”

“That’s insane.”

“That’s exactly what Taylor said.
Men
. You just don’t get it.”

“But what’s going to happen to him? To my brother? I mean, if he’s going to age twice as fast as normal—”

“
At least
twice as fast, Damien. Give my formula the credit it deserves. Some of those cows grew at absolutely astounding rates, if I do say so myself.”

“Then he’s not going to live as long.” Suddenly, I wish I hadn’t held him at all, that I hadn’t felt his weight in my arms or the way his tiny little legs wiggled inside his blanket. I was probably never going to get to see him again anyway, and now I find out he’s only going to have half a life. Less than that, according to Mom. Less than half as many leg wigglings. Less than half as many times hanging out with his friends. Less than half as many kisses. Less than half as many
everythings
.

I gape at Mom, horrified, and back away. “How could you do this to him?”

She holds Xavier extra close and glares at me. “It wasn’t something I did on purpose. Do you really think so little of me?”

“How could you let this happen? How could you want to let this happen to
other people
?!”

“Keep your voice down. Obviously my formula needs some more work before I put it on the market. And he’s going to have a perfectly healthy and happy life, just like everyone else. The formula will wear off. I think.”

“So he just doesn’t get to be a kid for very long, is that it? Let me guess—he’ll stop growing super fast once he turns sixteen, gets his
V
, and becomes my replacement?”

“Damien!”

Xavier starts full-out wailing, his little wrinkled face turning red and angry. I have to shout just to be heard over him. “So I guess that’s why you weren’t going to tell me about him! I wasn’t good enough for you, and instead of making things right with me, you just have a new kid. One who won’t waste any time growing up into a perfect teenage son, and then you can pretend I never even existed.”

“I think you should leave.”

“Yeah, I bet you do.”

I turn to go just as there’s a knock on the door and Taylor comes in, balancing a couple of bags of Chinese food in his arms. “They didn’t have the pork that you wanted, but I got the— Damien?” He’s so shocked to see me, he loses his grip on one of the bags and has to scramble to keep from dropping it. “What are you doing here?”

“
Leaving
.” I push past him, and the only reason I don’t slam the door on my way out is for Xavier’s sake. He’s going to have a hard enough life as it is.

Chapter 5

I DIAL KAT’S NUMBER for about the fiftieth time when Gordon, Alex, and me get home from the hospital. Today must be “nobody answers their phone” day, because she’s not picking up. Even though it’s after six and I know her classes must be over and she must be dying to tell me how it went.

After about ten rings, her phone sends me to voicemail.
Hey, this is Kat. I’m probably screening my calls right now, but if you leave an awesome enough message, I might call you back. Except you, Damien—you’re
always
awesome and I’ll
always
call you back.

I don’t leave a message. What am I supposed to say?
My mom had a new all-villain baby to replace me. How was Vilmore?
Right. Plus, it was bad enough Mom kicked me out—it’s not exactly like I want to broadcast my latest demotion to the rest of the world. Or, in this case, Gordon.