The Rise of Renegade X Read online

  Mom shrieks with joy. She puts her hands to her face, gaping at Taylor. “Yes, of course!” He slips the ring on her finger and puts his scraggly bearded mouth over hers. I’m so disgusted, I can’t see straight.

  I feel sick, and like the ground just dropped out from under me. The memory of falling off the tallest building in Golden City flashes through my head, and I relive that horror on top of this one. I can’t stand it. I step out into view, ruining their moment. It takes Mom a second to notice me, but when she does, she looks pretty freaked. She pushes Taylor off her. “Damien! Sweetie, what are you doing here?!” She moves to press the lid back over the container of hypno potion.

  I put my hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt and look around, as if I’ve never seen the place. “Last I checked, I thought I lived here.”

  “Damien,” Mom says, scrambling to her feet, “you’re supposed to be at Gordon’s, not creeping around the house.”

  “I have to come home, Mom. You can’t make me stay with those people!”

  “Just a moment, Damien. It’s not safe for you, with …” Mom glances at the pot containing the hypno potion, then at Taylor. “You’re young, and you don’t want to breathe in nasty chemicals with those healthy lungs of yours, right?” She laughs nervously, then grabs her potholders and carts the potion off into the other room, so the superhero half of me doesn’t get poisoned by it or whatever.

  Leaving me alone with her boyfriend. I mean fiancé. I stand there in my hooded sweatshirt with my hands in my pockets, the perfect picture of a sullen teenager, staring down Taylor Lewis.

  “So,” he says, “are you excited to have your V?” I guess Mom didn’t want him to know about her shameful tryst with a superhero. He tries to laugh good naturedly, but the tension in the room is too high. When I don’t respond, he goes on. “Damien, I want you to know I love your mother very much. I’ve thought a lot about this—it wasn’t spur of the moment—and I never meant for you to find out this way.”

  “How did you want me to find out? When I was off at school, where my freaking out about it couldn’t bother you in your love nest?” I’m so mad, I’m tempted to tell him who my father really is, just to spite Mom.

  Taylor’s mouth hangs open. He struggles to find something else to say to me. “I’m going to be your stepfather. I’d hoped that would be good news to you.”

  “At least you’re a supervillain,” I mutter.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I turn away from him and wait for Mom to come back. When she does, she’s got this big, fake smile plastered across her face. Or maybe it’s not so fake, because when she smiles at Taylor, it looks pretty real. I guess it’s only fake when it’s for me.

  “Damien, sweetie, can I have a word with you?” She shoos me into her bedroom. The room she’s no doubt shared with Taylor many times since she shipped me off to Gordon’s. Her bed isn’t made, and it’s obvious both sides have been used lately. Great. I kick some of her dirty laundry out of my way on the floor.

  Mom shuts the door. She can’t help beaming at the ring on her finger. “Isn’t this exciting?”

  I scowl at her messy bed. “I hope you’re using protection, Mom. The last thing I want right now is another sibling.”

  She acts like she doesn’t hear me. She’s got this selective-hearing condition that acts up now and then. “I want you to be happy for me.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” Not exactly enthusiastic. Maybe she should try me again on a day when I haven’t just been thrown off a building. “Look, I need to come home. I promise I won’t get in your and Taylor’s way.”

  “It’s only a little while longer,” Mom says, putting her hands on my shoulders and giving them a squeeze.

  “Like five weeks—”

  “It’ll fly right by. It’s a learning experience. Studying the enemy in their own home. Think how much further ahead you’ll be than the other students when you start at Vilmore.”

  My shoulders slump. All I want to do is go home, but I don’t know where that is anymore. “You’re only saying that to get rid of me. You want the house all to yourself. How’s Taylor going to like having a stepson who’s half superhero, huh? He didn’t know all the facts when he popped the question. Maybe if you tell him the truth, he’ll change his mind. He’s going to find out when I go to Vilmore next year.”

  Mom glares at me, her lasers charging in her eyes. “Damien Locke. You don’t have to be happy for me, but you do have to accept that I can make my own choices. Taylor makes me happy, and he’s going to be your stepfather, whether you like it or not.”

  “You’re hiding things from him, and you think it’s a good idea to get married?”

  Mom’s lasers die down, her anger replaced with a smug look. “Have you told Kat yet?”

  Touché. “Kat’s not my girlfriend. It’s different.”

  “I know this is going to be difficult for you, especially with all the other changes and new people in your life, but you’re going to have to face the fact that I’m not going to stay single forever, and Taylor and I are in love.”

  “Were you even going to invite me to the wedding? Or were you going to elope before I got back?”

  “How should I know? He just proposed—we haven’t made plans yet.”

  “Right.” That makes me feel so much better.

  “You should probably go now, Damien. Was there anything else you needed?”

  “I’m not going back to them. Gordon tried to kill me. That lousy cape flapper tried to—”

  “Then I guess it really is good supervillain training, isn’t it?” Mom smiles at me. An “I’m older and smarter than you” smile. “I’m sorry, but you can’t come home yet. Taylor and I are involved—”

  “I can see that.”

  “—in some very important work. We can’t be bothered.”

  “By someone who’s only half villain.”

  “It’s the superhero half that’s a problem. I don’t know how the hypno potion would affect you, and I don’t want to find out. Plus, I don’t want to have to worry about what to tell Taylor, concerning your X. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and I can’t be distracted.” A gleam off her new diamond ring catches her attention. “At least, not any more than I’m going to be.” She grins, then opens the door and steers me out. She walks me through the living room and the hallway, to the front door.

  Mom leans forward and hugs me. I’m taller than her, but I don’t remember when that happened. “Take care of yourself, all right, sweetie? And for God’s sakes, eat more, will you? I can feel your ribs.”

  “Sure, Mom. Whatever you say.”

  “Oh, and Damien? One more thing. Next time you visit? Call first.”

  Then she shuts the door in my face.

  When I get back to Gordon’s that evening, the first thing I notice is that someone has snipped Mr. Wiggles in half. Someone, who is a fat, lying bitch with shallow friends and no way to attract boys, has cut him in two, right under his little guitar, and left him for me to find on the dining room table.

  Alex and three of his liveliest friends come screaming in from the kitchen. They whirl past me, each of them touching my leg like a goalpost as they continue on into the other room. I don’t feel them, I don’t feel anything.

  The top of Amelia’s head appears from around the corner in the kitchen. She gasps and pulls back into hiding.

  “Honey?” Helen calls from the other room. “Is that Damien? Your father’s been looking all over for him!”

  Amelia doesn’t answer her. She ventures into the dining room and bites her lip. “I’m sorry, Damien,” she says. “I thought you killed Blue Bunnykins.”

  I don’t acknowledge her presence. I gather up Mr. Wiggles’s broken body, still in shock.

  “But it turns out it was Alex, not you.” She twirls a lock of her hair around her finger. “He was playing heroes and villains with it and got carried away, so I’m mad at him, not you, and I’m really, really—”

  I turn and walk away. I
don’t care what her explanation is. Not today. She was so quick to blame the villain before. She didn’t believe me about not doing it, so why should I believe her about feeling bad for what she’s done?

  Amelia trails after me as I try to get away from her. Alex and his friends stomp around, shrieking and slamming Alex’s door. Helen calls out to Amelia from the other room, asking her again if I’m home.

  I step into the bathroom, the only place where I can be alone in the whole house, and close the door only inches from Amelia’s face. I don’t know what she thought she was going to do—follow me in? I lock the door before slumping down against the wall and sliding to the linoleum. My eyes water, and I lean my head back to keep the tears from falling.

  “Damien?!” Amelia pounds her fists against the door, her voice shrill and getting frustrated. “I said I was sorry!”

  Mr. Wiggles will dance no more. She ruined the only thing in this house that was any sort of comfort to me, the only thing that was really mine.

  “Fine, don’t talk to me!” Amelia shouts. “You’re the one who came here and acted like a jerk. Maybe if you were a little nicer, I would have believed you in the first place and this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Or if she hadn’t been so quick to point the finger at me.

  I hear footsteps, then Helen’s voice asks, “What is going on?”

  Amelia pounds on the door again. “Damien! Talk to me already!” When I don’t respond, she makes a huffing noise and tells Helen, “He’s being really emo. I apologized and everything, and he won’t say anything.”

  “Then he might not want to talk,” Helen says. “Maybe you should leave him alone for a while?”

  “Mom, I’m going to get through to him. I’m—”

  “Amelia.” I hear mumbling mixed with scolding, then some groaning from Amelia, and then, finally, the sound of them leaving. I can still hear Alex and his friends storming through the house, but otherwise I’m alone, and it’s quiet. I hug Mr. Wiggles to my chest. I thought finding out my father was a superhero was the worst it was going to get, but that doesn’t even come close to today. A couple of tears streak down my cheeks as I get out my phone.

  Kat answers after only one ring. “Hey, Damien!” We haven’t talked since the day I told her I didn’t want to get back together. She sounds nervous at first, but then excited and relieved. “It’s so good to hear from you. I thought, when you didn’t call or come over again … Anyway, what’s up?”

  I wipe my face on my sleeve. I half expected Kat to hang up on me, still upset about the other day, but no. I guess she’s over it, and we’re cool. My best friend is still there for me, even if everything else sucks. And maybe that’s really all she should be—my best friend. It sounds good. I could live with that. “Oh, nothing much,” I tell her. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  Monday afternoon, Sarah and I share an armrest on the train. We’re supposed to be in school, but instead we’re traveling to Vilmore, to find Sarah’s father. I know, I know, I wasn’t going to get involved in this. But I figure since I was the one who broke the hypno device, causing my mom and Taylor to kidnap Dr. Kink, I owe her one. I won’t call it a rescue. That sounds like we’re doing a good deed. I don’t have anything against “good deeds” in general, only when they make me seem … heroic. In the superhero sense. If I was out superheroing, and the news got back to Gordon and Helen, Gordon might take that as evidence that I have superhero potential, and then he’d make me stay with him forever.

  Well, he might. Depending on how he reacts to the dead baby spiders I injected into his toothpaste, or the inchworms I dropped in his shampoo bottle. I have yet to discover what Gordon’s biggest fear is, but I’m hoping it’s the worms.

  Even if what I’m doing does count as superheroing in Gordon’s book, I can console myself with the fact that ditching school and running off on my own to do it doesn’t mesh well with his precious rules. Not only did I leave school without permission and without telling anybody, but I found the money for this trip lying around in Gordon’s wallet.

  Sarah looks over and smiles at me. She thinks I’m a good person, a wannabe superhero trying to fight off my half-villain status. That’s the impression I get from the way she talks about how great I am for doing this, and how awful it is I only have an X, but how cool it’ll be when I finally get the H I deserve. Yeah, right.

  I should set her straight. I really should. But then she wouldn’t want me to help her, and, to be honest, I’m her best bet for getting her dad back. So it’s for her own good that I’m not telling her the truth, and not because I’m selfish and want her to keep talking about how great and wonderful I am. Honest.

  Sarah leans across the armrest, her eyes huge behind her glasses. She’s wearing a pink turtleneck sweater with a cartoony cow on the front, mooing in Japanese. “What’s your superhero name going to be?”

  “I told you, I’m not a superhero. This isn’t a superhero mission.” I wave away the idea with a flick of my hand.

  She raises a finger in protest. “A rescue is a type one mission, according to the superhero handbook. That’s the highest rank a mission can have.”

  “Let’s not think of it as a mission. That sounds so … complicated. This is going to be no problem. Easy peasy, right?” Maybe not on her own, but with me here, we should be able to get in and get out and be home in time for dinner. Well, a late dinner—midnight snacks at the worst.

  I can’t wait to see Gordon’s face when he wants to know where I was all night. He’ll already be suspicious that I was up to no good—telling him I was out spending the money I stole from him at villain-themed strip clubs is going to be awesome. Especially when I tell him it was minors night and I got all my drinks for free.

  A grin spreads across my face, and I almost share my after-mission plans with Sarah. But then I remember she thinks this is a sanctioned trip, all on the up and up, and that she probably wouldn’t appreciate me lying to and stealing from my own dad. So instead I tell her, “It’s more like we’re just two teenagers, casually skipping school and enjoying a train ride together through the country, with plans to help someone out while we’re, you know, there. No big deal. Not anything that requires any superhero antics.”

  Sarah chews her lip, then says, “But it’d be easier for me to come up with a sidekick name if I knew what you were going to call yourself.”

  “You’re not my sidekick. Can I borrow those?” I point to her glasses.

  She blinks and hands them to me. I put them on and instantly feel like puking, but I stick it out, trying to look off to the side and not through the lenses. I want to know how long she’ll let me wear them before asking for them back. I stare out the window, but we’re past the city and there’s nothing to see but grass and cows. Fields and fields of them.

  I shut my eyes and start to drift off. I know I’m falling asleep because I suddenly feel like I’m plummeting from a million stories up and jolt awake. I don’t think I’ve slept more than five minutes straight since Saturday. I hope Gordon likes his worms. I’d hate to have to start messing with the family food supplies. Maybe fish eggs will mysteriously appear in the milk, or maggots in the ice cream. That’ll get Amelia—and hopefully several friends—next time she decides to pig out.

  I look outside, peering over the edge of Sarah’s glasses. Still more grass. I lean my head on my hand, propping my elbow against the window, and sigh. “Deviant Demon.”

  Sarah shakes her head and laughs like I’ve just said something in another language, like the cow on her sweater. “You can’t call yourself that. You sound like a supervillain.”

  Let’s see … Fraidy Flier and Freak Girl? “How about Locke and Keynk?”

  She snorts. “I’ll keep it in mind of we start up a detective agency.”

  “Cool Guy and Nifty Girl. That’s my final offer.”

  Sarah leans over, her hand on my arm. She looks like a pink-and-yellow blob through her glasses. I feel dizzy and sick from looking through the
m. Sarah moves in close, but I can’t make out her expression through the blur. She grabs her glasses off my face and puts them on. Her eyes flick up and down, studying my reaction as she whispers, “What about Renegade X?”

  Did it get hot in here, or is that just her? My chest tightens. Renegade X. It sounds really cool. I grind my teeth. I lick my lips and say, “I think it’s been done before.”

  My arm hurts where her fingers dig into it. She lets go. “You’re wrong. I checked.” She sighs in frustration as she folds her arms across her chest and stares into the aisle.

  Great. There goes my entertainment. I pull my phone out of my pocket and check the time. A little after two thirty. Perfect—the Crimson Flash is having a special afternoon Q&A session. Live. This is a once-a-month feature, so maybe it’s not really all that special, but Kat and I have taken advantage of it several times. The studio doesn’t even accept calls from her phone number anymore. Luckily, mine hasn’t been blacklisted yet.

  I lean toward the window, away from Sarah, who’s still being all huffy about me not wanting to be Renegade X—not that I don’t want to be, because it’s a cool name, but, like I’ve told her a thousand times, I’m not a superhero—and pick the studio’s number out of my contacts list. It rings.

  “Hey, there, Honorary Safety Member,” Gordon’s voice says. “The Crimson Flash is here to answer your question. There’s no challenge too big, no injustice too small—”

  “Yeah, I have a safety question.” This always works better when Kat does the talking, what with her voice not having changed and it being easier to sound, you know, the appropriate age for this show. This time around I’m more worried Gordon will recognize my voice before I get to the good stuff. Not that there’s actually an official age limit, and wouldn’t Gordon be thrilled if he thought teens loved his show as much as little kids?