The Rise of Renegade X Read online

  “On second thought, Damien, where is this diary of yours? Maybe I’ll show it to him.”

  “Maybe you’d better not. It might make him think I need saving even more.” I tap one of my temples. “Those superhero types, they can’t stand not saving people.”

  The look Mom gives me turns my stomach. She tilts her head, her lips twitching into a half smile. Of pity. I partly expect her to ask, Do you know that firsthand, Damien? Is everything all right? Have you been having superhero… urges?

  Mom pats me on the back. “Don’t worry. The last thing I’m going to do is let him take my little boy away from me.” She grins and rubs her hands together. “And the Mistress of Mayhem has a few tricks up her sleeve for people who refuse to cooperate.”

  More like a few tricks up her skirt. “Thanks, Mom.”

  She kisses my forehead, then throws the bathroom door open, already screaming in a shrill voice at the top of her lungs, “That boy is mine and you shouldn’t even be here!”

  The Crimson Flash shouts back at her. “You think everything belongs to you! It’s just like old times!”

  I think about Kat and how right now would be a great time to escape to her house. If, you know, I hadn’t told her I was over her and made her cry.

  I hide in the bathroom, and when the shouting is finally over, Mom bursts in, grinning. I start to smile, anticipating the good news that she got rid of the Subway Scrambler once and for all.

  Instead, she folds her hands together and says, “Get your things together, Damien. You’re going to be spending some time with him.” She doesn’t say “my father,” just him. I’m supposed to know who she’s talking about.

  “What?!” I can’t believe this. My blood runs cold and I’m considering whether I heard wrong, or if I can never trust my mother again. Talk about betrayal. “You said you wouldn’t let him take me!”

  “I changed my mind,” Mom says. “It’s only for a little while, and I think it’ll be good for both of us. I’ve got a big project I’m working on, and I could use the time alone.”

  By “alone,” I think we both know she means “with Taylor.”

  “And”—she nods at my gloved hands—“you have to turn that X into a V, and think of all the opportunities you’ll have to do that while living with superheroes. Know your enemy. That’s what your grandpa always says.”

  Great advice. Too bad Mom took it too literally. The corners of my mouth droop into the opposite of a smile. My shoulders sag and I still can’t believe this. “Gee, Mom, with that much opportunity, I’ll be enrolling at Vilmore in no time.”

  “That’s the spirit, honey.” She gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now hurry and get packed. Don’t keep your fa—that man waiting. I don’t want to have to put up with him any longer than I have to.”

  Mom sold me out. She didn’t just promise Gordon Tines, better known as the Crimson Flash, that I’d stay at his house for a while and then come home. No. They made a deal. He’s got six weeks to turn me into a wannabe superhero, proving I take after his side of the family, or else I get to go back and live with Mom. We’re not talking changing my X into an H or anything—that would take a lot longer than six weeks—just which letter I should be rooting for. Gordon thinks he can prove I have more hero potential than villain, and if I don’t stay true to my supervillain genes and survive all of his “teach me to be a hero” nonsense, I’ll have to live in this suburban hellhole for the rest of my life. Or until I turn eighteen, whichever comes first. Or, dear God, until they send me to hero school. The only thing worse than not starting at Vilmore this fall would be starting up at Heroesworth.

  Which is the last thing I’m going to do ever. Plus, I’m pretty sure I could get out of it. I’m half villain, and I’ll bet everyone at that school is a big antivillain snob. They wouldn’t want me there any more than I’d want to go. And even better than that? It’s not going to matter, because in order for Gordon to send me there, he’d have to convince me I’m supposed to grow up as a hero first. Mom says this is a great opportunity to know my enemy, but I’ve been making fun of his show for years—I know what I’m up against, and it’s ridiculous. The leader of the Safety Kids is going to convince me I want to stay with him forever and learn to be a hero? He might be my dad, but at least I didn’t inherit his delusions.

  But, for now, I’m staying at his house with him. With his family. He’s got the perfect setup—superhero wife and three 100 percent superhero kids. And now me. I wake up in the morning in an eight-year-old boy’s room that smells like cheese, with dirty socks covering my face, and I didn’t even drink any of Mom’s punch. I cringe as I fling the filthy socks away. All I have with me is a backpack full of my clothes and Mr. Wiggles. I can see why he and Kat were such great friends when she was a kid. I’m already appreciating his company immensely, as he’s the only familiar face in the house.

  Alex, my eight-year-old half brother, stomps on my arm as he jumps out of bed. His room is so cramped and small and overstuffed with junk that the only way I can fit on the floor is if I keep my legs folded. They ache, and my neck is cramping from only having a thin couch pillow to support it with all night. I guess this is the kind of five-star service a half villain like me can expect in a house full of heroes.

  “Ha ha!” Alex shouts. “I survived a night with a supervillain!” He does a little dance that involves not noticing he’s stepping on my ankles until I lift my foot up and trip him. He slips and, luckily for him, lands in a three-foot-tall pile of laundry that I believe to be the source of the cheese smell.

  “One down,” I mutter, but he just laughs.

  I drag myself out of bed—which consists of nothing but a blanket and a hardwood floor—rumpled and still wearing my clothes from last night. I yawn and follow Alex into the kitchen, though not as sprightly as him, bringing Mr. Wiggles with me. Mr. Wiggles and I, we have to stick together.

  A slightly pudgy teenage girl with blond eyebrows and dyed black hair sits at the dining table, glaring at us. “You’re late,” she says. This is Amelia. Amelia is fifteen. She has one of those countdown clocks in her room, like the kind they sell for New Year’s, counting down the days until she turns sixteen. She made a point of bringing it down and showing it to me last night. She’s got 236 days left. I told her maybe she shouldn’t be so impatient, because she might turn sixteen and find out she has latent supervillain genes, and then won’t she long for the carefree days of her carefree youth?

  “Couldn’t you have gotten dressed first?” Amelia asks in disgust. I can’t tell if she means me, looking like I’ve slept in my clothes all night but being otherwise fully dressed, or Alex, who’s running around in pajamas with his shirt half unbuttoned.

  I sit down at the table directly across from Amelia and position Mr. Wiggles next to me.

  Amelia makes a face. She’s wearing mauve eye shadow, which I hope isn’t to impress little old moi, as I am her half brother, her mortal enemy, and altogether not interested.

  “What is that?” she says, scowling at Mr. Wiggles.

  “This is Dr. Wiggles, formerly Mr. Wiggles. He recently got his PhD in early-twentieth-century literature.” Even if he didn’t have his degree, I’d still venture to say he’s smarter than Amelia.

  “Freak,” Amelia mutters under her breath, as if her saying it like that makes it okay, even though I can obviously hear her. “Aren’t you a little old to be playing with kids’ toys?”

  “Dr. Wiggles is a highly sophisticated piece of technology. Plus, ‘kids’ toys’ don’t go on to get their doctorates.” I have her there.

  She gapes at me, then says, “Whatever,” and rolls her eyes.

  Helen, my father’s wife and the mother of my three half siblings, limps out of the master bedroom with Jessica, my two-year-old half sister, glomped to her leg. Helen’s a superhero, too, but I didn’t catch what her power is.

  So far, I like Jessica the best because she talks the least, refers to me only as “boy,” and has started her own garden
in the yard. She has a couple of rows of dirt marked with signs she made herself that have scribbles of what the vegetables are supposed to look like on them. I think one of them might have been a tomato, the others some kind of mutant carrot-cauliflower hybrid. There may or may not be any actual seeds planted there.

  “Boy!” Jessica says, hiding behind her mother’s legs and pointing a grubby finger at me.

  “Yes, Jess,” Helen mutters. “It’s a boy!” She says that last part sarcastically, mimicking the balloons and greeting cards people get when they have a baby. Helen has shoulder-length blond hair and owns an antique shop downtown. She always walks with a slight limp, I noticed, even when Jessica isn’t trying to climb her leg.

  Jessica takes a risk, leaving the safety of hiding behind Helen, and runs over to the dining table, where she stares at me with wide blue eyes.

  “Jess,” Amelia says, patting the seat next to her. “Sit here, Jess.”

  Jessica ignores her and continues to stare at me.

  Amelia keeps calling her like a cat until Jessica turns around and says, “No,” very sternly. Another reason why I like her.

  Amelia makes a noise of frustration that sounds like a train colliding with a herd of mooing cows. “Nobody in this house ever listens to me!”

  I rest my chin in my hands, my elbows propped on the table, and stare at her. “I’m listening, Amelia. Tell me your problems.”

  That infuriates her even more, though for a second she thought I was serious. When I won’t stop staring at her—not even blinking, I might add—she shouts, “Mom! The mutant freak Dad brought home is looking at me!”

  Helen steps out of the kitchen, stirring a bowl of pancake batter.

  “I can’t help it if I’m entranced by her beauty,” I say, managing to do it without gagging, which I think should earn me some kind of award.

  Amelia looks like she’s going to be sick.

  Helen scowls at her. “Amelia, be nice.”

  “But, Mooooom!”

  “Amelia!” Helen forgets she has a spoon in her hand and accidentally flings batter across the floor when she points it at her daughter. Helen jerks her chin toward me in an effort to be discreet, like I won’t notice they’re talking about me. In a tight voice, her teeth clenched, she says, “We already discussed this.”

  Helen seems to be under the impression that I was “rescued” from my awful life of living in a filthy den of savage and immoral supervillains. She was not as forgiving of Gordon, however, who had to sleep on the couch, even though they weren’t together yet when he sired me. (Almost, though. I’ve only got an eight-month lead on Amelia.) Helen thinks I’m some sort of deprived refugee and is careful not to hurt my feelings or make me feel unwelcome. Which she would probably not be doing if she knew the truth, that I’m a supervillain at heart and thoroughly despise everything hero related.

  “Are you going to learn to fly?” Alex asks, leaping onto the seat next to me.

  “No!” Amelia and I both shout at the same time. I squint at her.

  “Alex, don’t stand on the furniture!” Amelia glares at him, then at me.

  Alex doesn’t listen to her. “You are going to,” he says. “Dad told me last night.”

  I laugh. Just a little chuckle to myself. “Sorry to disappoint you, Alex, but that’s not going to happen.”

  He doesn’t look at all convinced. “How do you know?”

  Because I’m going to spend all of my time praying I get laser eyes or pretty much anything but Gordon’s awful ability. “I’m going to be a supervillain,” I explain, “and no self-respecting supervillain flies.” Unless it’s in a cool jet or rocket pack, but even so, that’s not going to be me. I’m not leaving the ground anytime soon.

  “Who cares if he doesn’t want to fly?” Amelia asks Alex. “Flying powers are for superheroes only, and he’s clearly not one of us, no matter what Dad says. I’m still going to be the first.” She sounds pretty proud of that and twirls a lock of her hair around her finger.

  The idea of leaving the ground makes me sick. My chest constricts and my stomach flops. I push my bare feet against the floor to remind myself I’m on solid ground. “It’s getting kind of late—I’m already sixteen.”

  Amelia scowls like I said it to rub it in.

  “All my friends got their powers months ago. Maybe I’m a dud. I’ve got this stupid X, and mixing both viruses could mean I’m not going to get a power.” I could live with that if it meant getting out of flying. “Or maybe I won’t get one until I turn this into a V.”

  “Or an H,” Alex chimes in. So helpful.

  “Either way, flying isn’t my ability. I’m sure of it.”

  “You don’t know that,” Amelia says, sounding sympathetic for once.

  But one thing I do know? I’m not flying. Ever.

  “Dude.” Some guy grabs my arm as I go to sit down, apparently thinking he’s doing me a favor. “You don’t want to sit there. That’s Kink.” He points to the girl sitting in the desk next to the one I was heading for. “She’s a freak.”

  I look around the classroom. There’s a group of four kids off to the side wearing black spandex with black jeans over it, chains around their waists like belts, and gloves. Their gloves look a lot like the ones I’m wearing, except that I’ve got both of mine on, and they only wear one on their right hand. Like they’ve got something to hide—kind of like me—only I’m pretty sure they don’t, because according to Amelia, she’s the only superhero at this school. A fact she didn’t sound too upset about.

  Unlike everybody else, the black-spandex kids sit on top of their desks. Then there’s the teacher, Mrs. Log, who’s wearing a plain, flower-print dress and scribbling some equations on the whiteboard. Most of the other kids plowing into the room sit in the middle rows of desks and don’t make eye contact with the spandex kids. But nobody sits anywhere near “Kink,” the girl in the back.

  Kink has crimped, sandy-blond hair, with a hair band pulled over the top of it. It does nothing to stop it from looking wild and poofy and unkempt. A long braided strand of hair runs down the side of her face, with a couple of silver beads woven in that go with the choker made of tinfoil gleaming around her neck. She doesn’t seem to notice that nobody wants to sit by her, her nose shoved in a paperback about the world’s most notorious jailbreaks. By the looks of it, it’s a real page-turner.

  Hmm. Supposed freak, or the boring rest of the class? I shrug off the guy who thinks he’s doing me a favor and sit down next to Kink. She doesn’t look up at me or acknowledge my presence in any way.

  It was Gordon and Helen’s idea for me to go to high school. When I told Helen I’d never been before, she almost cried. Then I explained that I’d been homeschooled, but that didn’t help. She must have been picturing cavemen-like supervillains in capes grunting and showing me how to rub two sticks together to make “the pretty fire stuff.”

  There are high schools specifically for heroes, but thankfully Gordon doesn’t believe in sending his kids there. He thinks going to a school full of boring old regular kids brings you closer to the people you’ll be saving later. I asked him why, with that line of thinking, he didn’t send us to an old-people home so we could get closer to the people we’re going to help cross the street. His face kind of twitched, like he wanted to get mad at me, but instead he smiled and said I could volunteer at the senior center after school if I was concerned. Fat chance. But even if I won’t be saving anyone, I’m glad he didn’t try to send me to hero school. Regular school is going to be bad enough, and so is living with a bunch of superheroes—I don’t need to be surrounded by hundreds of them every day. Ugh.

  Gordon and Helen made Amelia walk with me on the way here, but once we set foot inside the building, she gave me instructions not to talk to her, called me a freak for good measure, and walked off. I will be, as they say, paying her a visit at lunch today. I look forward to it.

  “Class,” Mrs. Log says once “school” has started, “today we have a new student.”
She beckons me toward the front of the room. People turn their heads as I pass by, making pointed looks at my gloves, and coughing the word “Poser” into their hands. Maybe word hasn’t gotten around that Amelia and I are related, and they think I’m pretending to be a hero. Or a villain. Or this school isn’t as hero-friendly as Gordon thought, and they’re pissed because I’m not ordinary enough to go here.

  Mrs. Log introduces me. “Kids, this is Damien Locke.”

  I take a bow, which earns me some snickering from the black-spandex kids, who are now sitting behind their desks like everybody else.

  “He’s, uh, coming to us from another school. Is that right, Damien?” Mrs. Log’s brow furrows as she checks over a piece of paper that must have my information on it.

  The Mistress of Mayhem’s Institution for Underprivileged Boys. “Eastwood,” I say, because that’s the school Amelia keeps telling me I should be going to. Eastwood is apparently where they send kids who can’t handle normal society. You know, delinquents, the insane, and pregnant girls.

  Saying I came from Eastwood gets me the reaction I wanted. Half the class looks away from me in a mixture of fear and revulsion. The spandexes laugh derisively and whisper amongst themselves. Kink still has her nose buried in her book.

  Mrs. Log tries to very casually take a step away from me. Then another. “Eastwood, is that right? Oh, my, that’s …” She wrings her hands together, her attention swiveling to the whiteboard behind her, like she’s just remembered she has some very important math to teach. “Well, class, shall we get started?”

  That’s my cue to sit down. I take my place next to Kink, but she continues to read her book, unfazed by my confession of being either insane or a delinquent, or else unaware of it, too busy learning about breaking out of prison and not paying any attention to the math Mrs. Log is trying to teach us. I don’t blame Kink for not listening, because it’s boring anyway. We’re learning advanced algebra, but I covered this with Mom three years ago.