She opens her mouth to say something else—something smug, from the look on her face—but then Gordon walks in and holds up his car keys. “I’m making a run to the store. Damien, do you—”
“Yes.” I jump up from the couch and take the keys from him. Gordon might not be my favorite person right now, and I might not be his, but going to the store with him beats staying here with Amelia.
We put on our coats and get in the car. I’m in the driver’s seat, which I still can’t believe, even though I’ve had my permit for a couple months now.
Gordon doesn’t say anything until we’re about halfway to the store. Then he clears his throat. “Damien, I want to talk to you about something.”
I almost look over at him, to see if his expression is as serious as he sounds, but I decide I can’t risk taking my eyes off the road. “If this is some kind of trick and we’re actually going to an asylum or something, you really shouldn’t have let me drive.”
“What?” He sounds amused, though I still don’t feel comfortable looking over. Maybe at the next stoplight. “Why would you think that?”
“You don’t always think things through.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
We get to a red light, and I can finally glance over at him. He looks worn out, maybe kind of nervous, but not “tricking my son into checking into a shock-therapy program” nervous.
“Take a left here,” he says.
“The store’s in the other direction.”
“We’re taking a longer route.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to talk to you. And because you hate turning left.”
Only when there’s traffic, which there is. “Turning left is overrated. Turning right three times is just as good.”
“You’ll be fine. Put your blinker on.”
I do it and grit my teeth, waiting for the light to turn green.
“I actually have two things I want to talk to you about. After what happened last week, I really don’t think you should go to school on Monday.” He waits for me to say something. “Damien? Did you hear me?”
“Can’t talk. Have to concentrate.”
The light turns green, and all the cars from the opposite side of the road start going. People behind me squeeze into the space on my right so they can go past. The wind from all the cars whooshing by rocks the car a little, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to die here.
“Go after this next car,” Gordon says.
“There’s no room.”
“There’s plenty of room. Just trust me on this. It’ll be okay.”
Yesterday, he hardly looked at me, and now he wants me to trust him?
The car goes by, but I chicken out, and then after what feels like forever, the second car finally goes past. Just as the light turns red.
Great. “I’m going to turn right. Like a sane person.”
He shakes his head. “You need to learn how to do this.”
“You want me to do everything your way. And now we’re stuck here.”
“We’re not stuck.”
“And I’m going to school on Monday.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’re getting into fights. It’s not safe.”
“It was one fight, and I’m fine. Nothing happened.”
“You don’t have to prove anything. If that’s what this is about.”
“It’s—” The light turns green again. There are about a million cars coming from the opposite direction. It looks like there’s never going to be enough space for me to cross. “It’s not.”
“Two more cars, and then go.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. Just— Now! Go now!”
Damn it. I don’t have time to think about it. Somewhere deep down, I must actually trust him, because I do what he says. I press on the gas and turn the wheel, and I’m not sure why my body is letting me go through with this, because now I know we’re going to die. And even though he’s the one who told me to go, it’s going to be all my fault somehow.
There’s a car coming straight for us. My heart pounds and lightning crackles across my skin. But then I press harder on the gas to speed up, and we make it past.
“You did it!” Gordon sounds super proud of me, like I just saved ten burning orphanages all at once.
The fact that we’re not going to die tonight slowly registers. “I did it. And I’m going to school on Monday.”
“Damien.”
“We’re starting new missions this week! We’re going to track down some notorious boat thieves. That practically makes them pirates. It’s rumored that they have a bunch of stolen artifacts on their current boat, too. I mean, seriously. I’m not missing that.”
“You like fieldwork.”
It’s not a question, but I answer it anyway. “Yeah, it’s exciting. And it’s the thing I like most about Heroesworth.” Kind of the only thing, but I leave that part out. “It makes all the other crap I have to deal with there actually bearable. So I’m going on Monday.”
“Well...”
“If I miss that, then what’s the point? It’s the only part of school I’m looking forward to. Even if I don’t go for a while, I’m going to have to go back eventually. So don’t make me miss out on the one thing I actually like.”
“I’ll think about it.”
I turn right at the next corner to head toward the store. “You said you had two things you wanted to talk about.” As soon as I say that, I regret it. Anything he wants to talk about is probably something I don’t want to have anything to do with, so why bring it up?
“Oh. Right.” He clears his throat again. He sounds really nervous.
I wonder if he knows where I went last night and if this is going to be some kind of belated sex talk, even though he already knows me and Kat have been doing it for months. And I’m not the one with an illegitimate love child, so I’m not even sure he’s qualified to talk to me about it.
“Your birthday’s coming up. In a few weeks.”
“More like four. It’s on the twentieth.”
“I know what day your birthday is, Damien.”
I shrug. It’s not like he was there or anything.
“And I know I’ve missed all of them so far.” He says it quietly. “I’m not proud of that.”
I glance over at him and almost wander into the other lane. “It’s okay. Really.”
“It’s not. That’s sixteen years of your life, and I wasn’t there.”
“Think of it this way. That was sixteen years without me causing trouble for you. You’re lucky you only have to deal with me for two.” Two and a half, probably, since I won’t have graduated yet when I turn eighteen.
He doesn’t say anything. There’s a tense silence in the car, and I think I might have actually hurt him. “I thought maybe we could do something together, just the two of us. Anything you want to do. We could go to a game, or—”
“How about a strip club?” I pull into the grocery store parking lot and find a space with no other cars around it.
“A...” He splutters, trying to come up with a reason why we can’t, until he finally says, “You’re not old enough.”
“Like anyone’s going to card me if you’re there. Just a father and son, enjoying ogling strange women together, right? Come on, you said anything I wanted.”
He squirms, his embarrassment fighting sixteen years’ worth of guilt.
“I’m just kidding, Dad. The only thing I want for my birthday is for us to go into the backyard and throw a baseball around.”
He looks relieved for a second, since he doesn’t have to find a way to tell me that when he said “anything,” he didn’t really mean anything. Then he realizes I’m making fun of him and scowls. “I’m serious about this. So, if you think of something you want to do, let me know. And of course you can have a party.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening.” My last two birthday parties were complete disasters. Plus, I’m a bit lacking in the fri
ends-who-are-allowed-to-see-me department.
“Oh.” His shoulders deflate.
“I mean, I think Kat’s throwing me a party at her house,” I lie, just because he looks so dejected about it.
“Maybe we can have a family thing. We’ll at least do cake. And if there’s something you want, something big, we can talk about it. Like a car? A used one. Or a computer?”
I stare out the window, not looking at him. “You don’t have to feel guilty, okay?”
“Amelia got a computer for her birthday.”
“That’s different.” They got her a laptop because they wanted to. Because they actually like her for some reason. Not because Gordon missed most of her life and was trying to overcompensate. “Seventeen’s not an important birthday.”
“It’s important to me.”
“Not to me. So don’t worry about it.” I’d rather get nothing than a present that shows just how little he understands me.
“Damien, I’m going to worry about it. You’ll be eighteen next year. An adult, legally speaking. This is the only birthday I’ll spend with you while you’re still a kid.”
“A kid? I drove us here.” Not to mention the things I did with Kat last night.
He sighs and leans his head back, running his hand through his hair. “You’ll be eighteen next year.”
“You said that.”
“And then you’ll graduate. You’ll get a job, and you’ll move out to live with your friends. I’ll only see you at Christmas, and only when you don’t have something better to do. Before you know it, you’ll have your own family, and then we won’t see each other at all.”
“Uh. Way to plan out my whole life there.”
“It’s how it goes. It’ll happen with you, and with Amelia, and eventually with Alex and Jess. The difference is that I missed out on the first sixteen years of your life. We’ve only got these two years.”
“You don’t know that.”
He tilts his head, giving me a look that says we both know better. That I’ll be out of the house as soon as possible.
“Okay,” I say, giving in. “I guess we can at least have a cake.”
Chapter 20
“THIS IS HOW WE’RE going to play it this time.” I’m sitting in Advanced Heroism on Monday, since Gordon decided I could go to school after all. We’ve still got a couple minutes before class starts, and I’m trying to give Amelia some guidance on what is and isn’t okay to do on a mission. “First of all, don’t wander off and get caught by bad guys.”
“Uh-huh.”
She’s not even looking at me. Her eyes follow Riley as he comes in the door and sits down at the desk next to ours.
“Amelia?” I snap my fingers. “Are you listening?” I’m pretty sure she should be writing this down.
She acts like she doesn’t even hear my question and leans across me to talk to Riley. “Here,” she says, tossing him a piece of paper folded up into a thick square. “Give that to Zach. And you’d better not read it.”
“Of course not.” Riley acts like he doesn’t know why she even has to say that.
I wonder how difficult it would be to steal that note from him in fifth period. “Okay, now that that’s over, let’s discuss what we’re going to do. And by we, I mean you. You’re going to what? That’s right, not wander off.”
Amelia blinks at me. Then she looks at Riley again, like she’s waiting for something.
“Oh! Right.” He starts digging through his backpack. “Zach almost didn’t get a chance to give it to me this morning. He was getting ready to leave while I was in the shower, and—” Amelia snatches the piece of paper out of his hand as soon as he finds it, effectively cutting him off.
Unlike her note, Zach’s isn’t folded a million times. Just once, in half. She opens it and starts reading.
“You can read that later,” I tell her. “This mission is important. It has pirates. And if you screw this up for me or botch it in any way, I will never forgive you. I, your favorite brother, will hold a grudge as long as I live.”
She glares at me. “Will you shut up?”
Mason hurries into his seat next to Riley, sitting down only seconds before the teacher walks in. “Almost didn’t make it,” he says, pretending to wipe sweat off his forehead. “I was advising Brad on how he could have better handled expressing his feelings last week.”
“You what?!” I can’t believe him.
Riley just gapes.
“It’s okay.” Mason gives me a nod of acknowledgment, like this whole thing was no big deal. “I’ve done mediator work before.”
“Wow,” Riley says, stunned.
“I explained to him how that video might have looked to villains who saw it, and how they might feel just as angry and confused as he did. We discussed how villains are human beings, too, and how we only have one Earth that we have to share with each other.”
Ugh. I didn’t think it was possible to hate him any more than I already did, but he just proved me wrong. “You talked to Brad, the same guy who was going to kill me last week, about that?”
“You’re welcome.”
I clench my fists under the desk. “I don’t need you fighting my battles for me.”
He holds up a finger. “There was no fighting involved, X. You know, the verbs you use say a lot about how you think. Change your verbs, change your mind. That’s what I always say.”
Did he just call me X? Rage flares in my chest. Electricity twitches up and down my spine. “I’m going to electrocute you.”
“Exactly. That’s a perfect example of a verb to stop using.”
“No, I’m actually going to electrocute you if you ever call me X again.”
“Huh? Oh. I guess I did call you that. I must have picked it up from Ry.” He shrugs. “I didn’t even notice.”
He’ll notice when I murder him.
Mrs. Deeds starts passing out info sheets to everyone. Riley waits until she goes by before saying, “It was just a mistake. It’s not worth getting worked up over.”
“I understand that you’re upset,” Mason says, in a soothing voice you might use on a wild animal or an escaped mental patient, “but the fact that your immediate reaction when you got angry was to threaten to hurt me indicates a deeper issue. Like I told Brad earlier, the only way to work through our problems is to first identify them, then confront them. We do that by talking. We’re all just human beings here, trying to survive and make sense of the world around us. That means we have a lot in common—we just have to find those connections with each other. So if you ever want to work through anything, I’m here for you, X. Er, I mean, Damien. You can talk to me.”
I’m so pissed at him right now, I can hardly see straight. My vision is actually blurring a little, and I can hear the crackle of electricity.
Amelia scoots her chair farther away from me. Riley looks worried.
Unfortunately, Mason doesn’t notice any of that and keeps talking. “It can be hard to open up to people, even to a trained mediator like me, but you’ll feel better if you do. And from what I’ve seen from you so far, I would hazard a guess that you’ve got some deeply rooted abandonment issues. You don’t want to let those fester.”
I take a deep breath, really hoping I don’t blow something up. “All right, Perkins, that’s it. I was going to go easy on you during this mission. Maybe form an alliance, share some info, but now? Forget it.”
Riley’s eyebrows come together. “What? What did I do? And this isn’t even a competition.”
“For starters, you’re friends with him. And I don’t care what he did or did not do for me last week, because if he says one more word to me, there’s a good chance that someone in this room will die. Okay? And it might not officially be a competition, but we all have the same end goal. Only a few teams are going to get to actually take down the pirates, and I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I’m missing out on the action.”
Riley rolls his eyes. “They’re not pirates.”
“
They’re thieves on a boat with treasure. It’s close enough.”
Mrs. Deeds takes her place at the front of the room and announces that class is starting. “I know you’re all excited for this next project. Like it says on your info sheets, this segment is going to be very hands-on and will take up the next three to four weeks. Unless some of you really excel at fieldwork.”
She beams at Riley when she says that, even though it’s obviously going to be me. I mean, granted, I do have Amelia on my team, weighing me down, but I think a few rules and a lot of busywork will keep her from causing too much trouble.
“This assignment is going to be a little different than what we’ve been doing up till now. We’re going to have one team of three. Hopefully no one feels that’s unfair, but if you do, come speak to me privately and we’ll figure something out.”
One team of three? Me and several other people glance around the room, trying to spot whoever this extra person is. I don’t see anyone, though. Maybe they’re only in the process of transferring in and aren’t here yet.
“We’re also going to be working on the same project, instead of having individual missions. During the next few weeks, you’ll be doing extensive research, learning new methods of observation and tracking, and putting together a comprehensive report. You’re encouraged to share information with each other, but only the two teams who complete their tasks the most efficiently—that is, quickly while keeping a high standard of quality—will have the honor of capturing our criminals and recovering the stolen goods.”
I lean over and whisper to Riley, “That could have been you.”
“What makes you so sure it won’t be?”
Mrs. Deeds smiles at the class. “You’ll see on your info sheets a list of the stolen items. We’re going to spend the rest of today doing some research on them, so take your things with you and head to the computer lab.”
There’s the sound of chairs moving and people loading their stuff into their backpacks as everybody gets ready to leave.
“Amelia?” Mrs. Deeds says, coming over to us. “You’ll be joining Riley and Mason’s group this time.”
“For today?” Amelia asks.
The Betrayal of Renegade X (Renegade X, Book 3) Page 21
