The Phobia of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  But an uncharged phone is an uncharged phone, no matter what your messages are.

  Or maybe she’s still too upset to talk about it, and she’s waiting until she knows what to say to me. Or until she’s alone, in case I make her cry again.

  Great.

  “It’s a good thing I’m not paying you,” Helen says, grinning so I know she’s joking. “Come on. One more, and then we’ll stop for lunch.”

  Helen doesn’t usually eat until around one, since sometimes she gets customers who come in during their lunch hour, but the shop’s been pretty quiet today. Or at least that’s what she told me—I wouldn’t know because I make it a point not to hang out in places where I might get roped into random acts of manual labor.

  I made an exception today because Helen didn’t present it as a choice, and because I didn’t think she’d buy any of my excuses, what with my friends all still being in school during the day and my homework load suddenly non-existent. Also, it felt good to be needed for something, even if I kind of suspect she did it just to get me out of the house for a while, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.

  She grabs one end of a heavy wooden trunk, and I grab the other. It was part of an auction lot she got for cheap a while back that she still needs to sort through. Actually, there might be several lots’ worth of stuff here, since the back room is pretty full.

  “Alright,” Helen says, “we’re just moving it across the room for now, to get it out of the way. You ready?”

  I nod. We both start lifting. It’s really heavy.

  Then my phone chimes with a text. “Oh, wait!” I say, dropping my side without thinking about it.

  “Ow!” The trunk slips, knocking into Helen’s leg—the bad one she always limps on—and she and the trunk both end up on the floor.

  I can’t believe I just did that. I kind of stare at her in shock, dread and guilt slithering through my chest. “Are you okay?” I’m almost afraid to ask.

  Helen can’t talk at first. I think she got the wind knocked out of her somehow, even though she landed on her butt, or that maybe she’s crying or panicking or something. Then I realize she’s laughing too hard to get any words out. Finally, she nods. “I’m okay.”

  “I don’t get what’s so funny.” And if she’s really okay, then I want to check my phone. Which probably makes me a bad person, but it’s like there’s this itching in my brain because I know it’s Kat, finally texting me back, and I have to see what she said.

  Helen shakes her head, still laughing. “You’re the worst help I’ve ever had.”

  I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take that, so I reach out a hand to help her up.

  She takes it.

  I feel a little better once she’s standing again, proving that she isn’t actually injured or anything. “I helped you move all of those,” I tell her, gesturing toward the stack of boxes and crates along the far wall. We spent all morning moving them, and then prying them open so she could inspect their contents. None of them contained any cool treasure, much to my disappointment—though maybe that’s for the best, since the last ‘cool treasure’ I came across got incinerated—and the whole thing was actually pretty boring.

  I also spent a good hour coloring with Jess in Helen’s office, which Helen has set up with a baby gate so she can leave the door open and keep an eye on her whenever she has to go deal with customers. Then one of Helen’s friends I’ve never met, who apparently also has a three-year-old, came by and picked up Jess for some kind of play group. The friend obviously knew who I was and got super nervous, but maybe in a scared kind of way, not in a can-I-have-his-autograph sort of way. Then Helen sent me to go make a new pot of coffee, which I spilled all over, and then she didn’t even drink what was left, so I know it was just to get rid of me.

  “Last time I recruited Trudy’s son to help, and he moved everything all by himself while me and Trudy were still chatting.”

  I scowl at that. “Great.” I have no idea who Trudy is—one of Helen’s friends, I guess. “So her perfect son didn’t, like, drop anything on you.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just… There’s a big contrast, that’s all.”

  Uh-huh. Now that she’s insulted me, I take out my phone.

  The text is from Sarah. It says, Emergency meeting at Secant’s house this afternoon. That means YOU, Renegade!

  So, not from Kat. And Sarah wants to meet up, probably to chew me out for quitting. I haven’t told her yet, but I’m sure Riley has. And if she somehow doesn’t know and the meeting’s not to chew me out, it will be.

  “Hey,” I say to Helen, “can I ask you something?”

  “Me?” She puts a hand to her chest. She seems genuinely shocked. “After that bad advice I gave you before?”

  “What? What bad advice?”

  “When I told you it was okay to quit. I told you that as long as you were on that path, someone you cared about would always get hurt.”

  “Well, they did.”

  She shakes her head. “I thought quitting would protect you from getting hurt. But… I forgot how hard it is.” She glances down at her leg. Getting injured and losing her superpower was why she had to quit the League. “I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with it, and some days I think I have, and some days I don’t think I ever will.”

  “So, you’re mad at me for quitting?” And after she said she’d support me on that.

  “What? No. I just wish I’d kept my mouth shut.”

  “I would have done it anyway. And… sorry,” I tell her. “About, you know, blabbing everything to Gordon.”

  She looks like she has to think about that, like she isn’t even sure what I’m talking about. Then understanding dawns on her. “Oh. It’s okay. I should have told him a long time ago.”

  But she didn’t. She told me, and I managed to keep it to myself for not even two whole days. “I didn’t mean to tell everyone like that.”

  “I know.”

  “And if you want me to move all those boxes by myself, then I’ll—”

  “No, no, it’s okay. How we’ve been doing it is fine.”

  Good, because I don’t know who Trudy’s son is, but either he’s crazy strong, or his boxes were way lighter than mine.

  Helen’s laughing again.

  “What?” I ask her.

  “He has super strength. Trudy’s son. I wasn’t expecting you to do all that.”

  “Oh.” She could have said that earlier. “Why didn’t you get him to come in again?”

  “He’s got finals. And, believe it or not, I enjoy your company.” She heads into her office, stepping over the baby gate, and grabs our lunches out of the fridge. She comes back and hands me an egg-salad sandwich and a bottle of water. “Now, what did you want to ask me? Keeping in mind that I’m the last person who should be giving anyone advice, if it’s that kind of question.”

  I sit down on a nearby table. “I think… I don’t know. Kat’s not answering my texts.”

  “Ah.” She leans against the wall, where she can still see if anyone comes into the shop. “Did you try calling her?”

  I look at her like she’s insane. “I sent her eight texts. Either her phone’s off or she doesn’t want to talk to me. But it’s not like her to go radio silent.” That’s more like something I would do, which it turns out really sucks from the other side.

  “But you think she’s upset about something?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m dropping out of school.”

  “She’s upset that you’re dropping out of hero school?” I can hear the skepticism in her voice, and I know she’s still thinking of Kat as Bart the Blacksmith’s granddaughter.

  Now I kind of wish I hadn’t brought it up. “Never mind.”

  “No, I just… I told you I wasn’t good at advice.” She tries to smile, to pass it off. Then she says, “Eight texts is a lot.”

  “I know.”

  “But you said she’s not the type to not answer. She probably just forgot her phone.”

/>   “She’s worried we’re moving in different directions. It was bad enough when I got an X instead of a V, but now I’m this loser who couldn’t even cut it as a hero.”

  “And that’s what she’s upset about?”

  “She doesn’t like that I’m giving up on myself. She thinks I’m going to be miserable if I’m not a hero.”

  “She’s worried that you’re going to be miserable, so she’s not answering your texts?”

  Well, when she puts it like that, it does sound kind of ridiculous. “Okay, probably not.”

  “I’m sure she’ll call you later. By tonight, you’ll know you were worrying for nothing.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” At least, I really hope so.

  Riley picks me up from the antique shop after he gets out of school, and then we go over to his house. I’m kind of nervous about this meeting Sarah called. Or at least about telling her how her dream of all three of us becoming some amazing superhero team is never going to happen. And I still haven’t heard from Kat, which is starting to really freak me out. And even though all that stuff Helen said makes perfect sense and I’m sure there’s a good reason Kat hasn’t answered me that doesn’t involve her hating me or being dead in a ditch somewhere, I still can’t help worrying.

  “So,” I ask Riley as we cross the yard to his front door, “did Sarah say what she wanted to talk about?”

  “She didn’t tell me any more than she told you.”

  Which sounds suspiciously like he does know something but doesn’t want to tell me. “This isn’t, like, some kind of intervention, is it? To get me to not give up on being a hero?”

  “No. I mean, if it is, she didn’t tell me. Why? Do you want it to—”

  He shuts up as we walk into the house and gasps in shock. Zach and Amelia are on the couch, making out. Except ‘making out’ doesn’t quite cover it, since they’re practically horizontal and there are shirts out of place. Not off, just not all the way on. Thankfully I don’t actually see anything, or at least nothing that will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

  Zach and Amelia pull away from each other, but they’re both breathing kind of hard, and it’s not like we don’t know what we just walked in on.

  “What the hell was that?” Riley says, glaring at Zach. “What were you— What if Mom came in?!”

  Zach swallows. His eyes dart over to mine, like he’s not sure if I’m going to zap him or not.

  “We were just going to your room,” Amelia says. “Right, Zach?”

  “Uh-huh.” He takes her hand as they get up from the couch.

  “Zach,” Riley says. “Wait.”

  But I guess running off with Amelia overrides listening to his brother lecture him, because Zach acts like he doesn’t hear. He and Amelia disappear into his room and close the door.

  Riley still looks shocked. “That was weird, right?”

  “Yep.” I follow him into the kitchen.

  “I thought they were broken up. And even when they were together, I’ve never seen them act like that before. Have you?”

  “Other than finding condoms in your brother’s room?”

  “You know what I mean. And where were you back there? I thought you were against this.”

  I hold up my hands. “I said I was staying out of it.”

  “Two seconds ago they were broken up, and now they’re practically having sex on the living room couch. But you’re staying out of it.”

  “It’s none of my business. That’s what everybody kept saying.”

  “No, that’s what Zach kept saying, because he didn’t want you to be right.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I wasn’t right. And you can stop worrying about why they’re back together. I fixed them.”

  He pauses in the middle of opening the fridge and stares at me in disbelief. “You fixed them.”

  “Don’t say it like that. Look, Perkins, the only reason they broke up was because I interfered.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “So I told Amelia the truth. Sort of.”

  “Because you’re ‘staying out of it.’” He closes the fridge without taking anything out.

  I sit down at the kitchen table. “I said it was my fault Zach was thinking about whether or not he loved her. I told her he wouldn’t have said he only liked her at Prom if it wasn’t for me.”

  Riley gapes at me. “But you don’t know that, X!”

  “I kind of do. He would have said something different.”

  He sits down across from me. “So now they’re back together because Amelia thinks Zach might love her after all?”

  “What happened was my fault. They never should have broken up in the first place. Does it really matter how they get back together?”

  “Yes! She’s going to find out he doesn’t feel that way.”

  “Maybe he does.”

  Riley snorts. “If he loved her, he wouldn’t have had to think about it.”

  “I’m not all that convinced she loves him, either. She just likes the idea of it.”

  “So, nothing’s actually changed between them, but now they’re back together under false pretenses. And because of that they’re probably going to sleep together.”

  “Come on, Perkins. We don’t know—”

  He silences me with a look. Then he lets out a deep breath. “Zach’s going to be heartbroken. And I know it’s probably really not any of our business, but I don’t think he’s ready.”

  “To make use of the condoms? Or to have his heart ripped out again?”

  “Both. Either one.”

  “Well, that’s just great. Where were you a month ago when I was saying that?”

  “I agreed with you! I don’t know why you think I didn’t. But I figured things would work themselves out. Which they kind of did, until you started meddling again.”

  “I was trying to fix what I broke. Actually, no, that’s not true. I was trying to make Amelia hate me, which I guess I succeeded at.”

  Chapter 36

  “WE NEED A PLAN,” Sarah says after she shows up for our meeting at Riley’s house. She takes out a piece of blank paper from her notebook and puts it in the middle of the kitchen table. “That’s for ideas.”

  “Ideas on what?” Riley asks.

  “On how we’re going to track down that fear ray and get it back.” Sarah fishes a pen out of her backpack and sets it on top of the paper. “I can’t believe that was Frank who hired us to get that ring for her. And I can’t believe she called us amateurs.”

  “Total amateurs,” I correct her.

  “I know we failed to get the ring, but it’s not like we still demanded payment. Which was very professional of us, so I don’t know why she has to call us names. Well, she doesn’t know who she’s up against.”

  Except I kind of think she does. I glance over at Riley. “Didn’t you tell her?” I whisper.

  “I thought you should tell her,” Riley says. “You’re the one who’s dropping out.”

  Sarah wrinkles her forehead. “What?”

  “I’m dropping out of Heroesworth.” I say it fast, then brace myself for her reaction.

  “Oh.” She frowns a little, then goes back to what she was talking about before. “Frank’s going to find out that we’re more than a match for her. The job at the train station went south because of unforeseen circumstances, not because we’re unqualified.”

  “Sarah? Didn’t you hear me? I said I’m dropping out. I’m not going to go to hero school anymore."

  “I heard you.”

  “You’re not going to say anything?” I share a surprised look with Riley. Sarah’s probably the last person who I thought would be understanding about this.

  She sighs and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “We can discuss it later. Right now, finding the fear ray has to be our number-one goal. And this way you’ll have more time for freelancing.”

  “Seriously? You’re not, like, going to flip out and ask me what I’m going to do instead?”r />
  “Okay,” she says, sounding kind of annoyed, “what are you going to do instead?”

  “No, that’s— I wasn’t trying to get you to ask. I just thought it was weird that you didn’t.”

  “You can still be a hero. I don’t go to Heroesworth and I’m still part of this group.”

  “I know, but—”

  “You were really inconsistent about your time there, so I already resigned myself to the fact that you might not end up fully trained. At least, not formally, because we can all learn in the field. And you can still apply for colleges. Now, if we’re going to find this fear ray, we’re going to have to find Frank. And before you say it, that’s not the name she told me when we were working for her, and I already tried calling the contact number she gave me, but it’s disconnected.”

  “Sarah, wait. When I said I was dropping out of school, I meant I wasn’t going to be a hero anymore.”

  “What?” She blinks at me. “That’s ridiculous. Of course you’re still going to be a hero. You have an X.”

  “Yeah, I have an X, not an H. I’m quitting.”

  “So, what, you’re trying to be a villain again?”

  “No. I’m just out. Of everything. No heroism, no villainy. I’m just going to be a normal person with a normal life and a… a normal job, who doesn’t put his friends in danger or go looking for fear rays.”

  Sarah wrinkles her nose at that. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Well, it is me. Maybe it wasn’t in the past, but this is how it has to be from now on.”

  She looks at Riley. “And you couldn’t talk some sense into him?”

  “It’s his choice. If he wants to quit—”

  “He doesn’t.” She turns to me. “And even if you misguidedly think you want to quit, you still have to find the fear ray first. You’re the one who lost it into enemy hands, so it’s your responsibility to get it back.”

  “Hey,” Riley says. “I was there, too. It wasn’t all Damien’s fault.”

  “But he’s supposed to be a hero. We were supposed to be a team. He can’t just stop. Maybe you can drop out of school, but you can’t drop out of your destiny.”