The Rise of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  I slide onto an empty stool, and Sarah sits next to me.

  “What can I get for you?” Delores asks. She has hard, beady eyes that look over me and Sarah with curiosity.

  “We’re a little lost,” I say. “We got separated from our field trip. The bus stopped for everyone to go to the bathroom, and then they … left without us.” I hide my eyes with the back of my arm and shake my head. “We’re looking for a way to get to Vilmore. That’s the closest train stop.”

  Delores’s jaw moves like she’s chewing actual food, even though I’m pretty sure her mouth is empty. Her eyes wander from me to Sarah and back again. “It’s polite to order first before asking for information.”

  “Yeah, fine.” I was hungry anyway. I point to the nearest pie display. “I’ll take a slice of that.”

  “Two,” Sarah says.

  Delores shuffles over to the pie and shovels out two pieces of lemon meringue. She dumps them on a couple of plates and slides them in front of us.

  “Great,” I say, digging in. I grin at her, doing my best to look lost, scared, and unbelievably charming. “Can you tell us when the next bus leaves?”

  The whole diner busts up laughing. Even dried-up old Delores cracks a smile. “Kid,” she says, “a bus hasn’t come through here since I was five years old.”

  One side of my face twitches. I exchange a glance with Sarah. “I’m guessing I was right about Vilmore having the nearest train stop?”

  Delores nods. “I could give you a ride, but I don’t get off until two in the morning. And you’d have to order a lot more food first.”

  Sarah eats the meringue off her pie before cutting into the lemon. “Easy peasy,” she mutters.

  “I’ll take them,” a woman in the far corner says. “If you two help me clear out my truck, you can ride in the back. Your parents will be wondering where you are, no doubt. I remember when Angela didn’t come home from a field trip once. I was so worried, I just about died.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I smile at Sarah. See? No problem.

  Delores scratches out a bill on a pad of paper and slaps it down in front of me. “That’ll be five dollars even.”

  I feel around my back pockets, but apparently I don’t have my wallet on me. It must have fallen out in Sarah’s bag. She digs around in her backpack, reaching farther and farther into it, until I think she’s going to disappear inside it altogether. She frowns and checks the outside pockets. “I can’t find our wallets,” she whispers. “We must have lost them on the train.”

  I lean over and talk out the side of my mouth. “Write them a check.”

  “I don’t have checks!”

  Delores is getting suspicious by now, squinting at us and shaking her head.

  “It seems we have a slight problem,” I tell her. “You see, we must have left our money on the bus, with our schoolmates.”

  Delores’s lip lifts in a snarl. “You mean you can’t pay?”

  I swallow. “Yeah. That’s about it.”

  “But,” Sarah says, getting out a pen and one of her notebooks, “we’d be happy to mail the money to you. Just give me your address.”

  “This ain’t no free lunch,” Delores growls.

  “No, no, it’s okay.” I hate myself for what I’m about to do. I hold up my right hand and stick out my thumb, giving her a good look at my X. “I don’t have an H right now, but I’m a superhero in training, see? My dad’s the Crimson Flash. You can trust me—”

  Delores slams her coffeepot down on the counter, shattering it and spraying hot coffee everywhere.

  I notice out of the corner of my eye that the other patrons in the diner are no longer hunched over their meals; they’re on their feet and creeping toward us.

  “Superhero.” Delores’s eyes glaze over and her face twists in rage. Her arm shoots out across the counter. She grabs the neck of my sweatshirt with her gnarled claw. “Superhero,” she repeats, as if it’s the most disgusting phrase she’s ever heard.

  Her grip tightens. I struggle to get away. Sarah reaches over and unzips my sweatshirt, and I slip out of it, leaving it in Delores’s clutches.

  The customers are closing in behind us. They all chant, “Superhero,” under their breath.

  “It was only a concoction of basic ingredients,” Sarah wails. “Mostly flour and eggs and lemon juice!”

  “In other words,” I say, “it was just pie!”

  The goodly diner patrons grasp at us with their hands. Sarah reaches into her bag, pulls out the gun, and pushes a bunch of buttons on the side. “Here!” she says, shoving it into my hands.

  I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it, so I point it toward the ceiling and pull the trigger.

  “Close your eyes!” Sarah shouts.

  I do, just in time to see the super-bright light that flashes across the room from the safe side of my eyelids. When I open my eyes, I see spots, but I’m doing better than everyone else, who can only blink and run into each other.

  Sarah and I seize our opportunity to get the hell out of there.

  “It won’t stop them for long,” Sarah says, hurrying out of the diner.

  We don’t bother to look both ways as we run across the street. Already I hear the chant of “Superhero!” behind us.

  I make a beeline for the cop-car look-alike. “You drive!”

  “Are you batty? I can’t drive!”

  “Neither can I!” What would I need to drive for? Traffic in Golden City is awful, there’s nowhere to park, and Mom doesn’t even own a car.

  Sarah rolls her eyes at me. “Get in.” She tosses me her bag.

  It’s heavy. I grab it and scramble into the passenger side, slamming the door shut behind me. I hurry to roll up the window and lock the door.

  Sarah jumps into the driver’s seat. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, holding her hands out flat, waving them over the steering wheel, then the radio, then the parking brake. She looks more like she’s having a séance than getting ready to drive the stupid thing.

  The mob is already plowing through the diner door, lurching across the street toward us like zombies. “Sarah. Now would be a good time to start the car.”

  “I’m getting there.” She opens her eyes and buckles her seat belt. Then she carefully adjusts the rearview mirror, then the one on the side.

  “That’s not going to be very useful if the lynch mob tears us apart.”

  Sarah switches on the headlights. She puts her foot on the pedal, testing the distance. She purses her lips in a frown and moves her seat forward a couple notches. Then back one. Then forward again.

  “Sarah!”

  “Okay,” she says. “I’m ready.”

  Just as she says it, a superhero-hating diner customer snaps our antenna off. He pounds on the window. I hold the gun and point it at him, but I don’t dare shoot it. You never know what it’s going to do.

  Sarah takes more deep breaths. She turns the key. The engine sputters and dies. “Hmm,” she says, peering at the dashboard.

  More diner zombies pound on the door. Their nails screech against the window. Pretty soon they’re going to start rocking the car. Delores jumps onto the hood, splaying herself against the windshield. She presses our bill against the glass and points at it.

  “Oh, wait,” Sarah says, in a “silly me” voice. “I have to hold the gas in.” She does and the car starts and we move backward with a jerk. “Oops. Reverse.”

  I cover my eyes as Sarah makes the car go forward and Delores leaps off the hood. The car lurches a couple feet. Then a couple more. Sarah presses her foot in all the way, and the car takes off, speeding down the road. The dust we raise behind us blots out the mob.

  Every time Sarah moves the wheel at all, the whole car swerves to the side of the street. She grazes a telephone pole and knocks off my side mirror.

  She cringes. “Sorry!”

  “Maybe you should slow down!” I shout over the roar of the engine.

  We pass a sign that says, NOW LEAVING RUTHE
RSFORD! and has a smiley face graffiti-painted over the o. The name sounds familiar, and I wonder where I’ve heard it before.

  Sarah holds her arms out straight, her hands frozen on the wheel. She doesn’t take her foot off the pedal. “It’s under control.”

  My stomach disagrees. And so does the tree zooming up in front of us. “Sarah!”

  “Got it!” She turns the wheel. We skid into a 360-degree turn. And another one. We’re both screaming. And then we’re not spinning anymore, but racing downhill, backward. Sarah slams her foot on the brake. We slow, but not enough. I look behind me, then forward again, not wanting my neck to be twisted when we crash.

  I remember to keep my muscles relaxed as the car smashes into a tree, rear end first. There’s the sickening crunch of metal and a horrible, jarring feeling as the back of my head hits the headrest.

  I’m shaken and stirred, and I have to fight the urge to puke up my lemon meringue pie, but otherwise I’m okay. My heart pounds as I look over to see if Sarah’s all right. I hold my hand out to her, but she doesn’t notice. She’s too busy poking at the contents of her bag, which spilled open during the crash. She reaches down and picks up her wallet off the floor. “Look at that,” she says, beaming at it. “I guess we had them the whole time.”

  “What did I tell you?” I say, secretly thinking about strangling her. “Piece of cake.”

  When we get to Vilmore, I call up everyone I know who goes to school here. Five people, but I don’t get ahold of any of them.

  “I used to hang with a bad crowd,” I tell Sarah when she raises her eyebrows at me.

  “Oh, right,” she says. “Since you spent all that time at Eastwood as a delinquent.” She laughs to herself.

  “I told you I’m half supervillain.” I grin, making it seem less serious than it is.

  Sarah smiles, then just looks worried. “How are we going to get in?”

  All the outside doors at Vilmore open for supervillains only. As in, real supervillains, which means not me. You have to have a thumbprint with a V on it to get in anywhere important. I bite my lip and sigh. “There’s one more person I can call.” My shoulders slump in defeat as I dial Pete’s number.

  He knows it’s me when he picks up. “Damien!”

  I find it suspicious that he sounds happy to hear from me. Then again, he sounds like he’s been drinking. Maybe he’s too inebriated to remember he hates me. I tell him I’m on campus and I want to come see him.

  “Great. Come on up, man. I’m having a party.” He laughs. It’s been about two weeks since my birthday—maybe he’s celebrating getting over all the itchy pustules. “With you here, it’ll be just like old times.”

  There’s something sinister about the way he says it, and chills twitch up and down my back as I hang up. On second thought, maybe he does remember he hates me.

  I smile at Sarah anyway. “What did I tell you? Easy.” I ask her to wait for me outside the main office building while I make my way to Pete’s dorm. Things will be less complicated the less I have to explain to him. Pete lets me up when I get there. He lives on the second floor, so I only have to maneuver one staircase. I can hear the party as I walk down the hall. Even if I didn’t know which room was his, I could guess it’s the one with the open door and the loud music.

  “Look who’s here!” Pete shouts when I appear in the doorway.

  No one I recognize. I wonder what he meant by “just like old times.” There are four guys sitting around in the common room Pete shares with a couple other people—probably these people—all four wearing pajama sets they bought at the student store: T-shirts and sweatpants with big Vs on them. Nobody looks familiar. Three of them look up when I come in and raise their drinks at me, though I can tell by their expressions that they have no idea who I am, either.

  The fourth one is too busy making out with the redhead in his lap to care. Okay, that’s not true. His eyes flick over to me for a second, probably to see if I’m female. Then the girl sticking her tongue down his throat notices me. She shoves herself off him and stumbles, falling down once, then steadying herself with the coffee table. She smiles at me. She has wavy red hair, green eyes, and a short leather skirt and fishnet stockings. “Damien!”

  It’s not the sound of her voice but the way she says my name that makes me want to throw up. My heart stops beating. “Kat.”

  She morphs into herself, short straight black hair, clear blue eyes, and a thin nose.

  Pete is sitting on the arm of his couch. Laughing. He has half-circle pockmark scars all over him. I warned him not to scratch.

  I catch Kat in my arms as she flops against me. The guy I stole her from glares at us.

  “Kat,” I say as she wraps her arms around me and slides to the floor, resting her face against my knee, “what are you doing here?”

  “What does it look like she’s doing here?” Pete says. “Having a good time without you.”

  One of the bedroom doors in the back opens up, and two girls in tight clothes and another guy in rumpled Vilmore pajamas strut out. The girls give Kat a dirty look when they see her on her knees.

  “Why did you even invite her?” one of them says, her tone as snobby as possible. She flicks her curly blond hair behind her shoulder. She sits next to Pete and shakes her head. The second one sneers at me.

  Yeah, I bet they don’t like the girl who changes into whatever a guy wants her to be for the next five minutes.

  “I invited her cousin, not her,” Pete says. “I told Julie to come alone. Girl never listens.”

  “Kat …” I glare at Pete, then get my arms under Kat’s and drag her to her feet. Those rippling muscles I don’t have would come in handy right about now. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Julie ditched me,” Kat whines. “She said it would be a fun party, and I could forget about … about you. She didn’t say Pete would be here. Not you, either.” Kat’s eyes fill with tears. She touches my face, sliding her hands down my cheeks. “I always loved your ears,” she says. “And your nose. And your … eyebrows.”

  Forget about me? “Let’s talk about it later. You have to go home.”

  “No!” Kat shouts. She reminds me of my two-year-old half sister, Jessica. Great. A really hot sixteen-year-old girl with the mental powers of a toddler in a room full of drunken college guys. And if she’s not hot enough for them, she can turn herself into anything they want her to be.

  Kat drapes her arm over my shoulders and pulls me down with her into an armchair. She licks the side of my face and tries to stick her hands down my pants.

  “Kat, don’t.” I grab her wrists.

  Conversation continues like normal around us—nobody cares what we’re doing. The guy who made out with Kat goes off into a bedroom with one of the other girls. I hear two of the guys cough the word slut as soon as they’re gone.

  It’s a tight fit with both me and Kat in the chair, and we’re even cozier than when we’d hang out on her bed and watch TV, both secretly wishing we could do more than that. Only now I’m freaked because I caught her drunk at a party, making out with some guy. To forget about me, ’cause I told her it was never going to happen. “Kat,” I say, my voice shaking, “tell me you only made out. Not … not anything more than that.”

  Kat glares at me. “Why? You’re not my boyfriend. You don’t care.”

  That was the plan. In hindsight, I can see how it might be flawed. Her not being my girlfriend doesn’t make me any less pissed to find her here. Except this time around, it’s not cheating, because I turned her down—I said it was never going to happen. We’re close, but I said we were only friends-close, meaning I don’t have a right to be jealous. Some crappy plan that was.

  “I’m your friend,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

  Kat wraps her arms around my neck and rests her head on my shoulder. “Damien,” she says, “we were supposed to get married.”

  Whoa. This is news to me. She sounds serious about it, but that could be the booze talking.


  “Looks like somebody won’t be wearing white,” the blond girl mutters. Everybody laughs. So much for not paying attention to us.

  I move to stand up, dumping Kat off me. She tries to hold on, but I’m too wily and coordinated for her. “Don’t go!” she wails, reaching after me and almost falling off the chair.

  I tell her I’ll be back. I tell everyone else that if they touch her while I’m gone, they can ask Pete what will happen to them. Then I step into the hall and call Kat’s mom. I have a nice chat with her about the horrible teenage travesties her daughter is getting herself into, keeping an eye on Kat through the open doorway.

  I sigh as I hang up and rejoin the party. I look over at Kat, who seems pretty out of it. Good—that way she won’t witness what I’m about to do.

  Instead of settling back down with her, I head straight for Pete. I stand in front of him, twiddling my thumbs and not making eye contact.

  Pete smirks. “Looks like I’m not the only one your girl will ditch you for. Guess she’d rather be having a good time with anyone than hanging out with you.”

  I am so a good time. As Pete is about to find out. “Pete,”

  I say, my throat constricting, “I have to tell you something. I can’t wait any longer. I want to apologize.”

  Pete sets his drink down and folds his arms. “Here it comes. I’ve been waiting all year for this.”

  I lick my lips. “I was jealous. Back when you and Kat … you know.”

  “Keep talkin’.”

  I glance around the room at everyone, like them being present makes me really nervous. “And that thing with the invitation …” I stare at my shoes. There’s mud caked around the edges. “I couldn’t stand the idea of you being with anybody else. I wanted to make it so no one would want you. Not Kat and not Vanessa.” I sneer at her name. I don’t know if any of the girls here are “Vanessa,” but I get the feeling Pete’s steady girlfriend wouldn’t be invited to this kind of party.