The Rivalry of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  “The truth,” Sarah says, “now.”

  I swear the impostor flinches a little at the harshness in her voice. But then he glares at me and says, “I wasn’t following you. I was keeping an eye on you.” He looks me over, his eyes lingering on the glowing electricity in my hand, and makes a disgusted sound. “I’ve seen the videos.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I tell him. “Literally everyone’s seen the stupid videos. That doesn’t explain why or how you made yourself look like me.”

  “And sound like you,” Zach offers.

  “Yeah, that, too.” I brandish my lightning. “Tell us why you’ve been impersonating me—pretty badly, I might add—and trying to ruin my reputation.”

  “Or else he’ll obliterate you,” Sarah says.

  “Sarah. I’ll do the threatening here.”

  She gives this big, exasperated sigh, and lets her hands flop to her sides. “I knew I should have gotten my raygun.” She glances over her shoulder, biting her lip. “Mrs. Perkins has my key. Do you think they’re still at the food court?”

  Kat shakes her head at her. “You’re not shooting him until we at least know what’s up. You can get it later.” She tightens her grip on the impostor’s arm. “Now, for the last time, why are you impersonating—”

  “I’m not impersonating him—I am him!”

  We all stare at him. Then I look over at Sarah and say through gritted teeth, “You promised you didn’t clone me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  The impostor looks at us like we’re all complete idiots. “I’m from another dimension. A better dimension. One I’d really like to get back to.” He says that as disdainfully as possible, just so we know how little he thinks of us.

  I scoff. “Yeah, right. You expect us to believe that?”

  Zach’s eyes light up. He sucks in a breath. “What’s it like?”

  “Zach. It’s not real. He’s making it up.”

  “Yeah,” Kat says. “Don’t encourage him.”

  Sarah bites her lip and stares down at her shoes.

  “I’m not making it up,” the impostor says, sounding really annoyed. “I don’t care if you believe me or not, because I know the truth. But…” His expression softens a little as he focuses on Sarah. “I’m sorry again for what happened the other day, when I…” He clears his throat. “Obviously, things are different here, and the two of us aren’t a thing. I mean,” he says, glancing over at me, “I can see why. Though if you’re anything like the Sarah I know, I don’t get why you’d be hanging out with this delinquent in the first place.”

  “Well,” Sarah says, “we did date, but only briefly, and it was a long time ago.” Her eyes dart over to Kat’s, then away again. “A really long time ago.”

  “So,” Zach says, loosening his grip, “other dimensions are real? Am I in yours? Are we best friends?!”

  The impostor conveniently ignores his question. “I didn’t think they were real, either, until Sarah invented the interdimensional portal device and I got stuck here. But even after I ended up here, I wasn’t sure… Not until I kissed you.” He says that part to Sarah, wincing a little and ducking his head guiltily. “Your reaction made it pretty clear that you weren’t my Sarah and that we didn’t have the same relationship. Actually, I wasn’t even sure if you knew who I was. When I looked myself up online and didn’t find anything, I thought maybe I didn’t even exist in this universe or whatever. But then I looked up my dad, and I found”—he looks at me and sighs in this really put out way that I don’t appreciate—“Damien Locke. Apparently, in this world, I was raised by…” He makes a face like he might be sick if he actually says whatever words come next.

  “My mom?” I raise my eyebrows at him, letting the lightning in my hand die down.

  “I was going to say supervillains, but yeah, that.”

  “So, in your world, my—er, our—mom didn’t raise you?” Not that I believe any of this stuff. Though if anyone was going to make an interdimensional portal device and have it actually work, it would definitely be Sarah. And if anyone was going to use it and have something go horribly wrong, like getting stuck in some alternate dimension, it would definitely be me.

  “Don’t call her that.” He shudders. “The Mistress of Mayhem has nothing to do with me.”

  “That explains the flying,” Kat mutters. She lets go of him, but stays close by, just in case.

  He rubs his arm where she’d been gripping it, then pulls away from Zach. “She and my dad had a one-night stand.”

  “More like a thirty-second stand,” I add, “but sure, whatever.”

  “She’s basically an egg donor, that’s all. As soon as I was born, she dropped me off with my dad, and I, um, I pretty much never saw her again.”

  “Pretty much?”

  “I’ve seen her around. That’s all. I don’t associate myself with her. Our connection is barely even existent, and it’s not something I like to advertise.”

  “But you still have an X? Even though you were raised by Gordon?” I grab for his hand to check, but he jerks it away. Then, grudgingly, he holds up his thumb so we can all see that he does, indeed, have an X. I can’t help the somewhat smug smile that slips across my face.

  “What?” he snaps, channeling Amelia for a second.

  “Nothing. Just that you obviously think you’re so much better than me, but you’ve still got that X. You’re still half and half.” And either he doesn’t have lightning, or he does and just doesn’t know it yet, because otherwise, he wouldn’t have looked so terrified when I was threatening him with it.

  “It’s going to turn into an H any day now. Just as soon as I find a way to get back to my dimension and defeat the Mistress of Mayhem and the Red Demon and stop them from destroying everything. So, if you’ll excuse me—” He moves like he’s going to take off.

  “Wait. You’ve been here for days, and, like, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but do you…” I take a deep breath, steeling myself for this. “Do you need somewhere to stay? Because there’s plenty of room on Sarah’s couch.” I’m still not sure I believe him about the whole “being from another dimension” thing. But something about him… the way he looks and sounds exactly like me, right down to the same movements and gestures… I don’t not believe him, either.

  “Damien,” Kat scolds.

  Zach’s eyes light up. “Ooh! He could stay with us! Mom would probably say yes if we asked her. She wouldn’t have to do anything. I’d make sure he had food and water and stuff.”

  I point at him. “Sold. You got yourself one Damien clone. Just as long as you also take him on walks every day and promise to clean up after him.”

  The impostor gapes at us. “I’m not a pet! Or a clone.”

  “Just an impostor, then.”

  “If anyone’s the impostor, it’s you. And I’m not staying with him.”

  “Fine.” I roll my eyes. “I suppose there’s room at my house. But only if you stop impersonating me and trying to ruin my reputation.”

  He scoffs. “Improving it, you mean. And I’m not trying to do anything. As long as I’m stuck here, I might as well do a few good deeds. Plus, I can’t ignore people who need help. It’s just not how I’m built.”

  “Riiiight. Because Gordon taught you everything you know.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing, but I’d rather be Damien Tines than Damien Locke any day. And the last thing I need is help from a delinquent half villain like you.”

  “Whoa. You don’t have to be rude about it. And last I checked, which was, like, two seconds ago, you’re half villain, too.”

  “But I can fly. I didn’t get lightning, unlike some people, who clearly take after the wrong side of the family. Being born half villain sucks, but I’ve spent my whole life trying not to let it bring me down.”

  I guess he didn’t see all the videos of me, since he clearly missed the ones from the flying competition I crashed last semester. “So you’d rather be homeless?”

  “For your info
rmation, I’m staying with a friend. Some people in this dimension are still who they’re supposed to be.”

  “But you’re stuck here?” Sarah asks. “If you need help figuring it out, maybe we could—”

  “I don’t need anyone’s help. I’ll figure it out on my own.”

  “Classic Damien,” Kat says, giving me a knowing look.

  “Now,” my impostor—er, interdimensional twin—says, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got places to be and people to save.” And with that, he leaps up into the air and flies off.

  Chapter 9

  “I’M GOING TO BE on the news!” Zach screams as soon as Riley steps through the front door of their house.

  “What?” Riley looks at him, then at me, Sarah, and Kat, all sitting on the couch with the TV on, set to the news station. “What happened?”

  “Well, after we caught Other Damien—”

  “We’re not calling him that,” I say. “I thought we agreed.”

  “—then there was this news crew there, and they wanted to know if anyone had seen what happened with the slide exploding, and I said I had, and then they interviewed me, and it’s going to be on soon!”

  Riley blinks as he tries to take all that in. Then he gasps and looks over at me. “You blew up a slide?!”

  “Of course not! Why does everybody keep assuming it was me?”

  “Because it sounds like something you would do.”

  “First of all, I wouldn’t go on one of those slides.” They’re way too high up. “And second of all, I’ll have you know it was actually some hero kid who blew it up.”

  “On accident,” Sarah points out, pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. She switched out of her contacts as soon as we got back from the water park. “His power is a burn ray, and it just came in, and he wasn’t used to it yet. The adrenaline from the ride made him lose control. And then his little brother was right behind him on the slide, and he’s the one who almost fell out of it.”

  “But Damien saved him!” Zach says.

  Riley’s eyebrows jump up. “You did?”

  “You don’t have to look so surprised about it, Perkins. But no, I didn’t. It was Other— It was Damien Tines.”

  “What? Who—”

  “That’s his good twin from another dimension,” Zach explains.

  “Uh, more like my stuck-up, letterist opposite who’s nothing like me.”

  “Yeah,” Kat says. “Good isn’t the word I’d use.”

  “He claims he was raised by Gordon. And he may or may not be from another dimension. We’re still trying to figure it out.”

  Riley comes over and slumps into one of the upholstered chairs. “All this happened at the water park?”

  “Yep,” I tell him. “While you were living it up at work, fulfilling your oh-so-important obligations.”

  He scowls at me. “Obviously I didn’t know all this was going to happen. And there’s no way this guy who’s pretending to be you is actually from another dimension. That’s impossible, right?”

  Sarah clears her throat. “It seems unlikely.”

  “See?” Riley says at the same time as Zach’s shoulders deflate and he goes, “Aw,” like that’s the worst news he’s ever heard.

  “But it’s not impossible,” Sarah adds. “At least, I don’t think.” She takes a deep breath. “I didn’t want to say this in front of him, but I was working on an interdimensional portal device a while back, only I never got it to work. Maybe the Sarah in his dimension did. She probably never lost her edge. Or went crazy and tried to wipe out a bunch of supervillains.”

  Probably not, since other me—not that I’m actually calling him that, because I’m me, not him—doesn’t seem to have lightning. He wouldn’t have accidentally zapped her personality enhancer and turned her into a crazed lunatic for a while. And the two of them are a couple, so she wouldn’t have needed to invent the personality enhancer in the first place to get him to stop being a jerk to her annoying, douchey hero boyfriend. Who’s now my BFF, but whatever.

  The point is, none of that stuff would have happened, so that Sarah wouldn’t have tried to kill everyone at Vilmore, and then I guess she wouldn’t be trying to overcompensate for it. Not that I’m agreeing that our Sarah’s lost her edge or anything, because most of her inventions still scare the hell out of me, but a thermos that doesn’t even let you have your drink is kind of lame.

  “You don’t know why she got it to work,” Kat says, shaking her head. “You can’t compare yourself to her. If she even exists.”

  Sarah looks me in the eyes. “He’s not you. But at the same time…”

  Zach swallows. “He does look and sound an awful lot like you. He even made the same expressions as you. The way his forehead wrinkled and one of his eyebrows went up a little higher than the other when he got mad and said he wasn’t a pet?”

  Kat snaps her fingers. “Yes! Oh, my God, that was so Damien.”

  “What? I don’t make that face.”

  “You do.”

  Sarah nods. “All the time.”

  “All the time,” Riley agrees.

  I gape at him. “Et tu, Perkins? You weren’t even there.”

  “If it was the look I think they’re talking about— Yes, that one!” He points at my forehead. “Just like that.”

  “That’s not…” I clear my throat and try to make a neutral expression. “He’s not me.”

  “He kinda is, though,” Kat says. “And if you’d lived your whole life with your dad instead of your mom?” She gives me a worried look. “I could see you turning out like that.”

  “What, like some hero douche?”

  “He was actually pretty well behaved,” Sarah says, “considering that we kidnapped him.”

  “Come on, Sarah. It wasn’t a kidnapping. More of a… strong-arming.”

  “Still.” She shrugs.

  “I can’t believe you guys.”

  “You’re the one who offered him a place to stay,” Kat says.

  “Yeah, because…” Because I kind of believe him, I guess. “Look, even if he is some version of me, which I’m not saying he is, what are we supposed to do about it? Invent interdimensional travel?”

  Sarah sighs. “I’m not Other Sarah. You can’t expect me to perform miracles.”

  “We’re not calling her that. And we’re not—”

  “Oh, my God!” Zach jumps up and points to the TV. “It’s on! Look! I’m going to be on the news!” He calls out toward the hallway. “Mom! It’s on!”

  Mrs. Perkins comes running into the living room, a bright smile on her face. “Are you recording it? I promised Jeffrey we’d record it.”

  “It’ll be online later,” Zach says, but Mrs. Perkins runs up to their ancient VCR and presses the button anyway.

  On the screen, the news anchor explains, in a very serious-but-unfeeling voice, that there was a mishap at the water park today, but that luckily Son of Flash was there to save the day. “We weren’t lucky enough to get an interview with him this time, but here’s what witnesses had to say.”

  It cuts to footage of the water park. Zach’s clip is first. He looks super excited and screams, “It was so cool!” before the video cuts to someone else.

  I glance over at Zach, because I know from what he’s told me that his interview went on way longer than that, but he has this huge grin on his face and doesn’t look at all put out that they cut him off.

  “Yes!” he shouts. He puts a hand to his chest, either for emphasis or because he’s overwhelmed by his moment of glory. “Did you guys see that?! I was on TV!”

  “You need to quit your job,” I tell Riley later after everyone else has gone home. I mean, except for Zach, because he lives here. But Kat had to leave because she’s going with her parents to visit her grandparents at the retirement home tonight, and Sarah had to go walk Heraldo, but she’ll be back soon.

  Riley’s sitting on his bed. He looks up from the drawing he’s doing of two chickens taking a tour of a factory th
at makes feather pillows. “Did my mom put you up to this?”

  I sit down in his computer chair. “I got her to give me twenty bucks to try and convince you, but I was going to say this anyway. You missed important stuff today. There’s some guy who looks like me going around doing good deeds and just generally making me look bad, and he might be from another dimension, and… I can’t believe you weren’t there.”

  “You guys had it covered. And Zach can turn invisible. You don’t really need me.” He stares down at his drawing, giving it a really serious look, but I notice his pencil stops moving.

  “So you’d rather be at work?”

  “No, of course not. It really sucked today being stuck there while you guys were all having fun. And that was before I knew all the crazy stuff that happened. But just because I maybe should have taken today off doesn’t mean I should quit. From everything you’ve said, this guy doesn’t even seem dangerous.”

  “What part of ‘he kissed Sarah’ do you not understand?”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You’re worried about her in that scenario?”

  “No. You should have heard her talking about the invention she’s making to maim him. And I don’t think she’s even trying to hurt him.”

  He smirks a little at that. “Even if he was dangerous, you’re the one with the lightning, not me.”

  “So? You’re part of the group. Your job at the diner’s stupid. I would have said ‘no offense’ first, but offense was definitely meant. Your job sucks, and it was one thing for you to spend all your time there when nothing was really going on, but now? I think you owe it to yourself to quit. If this is about avoiding Jeffrey, you can just come over to my house.”

  “I’m not trying to avoid him. That’s just an added bonus. But I…”

  “You what, Perkins? And don’t tell me it’s the money, because I know it’s more than that.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “So is my interdimensional douchey hero twin showing up and pulling orphans out of wells and crap.”

  “I’d say that’s actually pretty straightforward. But…” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if I can describe it, X. It’s like, ever since my dad died, I’ve been the responsible one, taking care of everybody. I always help my mom around the house and stuff. I mean, Zach does, too, sometimes, but there’s a lot to take care of. It was so hard for her—for all of us—after Dad was gone, and when she went back to work, she just couldn’t do it all. She was so sad all the time, and I didn’t want things to be even harder for her than they already were, so I started picking up the slack. That’s how it’s been for years, and now Jeffrey’s here, taking over everything and butting in where he doesn’t belong, and it’s like I don’t have a place anymore. Like I’m not needed.”