The Rivalry of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  Riley brings us the strawberry milkshakes we ordered and sits down with us when he takes his break. He didn’t bring anything for himself, and he’s still wearing his polyester cape. He scrubs his hands across his face. “Jeffrey’s moving in.”

  Me and Kat both stop drinking our milkshakes and share a look.

  “Mom just told me last night. She told me and Zach, I mean. That’s why she wanted the garage cleaned out. To make room for his stuff.”

  “And that’s… bad?” Kat asks, even though she already knows Riley’s feelings on the subject. “I mean,” she adds, seeing the look Riley gives her, “your mom could do way worse.”

  “I bet you’re glad you weren’t the one to clean out the garage now,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, well, it still feels like a betrayal. That they’ve been planning this and she didn’t tell me.”

  Probably because she knew he’d freak out, but I still see his point. “How’s Zach taking it?”

  “He was shocked at first, but now he’s thrilled. He won’t shut up about it.”

  I take another drink of my milkshake. “Have you given any thought to what we talked about?”

  His eyebrows shoot up. “What? When?”

  I sigh and fold my hands together. “The other day. I told you to quit your job.”

  “Oh. You were serious about that?”

  “Come on, Perkins. You know I was.”

  He swallows and then shakes his head. “I can’t quit. There’s only a few weeks of summer left.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And I’ll be quitting after that anyway. Summer’s tourist season—they really need me here right now.”

  Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought he’d say. “Our group really needs you. Tell him, Kat.”

  “What?” Kat looks up from her milkshake, her eyes wide, like she wasn’t expecting to be called on. “Um, yeah, of course we do,” she says, not really selling it.

  Riley waves his hand at me. “Take Zach with you. He’ll love it. Who knows? Maybe he’ll get on the news again.”

  I grit my teeth. “That’s not the point. This isn’t about a numbers quota or having someone who can turn invisible, because I don’t think I have to tell you what a useless power that is.”

  He rolls his eyes.

  I take a deep breath. “We don’t just need a warm body—we need you, okay?”

  Riley considers that, then shrugs it off, as if it doesn’t mean anything. Or maybe like he just doesn’t believe me. “You guys can get by without me. Work can’t.”

  “Your mom doesn’t need you around the house as much anymore, and instead of actually dealing with it, you’re just filling up all your time with more responsibility.”

  He clenches his jaw. “That’s not… I didn’t tell you that so you could throw it back at me, X. And what’s wrong with being responsible?”

  “When you’re using it to avoid having to deal with your problems? A lot. Tell him, Kat.”

  “What?” Kat looks surprised again. She fidgets nervously, then stares real hard at her milkshake. “I, um, I don’t really know that much about the situation.”

  Which isn’t true, because I’ve told her everything.

  Riley sighs and gives me an exasperated look. “I’ll quit when school starts, okay?”

  “That’s still avoiding your problems. School is just more responsibility. Responsibility you can’t just walk away from. Look, Perkins, you might hate me for this, but I’m just going to say it. Jeffrey showing up and stealing your place as the responsible adult who picks up the slack? That’s a good thing, because it was never really yours to—”

  “My break is over, X,” he says, interrupting me before I can finish that thought. “I have to go.” He jumps up from his seat like he can’t get away fast enough.

  And immediately slams into one of the other waiters, who’s carrying a giant tray full of food. The tray goes crashing to the ground, the food spilling everywhere.

  “Sorry!” Riley says. He bends down and starts trying to help clean everything up, which the other waiter looks more frustrated than thankful about, and then their manager shouts at Riley to come see him in the kitchen. Riley sucks in a breath, apologizes to the other waiter one more time, and then marches over to his doom.

  Me and Kat both cringe when we hear his manager start to chew him out. Even though they’re in the back, the manager’s so loud, he might as well be yelling at him in front of the customers. Not that we can make out everything he’s saying, I guess, though the part where he shouts, “If you don’t take this job seriously, there are other people waiting in line for it!” comes across pretty clearly.

  “Yikes,” Kat says.

  I sigh. “You think he’s ever going to quit?”

  “Nope.” She shakes her head for emphasis. “At least, not until the end of summer, like he said.” She unbends and rebends her straw a couple times, then glances up at me. “I can’t stop thinking about there being another me in another dimension.”

  “Katherine, you mean?” Katherine, who doesn’t sound at all like Kat.

  “Yeah. My parents wouldn’t stop talking about Rachel again last night. Apparently she has a boyfriend, and she’s told them all about him, and they’re just dying to meet him. They want to have both of them over for dinner next time.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Let me guess. He’s a nice villain boy, gets good grades at Vilmore, and, oh, yeah, he doesn’t have an X.”

  “Pretty much. And I’ve been thinking about how Katherine Wilson is, well, a lot more successful than I am.”

  “Kat—”

  “She’s the same age as me, but she’s already helped Wilson Enterprises and probably done other really cool stuff, and obviously my—er, her—parents think she’s worthy of the company. Just like mine do with Rachel. So. I can’t stop wondering what the difference is between us.”

  I screw up my eyebrows at her. “Who says you’re not going to do great things? Katherine’s probably already peaked. You’re going to do way better than her, and you get to marry me instead of Xavier.” I grin at her.

  She grins back. “Yeah, okay, that last part is definitely way better.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. You’re with me, you obviously got the better deal, the end.”

  Kat frowns. “I don’t buy that Katherine won’t go on to do even better things than she already has. She’s obviously some kind of genius, or maybe she’s just way more productive than me. Or both. But theoretically we’re the same, right? So… maybe I’m just unfocused. Or going in the wrong direction. I’ve just been taking classes I like at school, but maybe I should have figured out more of a business plan and only stuck to that. Something that would get me somewhere. That would teach me whatever it is that she learned that she used to make whatever computer thingy she made. Or maybe she just learned that on her own, like Sarah? And, like, I never would have even thought I could work on computer stuff, but clearly Katherine did and is really good at it. So I could be good at it, too, if I was more like her. If I didn’t spend my time watching YouTube videos on how to style my hair, which I couldn’t even get right.”

  “You were styling it for a noble cause—to hang out with me. Oh, and to make fun of people at poetry night.”

  “Yeah.” She rests her cheek against one hand and sighs. “I’m obviously too unfocused. Or maybe just focused on the wrong things.”

  “Nah, Kat, you’re focused on me. What could be better than that?” I smile at her, trying to cheer her up, but she doesn’t smile back.

  Instead, she lifts her head and stares at me. “Oh, my God, Damien, do you think that’s it? Do you think you’re the reason?”

  “What?” That is definitely not where I was going with this. “I was joking! Obviously that’s not—”

  “I know, but, like, Katherine didn’t go out with you, because her and other you never met. And even if they had, I doubt they would have gotten along, so…”r />
  “Kat.” My voice sounds just a tiny bit squeaky when I say that. I clear my throat. “That’s crazy.”

  “But what if it’s not? What if that’s the big difference between us, and somehow knowing you means…”

  “Means what, exactly? That you have an awesome boyfriend you care about? That you’re happy instead of being stuck working at your parents’ company for the rest of your life?” Not to mention marrying Xavier, but I think that goes without saying.

  She considers that for a second, and then her shoulders relax. “Yeah, you’re probably right. And it’s not like Katherine doesn’t have a boyfriend—she’s with Xavier.”

  “Right. Though there’s no way he’s as interesting as me.”

  She smirks at that. “Not as distracting, you mean.”

  True, but also a line of thinking I don’t want her to go down. Not that I think my absence is actually the reason why Katherine Wilson is in line to become her parents’ corporate drone. Just because the other version of Mom having Xavier around instead of me somehow meant she was successful doesn’t mean the same thing would be true for Kat.

  Probably.

  I swallow. “Come on, Kat. You can’t compare yourself to someone else, even if she is you from another dimension. You’re going to do great things—things you actually care about.” Because maybe this other version of her actually likes working for Wilson Enterprises—maybe—but that’s just not Kat.

  “But that’s just it. I don’t know what I care about.” She pauses, then glances up at me. “Besides you, obviously.”

  Something about the way she says that—like she tacked it on as an afterthought for my benefit—kind of stings, but I ignore it. “We make each other happy. And isn’t it better to for sure be happy with what you have instead of longing after the successes of someone we know almost nothing about? We don’t really know what her life is like. Maybe it only looks good from the outside, and if she found out about you, maybe she’d be the one who was jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Kat says. “I’m just curious.”

  I tilt my head and give her a look.

  “Fine,” she admits, “maybe I am jealous. But you make a good point.”

  “Of course I do. So just accept that of the two of you, you’re obviously the lucky one, and let it go.”

  Chapter 15

  “IT’S NOT THAT BAD,” I tell Riley on the phone the next day. You’d think I’m talking about what’s happening at his house, with Jeffrey moving in, but I’m not. It’s a little after three thirty in the afternoon, when the morning episode of The Crimson Flash and the Safety Kids re-airs, and, just my luck, Riley doesn’t have work today and is conveniently home to watch it. Figures.

  “Uh, I’m watching it right now, X, and it is that bad. It’s so— Oh, my God, what did he just call you?”

  He means my dad. On the episode of his show. Because there was no way in hell I was letting other me go on TV, or at least not when everyone would obviously assume he was me. “The Scarlet Shine,” I tell Riley through gritted teeth.

  He’s laughing super hard. “The what?!”

  “You heard me.” I sigh and lie back on my bed. Then I get up again, because no matter how much I tell myself none of this matters and that the alternative would have been so much worse, I can’t just sit here calmly and pretend I don’t hate that people are seeing me on TV right now as my dad’s stupid sidekick. I pace the floor of my room, avoiding the floorboards that creak the most. It’s a pattern I’ve got memorized, though recently one of the “safe” boards started to creak a bit more, and I had to alter my path. Which I pointed out to Gordon might mean the attic is, in fact, the deathtrap I’ve always said it was, but he just laughed and said I had a big imagination. As if I’d ever make something like that up.

  “Seriously?” Riley says, laughing so hard I almost can’t make out what he’s saying. “The Scarlet Shine? I can’t believe I missed this this morning. And you didn’t even tell me it was going to be on!”

  Gee, I wonder why. “Other Damien was going to go on instead. He and my dad are all buddy-buddy about this crap, and I couldn’t let him soil my reputation. At least, not any more than he already has.”

  “That outfit. It’s just so… orange. You look like a safety cone in a cape.”

  “I think that’s the point. And you can turn it off now. Nothing else really happens the whole episode.”

  “Oh, really? So, you and your dad baking cookies together is nothing?”

  “We didn’t actually bake them. They were already made. And we’re demonstrating kitchen safety.”

  “Oh, and the part when you taste one of them and go, ‘Justice is served!’ I think that’s my favorite part.”

  I cringe and am glad that Other Damien’s downstairs, so he can’t delight in how uncomfortable this makes me. The only thing worse than having to wear that awful costume and let Gordon call me the Scarlet Shine on TV would be letting other me know how much I hated it.

  “You know,” Riley says, “I would have assumed it was Other Damien on the show, but you just can’t fake that level of, how do I put this… not wanting to be there? You couldn’t even pretend the cookie tasted good?”

  “It was good,” I correct him. “I made that face because I was preemptively reading the teleprompter and saw the ‘justice is served’ line. At least this way Gordon has it out of his system and can stop daydreaming about me being his stupid sidekick. And I think we can all agree that my performance on the show was pretty terrible. So nobody’s going to want me back on or anything, and we can all just—”

  An ear-piercing shriek emanates from Amelia’s room, interrupting me. I’m pretty sure she’s not being murdered, but just in case, I tell Riley I’ll call him right back and poke my head out into the hallway to check, especially since besides other me, who’s downstairs, we’re the only ones home. So, like, if someone is murdering her, it’s not like I can count on Gordon or Helen to notice and do their jobs as parents and take care of it or anything.

  Her door bangs open, and she rushes out. Her face is red and she’s holding her phone with shaking hands. I think for a second that something horrible must have happened, but then she shrieks again and says, “Oh, my God, we have over thirty-thousand views! And we just posted the video this morning!”

  I raise my eyebrows at her. She must have read that wrong. I reach out for the phone, and she lets me take it. I glance down at Team Glitter’s latest dance video and feel my blood run cold, and not because she does, indeed, have over thirty-thousand views—34,514, to be exact—but because of the thumbnail that clearly shows me standing there, looking super lame and giving the audience a big thumbs up. Except it’s obviously not me, since I know it’s Other Damien. The video’s also tagged with my name—well, names, since they put both Damien Locke and Son of Flash.

  “What the hell, Amelia?! How could you possibly think I’d be okay with this?” Lightning surges beneath my skin, and I should probably hand her phone back before I accidentally zap it, but I hold onto it and hit the play button anyway.

  Loud dance music blares from the tinny speakers. Amelia, Melissa, and Hil are all wearing sparkly costumes that are clearly homemade, and despite the fact that you can tell they’re all doing the same dance moves—or at least trying to—none of them is in sync. Oh, and they’re in our living room, and the lighting’s terrible. Then Other Damien enters the scene, wearing my clothes, along with one of Gordon’s capes, plus a sparkly headband that I think is supposed to make him match the others, but which in reality just makes him look like he wandered in from an aerobics instruction video from the ‘80s.

  He mimics Amelia and her friends, trying to copy their dance moves, but screwing up each time.

  The girls stop him, then demonstrate their moves for him, slowing them down until he gets it. Then all four of them dance together for the rest of the song, none of them in sync still, and at one point Hil trips over her own feet and stumbles pretty noticeably, but they di
dn’t bother to edit it out or redo it.

  And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the song ends and other me does his thumbs-up thing and shouts, “Team Glitter for a better tomorrow!”

  Ughhhhhh. I’m pretty sure I’m going to throw up now. Or just, like, crawl into a hole and never speak to anyone again.

  Tens of thousands of people have already seen this, and the number is climbing even as I stand here. Someone’s even made an Auto-Tuned song called “Team Glitter for a Better Tomorrow” that I will not be clicking on, because I think I’ve had more than enough humiliation today.

  “How could you do this?!” I shout at Amelia, shoving her phone back at her before I really do destroy it.

  The huge smile plastered on her face doesn’t budge, like my pain means nothing to her. “We didn’t need your permission.”

  “Yes, you did! You knew I wouldn’t be okay with it! You knew—”

  The front door opens on the ground floor below us, and other me walks in. It suddenly dawns on me that with all Amelia’s shrieking, it should have been super suspicious that he didn’t come running right away to see what was up.

  Amelia seems to take this interruption as her cue to leave, or maybe just a convenient excuse to not have to face me. She slips back into her room, her thumbs flying like mad on her phone as she texts, like, probably everyone she knows.

  “What the hell?!” I shout at Other Damien. “You’re not supposed to leave the house!”

  “What?” He cups a hand to his ear and pretends to strain to listen. “I can’t hear you from all the way up there. Oh, well.” Then he grins, like this is at all funny.

  I could so kill him right now. Amelia, too. And no one else is home, so it’s not like there’d be any witnesses. Plus, between that episode of Gordon’s show and Amelia’s dance video, I’m pretty much already going to have to go into hiding for the rest of my life, so why not make it count?