The Trials of Renegade X (29 page)

“And I wasn’t going to say anything, but ... Well, never mind.”

“No, tell me.”

I shrug. “It’ll just upset you.”

“
Damien
.”

“Fine. I’m sure no one else has noticed, but you did remember to put on deodorant tonight, right?”

“
Yes
. Why?”

“Oh.” I look away and scratch the back of my head. “No reason. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s hot in here! I can’t help it if I ...” She lifts one arm up and tries to sniff without being obvious about it, which she fails at. “You don’t think Zach will notice, do you?”

“No, he’s probably too busy noticing that your boobs are bigger than the last time he saw you.”

Her mouth drops open. “It’s the bra I’m wearing! It has extra
support
.” She glances over her shoulder, back toward Zach, who’s telling Kat about something that involves waving his hands around a lot. “You don’t think he actually noticed, do you?”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “What do you think?”

She puts a hand to her forehead. “I thought tonight was going really well.”

“Hey, I didn’t say he’d
mind
. Tonight
is
going really well. And because everyone you know is busy staring at me, no one’s going to be scrutinizing you or noticing that this is obviously your first dance. So, you know, you can thank me later.”

She sucks in a deep breath, taking all that in.

The group of girls comes back to get another look at me, only this time Kat comes over and hooks her arm through mine, resting her head on my shoulder and glaring at them. “Get your own,” she mutters.

I smile and kiss the top of her head. “Aw, don’t be jealous,” I say, even though I kind of love that she is. “You know they could never afford me.”

Zach comes over, too. “Hey,” he says to Amelia. “Do you, um, want to go get some punch or something?”

“
Yes.
” She says that like she can’t wait to get away from me . She also crosses her arms over her chest and keeps licking her teeth. Before leaving with Zach, she looks over at me and says, “
Don’t
embarrass me.”

I give her an angelic look, like the idea never even crossed my mind. I wait until they’re gone before telling Kat, “You’re lucky you don’t have siblings.”

She pokes me in the chest, her fingernail digging into my bare skin. “You’re lucky I don’t have brothers, because I’m pretty sure they’d kill you.”

“True.” And her dad is bad enough. “Hey, look, there’s Riley,” I say, spotting him partway across the room. “Let’s go make him uncomfortable. I mean, let’s go say hello.”

Riley is standing against the wall by himself, though since he’s holding a sparkly silver shoulder wrap that matches the dress Sarah showed us, I’m pretty sure that means she’s here. He takes a deep breath when we come up to him, letting it out slowly and shaking his head while he looks us over. “Wow. You were serious.”

“You knew I was.”

“Shorts. Just shorts.”

“Yep.
Just
shorts.”

He sighs and gives Kat an acknowledging nod. “It’s, um, good seeing you again.”

“I’ll
bet
,” I say. “Eyes up here, Perkins.”

His face goes completely red as he glares at me. “I wasn’t—” He doesn’t finish that thought, too embarrassed to say that he wasn’t looking, even though I’m pretty sure he really wasn’t. “Sarah went to the bathroom,” he says, like he hopes she shows up soon so he doesn’t have to talk to me. “She should be back any moment.”

Good. I want to show her she can’t tell me what to do. She can’t stop me from bringing Kat here. And not that I want to sour our evening or anything, but maybe if she starts in on her “all supervillains are sociopaths” spiel, Riley will see that we need to take action.

“Your brother’s cool,” Kat tells him.

“Um, thanks? It’s his first dance. He’s really excited.”

“He told me.” Then she grins at me and says, “He and Amelia are really cute together. You did good.”

Riley looks from her to me, frowning as he tries to make sense of that.

“
Kat
. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have never done a good thing in my life. Present company excluded, of course.”

She laughs.

Then Riley sees something behind me and his eyes go wide. He starts to say, “Sarah, what—”

But before he gets a chance, there’s a loud blast. One moment, Kat is smiling at me and laughing. And the next, she’s hurtling toward the wall. There’s a sickening crunch as she smashes into it and then crumples to the floor.

“
Kat?!
” All my blood runs cold. It’s suddenly freezing in here, and not because I’m hardly wearing anything. I start shaking and I can’t make sense of what just happened.

And then Sarah’s voice behind me says, “I told you not to bring her here, Damien. I
warned
you.”

I sink to my knees, crouching on the floor with Kat, trying to see if she’s okay.

She has to be okay.

She
has
to.

My heart’s pounding and I can’t think. My thoughts jumble together, too fast and too slow at the same time.

“Sarah!” Riley shouts, a shrill edge of panic in his voice. “What the hell are you doing?!” He gets down on the floor with me, trying to help. “I didn’t know,” he mutters. “Oh, God, I didn’t know.”

Blood covers one side of Kat’s face. Her left wrist is swollen and bent funny. Her eyes are closed, but she’s still breathing.

I’m not sure if I am. I look up at Sarah, who’s holding one of her homemade gadgets. It’s shaped like a gun and is pointed right at me. She takes another one out of her purse. This one’s smaller, more compact, but when she fires it at the wall, a laser blasts a chunk out of it and bits of debris rain down on us.

“Nobody help her!” Sarah shouts. “She’s a supervillain! We can’t let her leave!”

People scream. Some of them run. A room full of superheroes, and nobody does anything.

Instead, there are shocked gasps and snide whispers of agreement. Because they know who I am. They can believe that the half-villain guy bold enough to wear a pair of swimming trunks to Homecoming would also be bold enough—or maybe crazy enough—to bring a supervillain as his date.

Sarah points both guns at me. “Riley, get back. Didn’t you hear me?”

“Sarah,” Riley says, holding up a hand, trying to reason with her, “I know you’re not yourself right now, but this isn’t—”

“Get away from her.” She points the shockwave gun at him, keeping the raygun aimed at my chest. “You, too, Damien. You won’t get another warning shot.”

Riley goes invisible while her attention is focused on me. She doesn’t even hesitate. She pulls the trigger and he slams against the wall, turning visible again and crying out in pain as he clutches his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she says to him, “but you don’t understand. You don’t know what’s at stake here.”

I get to my feet, staying in front of Kat, blocking her from Sarah. Electricity burns beneath my skin. All my hair stands on end, and there’s a loud crackle as lightning arcs between my hands. I don’t think about it—it’s just there—and I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.

Sarah’s eyes widen in surprise, but then she shakes her head sadly, as if she should have known.

And if there was any doubt about who the bad guy is in this situation, it’s gone now as everyone stares at me. Kids and even some adult chaperones gape as sparks flicker across my bare skin and electricity crawls over my arms in waves. Phones come out. Pictures get snapped. More people run while they can.

Someone comes tearing through the crowd, pushing people out of the way to find out what’s going on, and I see Amelia staring, horror-stricken, at the scene before her. At Sarah, one of my closest friends, pointing a raygun at me. And me, trying really hard not to fry everyone in the room. “Damien?!”

“Amelia, get back!”

“No wonder,” Sarah says, her voice choked with emotion. “No wonder you brought a supervillain into Heroesworth! Even though you knew all it would take is one wrong word from her back at Vilmore and a whole generation of superheroes would be wiped out!”

More gasps from the crowd as the idea spreads like wildfire. They don’t have any trouble believing it. They don’t know that Kat wouldn’t do that. They’re probably pretty sure that
I
would.

“You’re one of
them.
” There are tears in Sarah’s eyes now, as if she can’t believe how I’ve betrayed her.

Riley’s face is pale. He’s still clutching his shoulder and his voice is strained when he says, “Sarah, stop. You’re overreacting.”

Something about the way he says that—or maybe the way he
doesn’t
freak out about me going all electric—makes her gasp and gape at him in horror. “You knew?!”

A couple of chaperones arrive on the scene. One of them swears when he sees two injured kids and then me, covered in electricity. He says something about a supervillain infiltration and needing backup before taking off again. The other one waves her hands and shouts at the crowd not to come any closer.

“Sarah.” My voice sounds weird. Shaky and thin and not like me at all. Waves of electricity wash over me, and I can’t tell how much of it is beneath my skin, or there on the surface for everyone to see. But I feel myself losing it, losing control, because I want so badly for this to be over. For Sarah not to be pointing a gun at me. For Kat to not be lying helpless on the floor. “You’re my
sidekick
. You know I wouldn’t—”

“I can’t be a sidekick for a villain. And that’s what you are, isn’t it?” Again, the hitch in her voice, the hurt because she thinks I’ve betrayed her. That both me and Riley have. “You have a
villain power
.”

One that’s going to get out of hand really soon. I wish the crowd would move farther back. I wish the people next to me weren’t people I cared about. “Sarah, please, this isn’t you. Just—”

“You endangered all these people, Damien! You’re doing it again,
right now
!”

“Put the guns down, Sarah.”

“You first,” she says. “Stop using your villain power and move away from her, or else I’ll have to hurt you, too.”

I don’t trust her, and even if I did, I don’t know how to stop. And this
isn’t
Sarah. And it’s my fault she’s like this, because I screwed her up in the first place with my stupid electricity power, and I insisted she was fine last weekend, because I wanted her to be. And if I’m all that stands in the way of her pointing that gun at Kat, then there’s no chance in hell I’m going anywhere. “You know I can’t do that.”

“And you know I can’t let her go back to Vilmore.”

“Sarah,” Riley says, “just stop. We can talk about this.”

Giant waves of electricity arc between my hands. Somebody’s going to get hurt soon if I can’t stop it. Maybe lots of people. Amelia’s still there, on the edge of the crowd, only now Zach’s there with her. Both of them are watching this play out, their eyes wide. Riley’s leaning against the wall, thinking he can still talk Sarah out of this. Or maybe he’s just too stunned to know that he should get the hell out of here.

I’m pretty sure I could take Sarah out. I’m pretty sure I could take
a lot
of people out. But I’m not a killer, and this isn’t really her. Somewhere in there is the real Sarah, who would never do this. Who I would trust with my life.

More adults arrive. Screaming at me to stop. One of them uses her power to make a protective shield, but it’s not enough to cover more than a few people. Another points his hands at me. I don’t know what his power is, but he shouts something about not being afraid to shoot.

I hear Amelia’s voice shrieking, begging them not to hurt me.

Sarah takes aim, her raygun pointed right at my heart. Her finger moves against the trigger.

This is it. She’s going to kill me. And I can’t hold it back anymore. Adrenaline spikes through my veins. Electricity surges over my entire body, forcing all my energy into my palms. I raise my hands up toward the ceiling, right as I completely lose control.

Lightning blasts a huge hole through the roof. People scream and run for their lives as plaster and tiling and other crap rain down on them. All the lights go out and the music stops. The sprinklers come on and the fire alarm blares.

The blast from my electricity knocks Sarah back, and her shot misses its target and hits the wall above my shoulder. The superhero who kept shouting that he wasn’t afraid to shoot finally does. A beam of white light clips my arm, leaving an angry burn across my skin. I have just enough time to realize how much it hurts before the doors burst open and the cavalry arrives.

Some guy says, “Oh, it’s you again,” and then blasts me with his freeze rays.

Chapter 22

I GET ARRESTED. SARAH does not. They lock me up in a special containment room at the police station that’s meant to hold the most dangerous supervillains. Which, in what feels like another lifetime, I would have taken as a pretty big compliment. They fingerprint me—making sure to get the
X
on my thumb—and take my picture. A picture I will
not
be putting on the wall. They ignore the burn on my arm, and I don’t say anything about it, even though it hurts like hell.