The Trials of Renegade X (30 page)

I use my one phone call to call Gordon. I consider using it to call Kat, because I’m desperate to find out if she’s okay and I know Amelia will have already told Gordon what happened to me. But I figure Kat’s probably not in any condition to answer her phone. Or mine, since it’s still in her purse. In fact, all my stuff I had with me tonight is either with her or in my locker at school, and I have absolutely nothing on me. No phone, no ID. Nothing. Just shorts and a pair of flip flops.

I keep telling the police and the guys from the League who brought me in that I’m not a supervillain. But after what happened, I don’t exactly blame them for not believing me. And it doesn’t help that the only other villain in the containment room recognizes me and asks me how my mom is doing. I tell him she’s fine, and he notices I’m shaking all over and tells me not to worry, that getting hauled in occasionally is just part of the trade, and that it’s going to be all right. I don’t believe him, but I nod anyway and try not to feel like I’m going to throw up.

It’s well after midnight by the time Gordon comes to get me. He takes one look at me after they let me out of the containment room, his face an angry mask, and says, “Where are your clothes?”

In my backpack, in my locker. But somehow I don’t think he meant it so literally. “I was trying to be different.”

He makes a disgusted noise, like he’s not surprised. Not by me screwing up and not by me getting arrested with almost nothing on. He stands there, glaring down at me, looking me over and obviously not liking what he sees.

I’m still shaking, and my arm hurts really bad, and I would give almost anything for him to hug me right now and tell me he knows it was all a big misunderstanding and that he’s just glad I’m safe. But instead he looks at me like I’m a criminal, like he’s never seen me before. There’s a moment where I’m actually afraid he’s going to tell them he doesn’t know me after all and that they should lock me back up again.

“I saw the videos,” he says. “Online.”

Videos that I’m betting
don’t
include the part where Sarah attacked Kat out of nowhere. Probably nobody started taking pictures or filming until after I went all electric. I wonder if he somehow didn’t notice I was only wearing shorts in the videos, or if that comment about my clothes was just him taking a jab at me, pointing out what a disappointment I am.

“What were you
thinking
?” He keeps his voice low, and I get the impression it’s taking a lot of effort on his part not to yell at me. At least not until we get home.

I swallow and wrap my arms around myself, being careful not to touch the burn on my arm. “Is Kat okay?”

He shakes his head dismissively, like he can’t believe I had the nerve to ask that, like maybe I have no right to after what I let happen to her. And now he does yell. “I don’t know, Damien! Maybe you should have thought of that
before
you endangered her life!”

I feel hollow and absolutely worthless. My throat goes tight, and hot tendrils of guilt and self-loathing slither through my chest, ugly and painful.

Nobody was supposed to know she was a supervillain. Sarah wasn’t supposed to go psychotic and start
shooting
at us. But all my reasons for taking Kat to Heroesworth sound really stupid in retrospect. I wanted to defy the rules. I wanted to prove that I could bring her there and that nobody could stop me. I wanted to flaunt the fact that we were together.

Or maybe I just wanted to have a good time. I wanted to be able to take my girlfriend to a stupid school dance and not have to think about what letters are on our thumbs. But even that sounds lame. I risked her life, I almost got her killed, because I wanted to spend a few hours wearing nothing but swimsuits so people I don’t even like would stare at us? Not that I knew I was risking her life. I wouldn’t have been, if not for Sarah, and that’s kind of my fault, too. Okay, no, not
kind of
. It’s completely my fault. Sarah going crazy, Kat and Riley getting injured, and me blowing up part of the school and getting arrested is all completely and totally 100 percent my fault.

“Do you know how humiliating this is?” Gordon says as he leads me toward the lobby. “To find out that my son has a
villain power
because he got arrested for blowing up part of Heroesworth? And that he got
expelled
? Do you know what I had to do to get them not to press charges?! Never mind,” he snaps when I open my mouth to speak. “Whatever smart-ass comment you have to say to that, I don’t want to hear it!”

For the record, I was simply going to say, “They’re not?” because I can’t actually think of anything he could have done to get them to let me go, sexual favors or otherwise.

Amelia’s waiting for us in the lobby. She’s changed out of her dress and into jeans and a sweatshirt. She jumps up out of her chair when she sees us, her eyes darting back and forth between me and him, looking relieved to see that he hasn’t murdered me. At least, not yet. “It wasn’t his fault,” she tells him. And with a surprising amount of conviction, considering she didn’t see how it started.

“
Amelia
,” he growls, like this isn’t the first time she’s said that and he didn’t believe her the first million times.

She looks me in the eyes and says, “Riley told me what happened. He said it wasn’t your fault.”

Well, if Mr. Perfect said it, then it must be true.

I think that, and then I feel this overwhelming wave of guilt. For what happened to him tonight, because of me. And because, even after all that, he still said I was innocent, even though he must know that I wasn’t. I might not have pulled the trigger on Sarah’s gun, but I was the one responsible for it, and he knows that as much as I do. I don’t deserve for him to defend me. Just like I don’t deserve the concerned looks Amelia keeps giving me, like she’s worried about how I’m doing.
Me
. Her stupid, idiotic brother who ruined her big night and is, no doubt, going to be the talk of the school on Monday, but not for the reasons she thought. And she’s not going to be Amelia anymore, she’s going to be “the sister of that villain kid who blew up part of the gym.” Good luck living that down.

And Sarah thinks I’m a sociopath, that I don’t feel bad for anything. She should see me now.

Gordon walks ahead of us, like he can’t stand to look at me. He leads us outside, toward the car. An icy wind blasts me as soon as I step outside, giving me flashbacks to when that freeze guy used his power on me at the school. And at the jewelry store. But mostly at the school. I can see my breath in the air, and I start shivering after only a few steps, what with it being so cold out here and me wearing pretty much nothing. I guess nobody thought to bring me a coat.

I catch Gordon’s arm as he’s about to get in the car. Because I need him to look at me. I need him to turn around and acknowledge that I exist and that I’m still his son and not the evil supervillain the internet has probably already made me out to be. My teeth are chattering as I start to say, “Dad, I didn’t—” But he jerks his arm away from me, and then, yes, he looks at me. But it’s not the look I wanted. It’s a mixture of anger and fear and even revulsion. It’s a look that stops me in mid-sentence and makes me want to go crawl under a rock and never come out again.

And then, in a tone that doesn’t leave any room for arguing, he says, “
Not now
, Damien.”

I get in the back of the car, because there’s no way I’m sitting next to him in the front. Amelia gets in the back, too. She should be as mad at me as Gordon is, but instead she doesn’t know better. Because Riley mistakenly told her it wasn’t my fault. Because she saw all those superheroes yelling at me, and Sarah pointing guns at us. And she saw how freaked out I was. And maybe I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, or to lose control of my lightning power, but she should still be mad. She must realize that her life is pretty much over, all because of me.

But instead she reaches out and touches my arm. Like I’m still a real person. Like I’m still her brother. “Kat’s okay,” she whispers. “Riley was there at the hospital, and I made Zach find out, and he told me. She has a concussion and some broken ribs, and her wrist is broken, but she’s going to be okay.”

I swallow and nod, not trusting myself to speak. And then I turn away, pretending to see something really interesting out the window, so she doesn’t see the tears in my eyes.

Gordon calls a press conference Sunday afternoon. No, not Gordon—the
Crimson Flash
. Because that’s what he had to promise in order to keep me out of trouble. He has to go on live TV and confess to the entire world that the half-villain kid who destroyed part of Heroesworth is his
son
. That he slept with a supervillain seventeen years ago and that, all this time, he hasn’t been the pinnacle of morality his fans thought he was. And that he’s kept me a secret from them, even if it was only for the past seven months.

A secret that obviously had serious consequences.

He also has to claim that it’s his fault I was attending Heroesworth in the first place, that he deceived the administration into thinking I wasn’t dangerous, despite being half villain. He’s taking the blame so the school can pretend they had no idea I was a liability or that I might have been a danger to the other students. Instead, everybody gets to think it was the Crimson Flash, of
The Crimson Flash and the Safety Kids
, who knowingly risked the lives of everyone at Heroesworth, so that his secret delinquent son could go to his alma mater.

As if any of that is even remotely what happened.

He explained all that to me last night, before he let me go to bed. He made sure I knew just how badly I’d screwed up, as if I didn’t already. Now I’m hiding in my room. I know the press conference is on because I can hear the TV downstairs. And because Amelia knocked on my door and told me it was starting, though I pretended to be asleep and didn’t answer. Everyone else is down there, watching him ruin his life for me, but I can’t.

So instead I’m sitting on my bed, pretending it isn’t happening. I have my phone back, thanks to Amelia using her power to get it for me last night, and I dial Kat’s number for the millionth time today. And, like all the other times, it goes straight to voicemail.

Hey, this is Kat. I’m probably screening my calls right now, but if you leave an awesome enough message, I might call you back. Except you, Damien—you’re
always
awesome and I’ll
always
call you back.

Hot guilt wells up in my chest. Always awesome. Yep. That’s me.

I don’t know why she’s not answering. Maybe she’s that hurt, that she can’t. Or maybe she’s mad at me for, you know, almost getting her killed.

Or her battery could be dead, but somehow I doubt that’s it.

Gordon says something very solemn sounding on the TV downstairs, though I can’t make out what it is, and then there are a lot of angry noises from the crowd.

I pull my blanket over my head to try and muffle the sound more. Then I suck it up and call Kat’s house. I hope Kat answers. I hope her mom answers. Anyone but—

“How dare you call here,” her dad says. He sounds pissed. I don’t blame him.

“Can I talk to her?”

“Can you
talk
to her? No. No, you cannot.
You
are never talking to her again.”

In the background, I hear Kat’s mom say, “Is that Damien? Is he all right?”

Her dad sighs. He says to me, gruffly, “You’re all right, aren’t you?”

My arm still hurts, though not as badly as it did last night, since I put medicine on it and a couple of giant band-aids. The most popular video of me blowing up part of Heroesworth has over 1,000,000 views. My little brother looked at me this morning like I wasn’t the same guy who drew a Velociraptor on his cast, but instead like he thought I might be planning to burn the house down, and was too scared to talk to me.

“I’m fine,” I lie.

“He’s
fine
,” he repeats, talking to her mom. Then, to me, “You listen here. After what you did, you don’t speak to Kat ever again. You don’t call her. You don’t message her. And you sure as hell don’t see her in person.”

“
Tom
,” Kat’s mom scolds.

But he ignores her. “I told you you were trouble. And then you and her lied to us, and you took her to
Heroesworth
and almost got her—” Too much emotion clouds his voice, and he doesn’t finish that thought. “You stay away from her, Damien.”

I’m not going to do that, but I keep my mouth shut. I might be trouble, but I’m not stupid. “Is she okay?”

“She will be. The doctor said she’ll be able to shapeshift herself back to normal, once she gets her strength back. She should be better by tomorrow.”

I exhale in relief.

“Until then, she’s in a lot of pain. Because of you.”

I wince. “Will you tell her I’m sorry?”

“No. I won’t.” And then he hangs up.

I just sit there, under my blanket. It’s too hot and I can hardly breathe. And I can still hear the TV downstairs. I think they might have turned it up. I catch part of a sentence where Gordon’s saying how ashamed he is, and my blood runs cold and my heart beats too loud.