The Trials of Renegade X (8 page)

It’s the one they made this summer about Gordon’s superhero alter ego, the Crimson Flash, called
The Man Behind the Cape
. They interviewed the whole family, putting those blurry dots over everyone’s faces and disguising their voices, so supervillains and overeager tourists wouldn’t be able to track down his real identity. Well, I shouldn’t say they interviewed the
whole
family, since they left me out of it. The lady making the documentary asked who I was, and Gordon got this look on his face like he was going to have an embolism or something. His eye twitched, and he started stammering about how families are made of all kinds of people and that we never know how they’ll turn out. The lady looked like she thought he was crazy.

Then I stepped in and said I was a distant cousin from out of town and did she know when was the best time to visit the Heroes Walk? She bought it, and nobody corrected me. I mean, Gordon looked like he wanted to—he even opened his mouth to protest, but then ... he just didn’t. And I get it. It was easier this way. Plus, it’s not like I wanted to be on TV, broadcasting to the world that I’m some freak with an
X
on my thumb. Or to have some actor twice my age play me in the recreated dramatic scenes, like they did for Amelia. The actress who plays her isn’t just older, but way skinnier and with much bigger boobs—a body type I know Amelia aspires to have, even if she’s about a million calories and a boob job or two away from ever achieving it. Which is probably the real reason she’s watched
The Man Behind the Cape
about fifty times since it first aired last month.

But once I get my
H
, things will be different. Well, for me, not Amelia. Then even if I’m not exactly part of their perfect nuclear family, at least Gordon will be able to tell people I’m his kid with a straight face. And then the only embarrassing questions he’ll have to answer will be why me and Amelia are so close in age, not why he, Golden City’s most beloved superhero, has a half-villain son.

“Are you watching that stupid documentary again?” Kat asks through the phone. “Is it on my part yet?”

Kat managed to sneak in as a random extra when they were interviewing people on the street. She used her shapeshifting powers to hide the fact that her thumb has a
V
on it, just in case they weren’t open to interviewing supervillains. The only line of hers they kept was the part where her eyes get all wide and she says, “Gosh, is the Crimson Flash actually here,
right now
?!” Then she looks around, like he might be standing behind her and she just missed him or something.

It’s definitely the best five seconds of the whole movie. That and the bit where the Crimson Flash’s cape gets snagged on a sticker bush and it takes him a whole minute to get it loose again. They overlay it with him answering questions about his everyday life, I guess so the viewers at home can see what an ordinary guy he is. You know, getting his cape stuck on things.

“Of course not,” I tell Kat. Unlike Amelia, seeing it a couple times—once with my family, and once with Kat, making fun of it—was more than enough for me, though I do have my favorite clips saved on my phone. “That’s my wonderful new neighbor, Amelia, who is oh-so-respectful of my space.” My phone beeps, reminding me to plug it in. It’s been beeping every once in a while for about twenty minutes now, but I haven’t bothered to charge it. I’m too busy jotting down a list of potential ways to get myself kicked out of my excellent new living quarters. Alex did it, and he’s only eight—it couldn’t be too hard. “And how could you not tell me my mom was having a
baby
?”

She groans, and I can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “You didn’t want to talk about her, remember?”

“Yeah, but that’s before I knew she was replacing me.” The problem with Alex’s method of escape is that it involved falling down the stairs and resulted in breaking his arm. I happen to like my arm the way it is—intact and pain-free—and falling down the stairs is
not
an option, for all the obvious reasons, like it being way too terrifying.

Kat’s quiet a minute. “I know things aren’t great between you and your mom, but do you really think she’d do that?”

“I don’t know what she would or wouldn’t do. And either way, that doesn’t change the fact that I have a brother.”

I tap my list with my pen, considering other possibilities. Like, what if Jess suddenly started having nightmares and I was the only one who could make her feel better and had to sleep downstairs in her room? I put that in the “maybe” column, since it would probably also involve me giving her the nightmares to begin with—I’d say with scary movies, but Jess is actually really terrified of this one puppet show that’s on in the mornings—plus I’m not
that
horrible.

Or that desperate. At least, not yet.

“You already had a brother,” Kat says.

“This is different.” My voice goes quiet. The wind shakes the attic extra hard, making it feel like the floor’s falling out from under me, and I forget about my notes and clutch Alex’s bedspread instead. It’s got blue squares with pictures of trucks on them. Someone—I suspect Alex—has taken a Sharpie and drawn faces on all of them, giving them their own personalities. I like Alex. I’m even sort of glad he’s my brother. But it’s different with this side of the family. Gordon didn’t raise me. And he took me in. My mom, on the other hand, kicked me out the first chance she got.

“She claimed she couldn’t make a name for herself because of me,” I tell Kat. “And all this time, I thought she’d eventually figure out she overreacted and that she still wants me in her life. I mean, there’s no way I’d go back there, even if she did, but now I find out she hasn’t been thinking of me at all. She’s been too busy having another kid. One she’s actually happy about. He might not have been planned, either, but at least he’s all villain. He even looks like her.” I pause, thinking about holding Xavier earlier. “I don’t want to like him.” I feel kind of ashamed to say it. Whatever Mom did, it’s not his fault. But that doesn’t change the fact that I wish he didn’t exist.

“I used to wish my parents would have another kid,” Kat says. She’s an only child. We used to have that in common. “But that was when I was, like, two. If they had another one now? Ugh.”

A girl’s voice in the background shouts, “We’re going to the student store, Katie, you want to come?”

“Can’t,” Kat says. “I’m on the phone.” As if they were talking to her, even though they obviously used the wrong name. Crazy.

“Ooh,” another girl’s voice says, “talking to your
boyfriend
?” Whoever she is, she says the word
boyfriend
like it’s the most scandalous thing in the world. Kat must have told her all about me.

Then both girls call out in a singsong voice, “Hi, Damien!” before giggling hysterically and leaving the room.

“Sorry about that,” Kat says, sounding embarrassed. “Those are my suitemates, Tasha and Liv. I guess I kind of talked a lot about you today.”

“Understandable. I mean, it is difficult to go a whole day without gushing about how awesome I am. I often have trouble myself.”

There’s a thumping noise. Then Kat says, “That was me, hitting you with a pillow. Hard.”

“I guess there are
some
benefits to this long-distance thing.”

“Seriously, I was one of those annoying people who wouldn’t shut up about her boyfriend back home. I even showed them pictures of you on my phone.”

“And they were so taken with me, they forgot to ask you why I don’t go to your school.”

“I kind of let them think you’re a year younger than me.”

Well, it’s better than them knowing the truth—that I go to Heroesworth, their rival school—or thinking I wasn’t good enough to get into Vilmore. Which is, er, sort of also the truth, since even before I got my
X
, I was apparently not an ideal candidate, or at least according to Taylor, my stepfather-to-be and the former dean of Vilmore. He resigned last year, after Pete, my ex-best friend and one of his star students, died during his and Mom’s attempt to take over Golden City. But not before he’d made his final decisions on who would be joining Vilmore’s freshman class this fall. Mom really should have waited to start sleeping with him until
after
the admissions process. But, as I said before, she never listens to me. “They’re going to be disappointed next year when I don’t show up.”

“Well, I was kind of hoping ... I mean, you know, Heroesworth might not be your thing.”
That’s
an understatement. “And you could reapply. Taylor’s not the dean anymore. You just need to buff up your villainous extra-curriculars. I could help you. Between the two of us, we could pull off something really devious.”

I’m silent a minute, taking that in. And even though I’ve decided I want to get my
H
, part of me is still tempted by what she’s saying. “Who’s Katie?”

“Oh.” She swallows. “That’s me.”

“Yeah, I figured. You didn’t tell them your name was Kat?”

“Well, at role call this morning in Thwarting Heroes, Mrs. Thorpe called me Katherine. I
said
I go by Kat, but then this kid, Tristan, he started teasing me and calling me Katie instead and it kind of stuck.”

I can’t picture her as a Katie. She’s always been Kat to me. “So some guy starts flirting with you and now you have a new name?” Some guy who better hope I never do get into Vilmore, because I
will
murder him. And probably get extra credit for it.

“
Damien
. It wasn’t like that.”

But I can tell from the way her voice gets super high-pitched that it
was
like that. I switch my phone to my other ear. There’s a sharp zap of static electricity when I touch it that sends my nerves racing. “So, what do you want me to call you now?”

“Kat, of course. Geez. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

But it feels like a big deal. When we were making out in my bed on Friday, she was Kat. Now she moves away and talks to some other guy, and suddenly she has a new name, like she’s a different person. Like that time I caught her making out with my best friend Pete and she’d shapeshifted to look like someone else.

Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe I do still have trust issues.

“Katie is still short for Katherine,” she says, sounding defensive. “It’s just another version of the same name.”

Just another version of her. One that feels really far away all of a sudden.

“Damien,
you’re
my boyfriend.”

“I know that, but does Tristan?”

“Oh, my God, will you let it go?”

“I just don’t get it.”

“It’s not my fault if guys flirt with me.”

But that doesn’t mean she has to change her name every time one of them does. I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I waited all day to talk to her, and now I don’t know how our conversation got so derailed. “Imagine how you’d feel if it was me. If some girl started calling me by a new name and I just went with it.”

“Uh, you mean like when Sarah named you Renegade X? I don’t have to
imagine
it.”

“That was totally different.”

“You’re right. It was worse. You weren’t even supposed to be a superhero. You were supposed to be a villain, with
me
. She shouldn’t have been the one helping you pick out a name. Plus, I know you made out with her. And I know we weren’t together then, but don’t pretend it doesn’t mean anything. And you still see her all the time.”

“She’s my friend.” And just because I’d never want Sarah and Kat to be in the same room at the same time doesn’t mean they can’t both be important people in my life.

“She’s your sidekick. Face it, Damien, if I was running around doing villain stuff with some guy I’d made out with, you’d be going nuts.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I would very calmly—
very
calmly; I really can’t emphasize that enough—and methodically
destroy
him, piece by piece. Look, Kat, I know I didn’t get into Vilmore and that our plans for the future got thrown out the window, but that doesn’t mean I don’t—”

My phone beeps again, reminding me for the millionth time to plug it in, except it’s actually about to go dead this time. “Hold on,” I tell her, grabbing my backpack off the floor and scrambling to find my charger.

“It’s okay. Tasha and Liv are back. I really should—”

“Wait, hold on. Don’t go yet. I’m sorry, I just—”

I plug in the phone, and the wall socket lights up. Sparks fly out of it and burn my fingers a little. The wall socket goes dark almost as quickly as it lit up, and then all the lights go out and Amelia’s TV turns silent.

“I just miss you,” I finish, even though she can’t hear me because my phone has gone completely dead.

Chapter 6

THE POWER’S BEEN OUT for less than five minutes before Amelia knocks on my door. I debate answering it, since that means getting up and risking my life by walking across the floorboards. There’s one in particular between the bed and the door that I don’t trust, since it sort of sagged under my foot earlier.

But then Amelia calls out, “Damien, I
know
you’re in there. And I know you’re awake—I heard you talking.”

Wow, and here she thought she inherited the power to teleport stuff to her. But her power must actually be super hearing if she could pick up anything above her blaring TV.

“Damien?” she calls again, and this time she sounds kind of freaked out. Like maybe she’s watched one too many horror movies and thinks everyone in the house might have disappeared along with the electricity, leaving her completely alone.

I groan and, wonderful half brother that I am, get off the bed, take a deep breath, and try not to picture the floor crumbling beneath me, now that I can’t actually see it. It’s pitch black in here, and this is my first time in the attic, let alone in my new room, so I have a little trouble finding the door at first. But then my hand smacks into the knob, and I open it to find Amelia standing in the hallway with a flashlight.