Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain

by Richard Roberts

  I pointed at the jar. Money in the bank.

  “So she can cast spells,” I translated back to him.

  “They just happen to sound like incantations,” he insisted.

  We glared at each other. Then I realized he’d taken off his glasses, so I took mine off to make it fair. We glared at each other a few seconds more, then both broke down laughing at the fuzzy-edged blob arguing against us.

  “So, where is that paper on the nervous resonating antenna thing?” I asked.

  He looked around the room, then his eyes drifted down the rows of piled up books, drives, notebooks, clipboards, and sheaves of paper. Got him! He’d started analyzing his own pattern of clutter. He knew it well enough to figure out the system when he needed to. “Under the Audubon Field Guide. I’m still not going to build you one.”

  I scooped it out. No title, but the first paragraph talked about matching neural electromagnetic resonance. He loved printing out his work. Good for me!

  “I need to do it myself anyway,” I evaded. “It’s for the science fair.”

  “How is school? Report cards will be coming in soon. Were you ready for that German test you were worried about?”

  EEK.

  Okay, shake it off. Not literally. He didn’t notice me freeze up. I flipped through the pages laying out the engineering of the antenna. “I don’t think I have time to talk, Dad. I have to do a lot of math. Really a lot of math. Really, really a lot of math.” A different sort of horror crept over me at the thought. Urgh.

  “Yeah, I bet. Good luck, Pumpkin,” he urged me. I pointed at the jar silently. I would have liked to gloat that I was cleaning up today, but I was trying to keep from fainting.

  I could do this. I got the trig and calculus textbooks off of the kitchen shelf, praying I wouldn’t need to use them. I got my custom smart phone (like Dad would let me use a brand name when he could spend three weeks making one that works across all platforms) to use the calculator functions.

  So many equations. Okay, I had to know the percentage by mass of each element in the antenna. I ran into Dad’s electronics workshop and copied down the label on his cheap spares. It didn’t matter what they were as long as I had the numbers, right? That gave me three variables he had down with Greek letters, and I plugged them into the next equation, which… took differentials of sines and cosines. He had to be kidding me. I dug out both books I’d been hoping not to use. I’d seen this stuff before. I just had to find the cheap rules and apply them… Okay, no. No, this was too complicated. I had to understand what I was doing. How did you get the first differential of a sine function?

  I didn’t know. It just… it just didn’t make any sense. There was something there. I had to know because the waves from the antenna when they traveled through my skin had to become waves that would merge with waves in my axons, causing a chain of…

  I could almost see it, but those words didn’t make sense. What was I doing? It was like trying to call The Mona Lisa a painting. Just work out the math the cheap way. I’d need my body mass index; that was in the next equation. Of course, I needed my real, exact body mass index, not just some rough approximation by comparing weight and height, or whatever the rule-of-thumb trick was.

  I didn’t even know the rule-of-thumb trick. I’d need a machine just to get my body mass index.

  Whining in frustration, I threw Dad’s papers across the room, then threw my notebook with my fumbling math after it. I’d probably gotten the math wrong anyway. And I was good at math!

  I lay down in bed and put the cover over my head. It wasn’t nearly bedtime. I would spend the rest of the day sulking and trying to avoid the issue and maybe tomorrow I could come up with a new idea. I had to hurry. I could hide a C on a test from my Dad, but not my report card.

  And what was I going to do about the science fair anyway?

  The alarm on my phone woke me up the next morning. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I stared at the ceiling for a while, but I’d already outsmarted myself. The phone was out of reach of the bed, and I had to get up to turn off the alarm, and after that I might as well go take a shower.

  The sky was black outside, and I was all alone in the house. Technically, I wasn’t alone. Mom and Dad were there, they were just fast asleep. I tied my pigtails into braids myself. Dad made me a machine for when I don’t feel like putting forth the effort, but he’d tinkered with it yesterday. The little hands had extra fingers, and the access plate looked new. No matter how lazy I felt, I wasn’t going to risk it. I could tell just by looking that he’d messed something up. Dad’s inventions always do what they’re supposed to do, but sometimes don’t do what you think they’re supposed to do. Something about the extra grabbers looked wrong to me, and, if I couldn’t put a finger on it, I wouldn’t let them put a finger on my hair.

  The scrambled egg maker, on the other hand, was a godsend, since it’s a miracle if Mom ever makes breakfast. She’s right; I’d hate it if she pulled her Audit routine at home, and she needed a break. Not that she could stop herself completely. Halfway through my cereal bowl I heard her door alarm squeak, and, as I reached for my backpack, she stuck her keys in the side door and opened it for me.

  As she pulled the car out of the driveway, Mom asked me, “Still brooding, Penny?”

  I’d just sat through breakfast grumbling about my parents’ super powers. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know what to do for the science fair.”

  Just saying that gripped me. That’s all I needed, an F for not presenting anything at all. I had no ideas for what to do to replace the antenna. None. I still wanted to make the antenna.

  “Want any advice?” she asked.

  “No.” If I talked over the science fair thing with my parents, sooner or later my grades in German would come up. Most likely sooner. I was hemmed in on all sides.

  At least my Mom has a light touch. She let it go, although she gave me a concerned glance. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’d timed it precisely to give the maximum amount of sympathy without making the recipient feel pressured.

  The brooding didn’t stop when I got to school. What was I going to do for the science fair? I wanted to invent something, really bad. I wanted to make that antenna. It wasn’t even about zapping myself with it for super powers now. It clawed at me that I’d stared at a few pages full of math and they’d beaten me utterly. I’d had reference books, but they didn’t help, because none of it had made sense. The device and the calculations were two different worlds that I couldn’t connect.

  Making that connection was Dad’s super power. I didn’t have it. I didn’t even have a hint of it, like I was going to grow into it.

  The bell rang. I was sitting in my chair in History class, and I hadn’t heard a word. I’d read the whole chapter ahead of time because World War I was such a bizarre war, but that wasn’t the point. I’d been wrapped up, brooding the whole time. This was tearing me apart.

  I slipped out into the hall and laid my back against the cement block wall of the hallway. I had to do something. I had Geometry next, across the street in Upper High. I’d always kind of known it would be easy to skip out on that class, because nobody was tracking that I’d been to the other school that day. It hadn’t been important until now.

  I walked around the school to the science lab. I’d left the parts in there. It would work. I couldn’t do the math, but it ought to just work. It was the most obvious thing in the world. If the antenna was the right length and you touched it, it would zap you.

  I stopped in front of the classroom. I could see kids at their benches through the door’s window. Of course,a class was taking place now. There’d be a science class every period.

  “You are entirely unable to leave this invention thing alone, aren’t you?” Ray asked from behind me.

  I flinched. Of course, there was one person who would track whether I’d been to Geometry, because he took the course with me. He’d even guessed where I would come.

  I turned around to see Claire
standing right next to Ray. They were both missing class to talk me out of being an idiot.

  “It’s driving me crazy, okay? I just need to try. I need to fiddle with it until I’ve proven to myself I can’t do it and I don’t have any choice but to let go.” I hunched my head down between my shoulders. Guilt clawed at me, but I’d be in more trouble going to class late than skipping it anyway. I wasn’t walking away from this.

  “Were you able to get hold of your Dad’s notes?” Claire held her hands clasped behind her, the picture of innocent concern. Even her dark blonde hair just made her look more sincere and charming than if she’d been a pale blonde. Claire was so much better looking than me; her power would come out any minute.

  That was crazy thinking, getting mad at Claire for being such a good friend. I was just so frustrated. “It was like Dante’s Calculus Inferno. There was no way,” I whined.

  “You’re not Brian Akk, and you don’t have to be. You’re Penelope Akk,” Claire reminded me. I wanted to pop her for that gentle, talking-me-off-the-roof voice—so imagine if she hadn’t used it.

  “It doesn’t matter. I can’t get to the parts now. I just can’t let it go!” I growled.

  “If you get an hour to show yourself that it doesn’t work, will that help you?” Ray asked.

  He knew something. “Yeah, it will.”

  He started grinning again. I must be seriously flipping out if he’d been frowning this long. He did know something. “Come on,” he told us, and we followed him down to the other end of the hall, past the computer science lab to the… other computer science lab.

  I’d never actually been in this one. He pulled the door open, revealing a lab empty of kids or teachers. Half the computers were in bits. This wasn’t a schoolroom.

  “Miss Petard lets me help her with hardware repairs when I’m ahead of the class,” Ray explained grandly. That “when” would be “all the time,” but he didn’t say it.

  “I can’t steal the school’s computer parts!” I squeaked in horror.

  “You don’t have to,” he promised, as smug as if he’d been waiting for that objection. He stepped over to a set of shelves, scooped up a pile of cards and drives and cords, carried them over to the nearest table, and dumped them on it. “All broken. She never throws anything away. You just need the parts, don’t you?”

  Claire, bless her as the best friend a girl could have, heaved a toolbox onto the table.

  I grabbed a screwdriver and opened up the casings. A length of copper wire, any battery, it wasn’t a complicated device. It had to… what was the word? Modulate? It wouldn’t be exactly the same signal constantly. It had to work in a pattern. I needed… I didn’t know the name of the part I needed. I tried to pry some electronics off of a circuit board with a screwdriver, and it snapped in half.

  “FRACK!” I didn’t quite swear.

  “What are you looking for? Maybe we can find it,” Claire asked.

  I shook my head. “I’ve got what I need here. I just need to rearrange things.”

  “You can’t rearrange a circuit board. They’re made that way in a factory. You’d have to recycle the whole board and start from scratch. We don’t carry blanks.” Ray was trying to be gentle, but it was useless because he was wrong. Or he was right, kind of.

  Recycle. I’d have to recycle the whole board.

  “I need… metal cutting tools,” I begged. Was I begging? My voice sounded so quiet. Yes, I needed those tools. I couldn’t let this go.

  “I don’t think there are any in a computer lab, Penny,” Claire warned.

  Ray’s eyelids lowered, and his grin widened. He’d thought of something. “There aren’t, but nobody’s using the shop classroom in the morning.”

  “There’s a shop class?” Claire and I asked simultaneously.

  “It’s downstairs,” Ray told me, grabbing our hands and pulling us out the door.

  “There’s a downstairs?” Claire and I asked simultaneously.

  He dragged us down to the corner stairway. There were the stairs going up, like I’d expected, and there were stairs going down. I’d been to Northeast West Hollywood Middle for three years, and I’d never had any idea these were here.

  It was like a sign. The tools I needed were down there. I skipped down the stairs ahead of Ray and ran down the short, blankly white hallway. One of the doors said “Shop,” and I flung it open. I walked inside and was surrounded by ugly, crude versions of all the mad machines in Dad’s workshop that I’d have to find the names of.

  I knew what I needed. Gears, lots of gears. I found them. Magnets, electricity. I flipped on a saw and sliced pipe into thin slices, then squeezed them in a vice. It was obvious, wasn’t it? You could recycle anything. Even energy, sort of.

  Stop trying to find words. I didn’t know what I meant, but I could see it.

  I twisted the top segment into place. It looked like a centipede. I sighed, put the soldering iron into its brace and turned around to lean against the table until my muscles stopped shaking.

  Ray and Claire stared at me like I’d made a second head instead of—

  “What is this thing?” I asked, looking at the contraption in my hands. Large portions of it had no cover plates. There was just no way I’d made gears that tiny, much less fit them together.

  “Shouldn’t you know?” Claire asked me. She and Ray really looked scared. No wonder. Was that a psychotic break? I felt so tired now, but relaxed. Well, if I’d stressed out so badly I’d made this ridiculously intricate piece of modern art, my parents would be sympathetic. Therapy wouldn’t be so bad.

  “I think it’s just—” I started, absently twisted it in my hands. It resisted, but turned, like a crank. And just like a crank, it kept turning. Then it flipped, grabbed my hand with its many legs, and crawled up my arm.

  Claire squealed, but I wasn’t afraid. I’d made it. I knew it wasn’t going to hurt me. That was about all I knew.

  Ray got there before either of us. “Penny, you made that. You have super powers!” he announced.

  My eyes stung. He was right. He was so right! I lunged forward and grabbed both of them and squeezed them in a hug. I felt a little electric feeling as Ray’s not-as-skinny-as-I’d-have-thought chest pressed against me, and he must have felt the same about Claire, but… forget that!

  “I have super powers!” I crowed, my voice squeaking like a mouse. “Just like Dad’s … ! Almost like Dad’s.” I saw Dad work all the time. He had to do research, lots and lots of research, and he knew exactly what he was building ahead of time and what it did when he finished.

  “I made this,” I said, pulling back and holding up my hand as the little automaton crawled up that arm and fastened itself around my wrist like a bracelet. “I have no idea what it does.”

  “It’s an inscrutable little machine, isn’t it?” Ray admitted, leaning down to peer at the snowflake gears.

  Who cared about the details? I was a superhero!

  had my weird little machine, and I had my super power. Now I had to do the right thing. Before, that would have been humiliating and terrifying. Not now.

  Claire tried to argue with me. It was her decision, blah blah blah. She shut up when I pulled the door to the biology classroom open.

  “Claire Lutra, Penelope Akk, Ray Viles, what are you doing, and, Miss Lutra, why are you so late?” Mrs. Golgi demanded, pausing in her lecture to give us a frosty glare. I imagined Claire and Ray fainting behind me, but I was in front on purpose. I couldn’t feel her anger at all, just the wonderful high-tech metal bracelet around my wrist that I’d made myself.

  The right thing would also be the smart thing, if I was brave enough to do it, but that wasn’t the point. It was the right thing.

  “Mrs. Golgi, I’m here to apologize,” I told her solemnly. “I’m the reason Claire missed class. I’ve been having a hard time, and I broke down, and, if Claire and Ray hadn’t found me and gotten me through it, I don’t know what I would have done. I really lost it. I know I’m going to be
in trouble, but please don’t blame Claire for being a good friend.”

  It was all completely true. Talking about super powers would have confused the issue. What I’d said had been the important part.

  Mrs. Golgi could tell. She looked stumped, like anyone caught between anger and sympathy. I’d had her last year, and she was a good teacher and a good person. All my teachers were.

  Her face and tone never gave away exactly how she’d decided to feel, but she ordered, “Claire, take your seat. You’ll have just enough time to copy down the homework. You two, get to your next class. If you don’t show up on time, you can expect to be in even more trouble than you are now, Penelope.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Golgi,” I agreed. I felt like doing the Japanese thing and bowing, but she’d think I was insulting her when I meant it. I did the next best thing and obeyed immediately, backing out into the hall.

  “You have German. I’ve got to get back to computer science,” Ray told me sheepishly. Our classrooms were in opposite directions.

  “You’re not abandoning me.” Lifting up my right hand, I showed off the segmented bracelet wrapped around my wrist. “See you in science,” I promised. I smiled, and it felt like contentment shot straight from the bracelet into my heart, then spread out everywhere. I had a super power. All that worry and tension were over.

  So he went one way, and I went the other. I got to German class right as the bell rang to let out the last class. I learned immediately that my super power hadn’t opened up some awesome wealth of new brains. I spent the hour struggling to figure out which nouns had which gender.

  I was fine with that. My German grade was a sideshow now. If I could pull it up, that would be great.

  What was important was my invention, which I had no time to investigate while trying to give German the focus it desperately needed.

  That had to wait until the next period, in science. Not the same as biology, or computer science. “Science” wrapped up chemistry and physics in one bag. It was often a fun class, and today we compared elastic and inelastic reactions, throwing cue balls and toy cars and rubber balls at each other and doing lots of calculations to figure out how much force was lost when they hit.