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

by Richard Roberts

  I held up my hands. “I provisionally surrender. I have only one condition. I need to try and build something, and remember doing it.”

  Claire looked suspicious. Ray figured it out. “You’ve been freaking out all day about this, haven’t you?”

  I let out a huge sigh. “Yes! I know it’s fine, it’s just been needling me. I don’t remember anything from yesterday. I don’t even know how that works.” I flapped a hand at the metal caster, and went on. “And you say I ordered you around while building it? I’m going to be creeped out until I try to explore this, and there’s no way I could do it in class.”

  “Okay, but keep it small,” Claire warned me.

  Like I had that kind of control. That was part of the problem. Could I even turn this on? A three-second invention made out of a pencil wouldn’t count. It wouldn’t tell me anything.

  If I didn’t get this figured out, I’d be on edge all night. I picked up a screwdriver and one of our spare outlets, and went over to another wiring gap. Dropping down onto my knees, I looked at it.

  Wiring gap was the problem. There had to be something I could do with it.

  My brain remained blank. The wrong kind of blank.

  At least we had electricity. I didn’t know if it was part of the school’s circuit or what. I could plug in most things, and, if I needed higher voltage or amperage equipment, maybe I could…

  I’d started something. Wires. I twisted The Machine to rev it up, and, as I scrambled to pick up a pile of copper wires, I ordered, “Plastic sheets, quarter-inch thick. No, better idea.” I hadn’t turned off the circuit breakers yet. Who needed to? I smacked The Machine into the open gap. “Divert and store the electrical flow.”

  What was I—don’t think about it. Just do it, but pay attention. I grabbed pliers and twisted around a length of wire. The loops had to be exactly this width apart, because the electricity would flow…

  I lost it. I’d tried to put words on it and strangled the understanding in my head. Bah.

  I grabbed The Machine, and told it, “Let go.” It did.

  “You still in there, Penny?” Claire asked.

  “Clap once for Penny, and bark twice for Mad Scientist Penny,” Ray suggested.

  That did it. I snickered. Pushing myself back up to my feet, I snapped The Machine back onto my wrist. “I messed it up, but I messed it up in a way that makes me think I can get it with practice,” I confessed.

  “So you feel fine now?” Claire asked, all sweet and careful.

  “Yeah, as long as I know it’s not totally out of control,” I assured her.

  “Good.” She nodded at Ray, and they stepped forward together, grabbed my shoulders, and pulled me toward the elevator. “You can’t spend all week down here,” she lectured me. “Your powers don’t need a push, they’re already racing. We’re going upstairs, you’re going to call your Mom and get us all a ride home, and then you will be crushed under the unstoppable might of my zombie rag dolls.”

  “Uh-huh.” I pretended to concede. I’d let her find out about the candy chain saw the hard way.

  An hour later, she found out about the candy chain saw the hard way. I found out that zombie rag dolls had a nasty reassembly mechanic, and, as fast as I could kill them, she could spawn two more. Then we both got ourselves stomped by some horrible hybrid thing Ray had been building without telling us. He called it “The Thresher,” and we might as well have been standing in front of a combine harvester when he launched it at us.

  Who was the mad scientist here, anyway?!

  Wednesday.

  Mom was awake when I got up. It was Pancake Day. Nobody told me it would be Pancake Day, but a wise superheroine never questions good fortune. Needless to say, I questioned my good fortune. While shoveling buttermilk pancakes soaked in more butter and maple syrup into my mouth, of course. What was going on?

  “Are you going to need a ride home this afternoon?” Mom asked as she passed the dishes through Dad’s latest model of dishwasher.

  So that was it. Mom didn’t make me these pancakes. The Audit did. Another tell—you could have set a metronome to the rhythm of my mother’s hands through the dishwasher. Dishes were stacked, then slid into place on the shelves with perfect efficiency.

  No point in lying to her. “Probably the opposite. I’ve got a lot more work to do on the clubhouse. I want my lab assembled as soon as possible.”

  The Audit smiled, and walked over to the table, and it was Mom who bent down and kissed the top of my head. “You’re in such a rush. Your powers will arrive when they’re ready.”

  Yep. I was guessing Friday. Or maybe tomorrow. One week after first emergence? That’d be perfect.

  But that wasn’t what Mom meant. She was so sure about the four years thing she’d gone in totally the wrong direction. HA! I was out of the woods!

  Honesty was now an even better policy. “I still want a lab. It’ll make me feel better.”

  My Mom gave the head shake of adults dealing with children. My secret was safe for another day.

  One morning of classes later, I slid my lunch tray down onto the table across from Ray, eyed the ravioli suspiciously, and wondered if I could get The Machine to recycle it into raw starch and tomato sauce and cheese proteins. If I just ate the ingredients raw, they’d taste better than this mushy paste.

  “That’s quite a smile. It’s as if you won last night, instead of being churned into sugary goo.” Ray gloated as he unpacked his sandwiches.

  “Sugary goo would be better than pasta frappe.” I poked whimsically at the ravioli with my fork.

  “I never pick candy. It’s all reflexes and offense. You can’t build something that’s greater than the sum of its parts, like the junk heap can,” he explained.

  I chuckled. “You’d think that would be how I play.” Greater than the sum of its parts was inventing in a nutshell. Even chemistry was like that. The starch in this so-called-ravioli was a long, boring chain, but if you attached something more reactive to the end…

  I’d killed the idea, but I’d meant to. I did not want to flip out and go into inventing mode in the middle of the cafeteria. Much safer to think about Teddy Bears and Machine Guns. If we hadn’t been busy with each other, I bet Claire’s zombie rag dolls could have taken that Thresher. Going Von Neumann on cloth and making dolls that infected other dolls with mobility was an idea with such potential. Maybe some kind of internal framework…

  I had to gush. “I am so inspired this morning, Ray. I can’t tell you how it feels, like my power will pop any minute. I swear you were right and I’m going to get control of it before the week is over.”

  “Does this good mood mean you also got a good grade on the German quiz?” Claire asked as she dropped heavily onto the bench next to me.

  I shrugged. “High B. I spent a lot of time on the homework after our game last night. I think if I keep doing that, I can pull out a B, and that would be fine.”

  “I hope my powers activating will make me that happy. I’m sorry about…” Claire trailed off, waving a hand at the popular girls’ table.

  “About what?” I asked, looking around. The cafeteria looked normal.

  “You didn’t hear? You’re better off,” Claire said.

  “Her brains are full of Science,” Ray explained.

  “I’d still like to know what I missed,” I insisted. Claire opened up her lunchbox, which bulged with food today, and passed me and Ray sandwiches. These weren’t like Ray’s flabby peanut butter and jelly offerings. She had fat submarines on crisp Italian bread. I kept looking at her. I wasn’t that easy to divert!

  “Marcia just implied they won’t let me join the cheerleaders if I keep spending time with you two.” Claire successfully kept her tone light and avoided the actual insults I was sure had been flung.

  “I still can’t believe you want to join them,” I told her, then bit into my sandwich. Real mayonnaise and tuna and so many spices, mmm! I still had the ticklish idea that mayonnaise must be made of all kinds o
f useful chemicals.

  “It’s in the blood. I love showing off and wearing short skirts,” Claire answered me before biting into hers.

  Ray turned beet red, but we weren’t going to embarrass him by mentioning it.

  Wednesday meant another PE class, walking into the gym to see every piece of athletic equipment we had lined up and Miss Theotan shouting, “You thought PE didn’t have pop quizzes? You were wrong! It’s time for your national physical fitness tests!” Miss Theotan was a woman who struggled day after day with the inappropriateness of cracking whips and yelling, “Hyah, mule!” while we exercised. She settled for, “Be aware, your performance will be permanently recorded next to millions of others on a national database with no names attached that no one will ever look at!”

  If we weren’t a gifted school, what followed would have been a walk of shame. Claire could manage eleven pull-ups. My arms turned to jelly after seven. Ray started wheezing after six. I couldn’t pull myself so much as an inch off the floor at the rope climb. Our salvation was that nobody was any better off than we were.

  Technically not nobody. A dozen or so kids could bob up and down on the pull-ups, keep doing sit-ups like they’d never get tired, that kind of thing. Marcia could even climb the stupid rope. She was the head cheerleader, after all. The other cheerleaders and the kids on the sports teams—we had an okay soccer team, apparently—did fine. The rest of us were troglodytes by nature and didn’t get that kind of regular exercise.

  Marcia at least got some whistles when she climbed to the top of the rope. Nobody else could do it. Claudia of all people got a quarter of the way up, then hung on like she’d had an attack of acrophobia until Miss Theotan pulled her off. Two of the boys did very well on the weight lifting, but nothing else. About a third of the kids could do cartwheels. Claire could almost pull one off, but she overbalanced at the end and landed too hard.

  “Is it just me, or is this like a free ticket to the circus?” I whispered to Ray as we stood in a line, waiting to fail to climb a wall. Nobody knew how it was done. Even Marcia couldn’t do it. One girl managed by jumping so high she grabbed the top edge, and we were watching a boy as skinny as Ray who’d gotten two feet off the floor by clinging to cracks in the boards, and couldn’t go any higher.

  “I’m guessing it all seems entertainingly trivial to a newly fledged superheroine,” he whispered back.

  I thought about that for nearly half a second. “Yeah. It does. It’s my powers I want to be testing right now.”

  Time passed, and gym class ended. My arms and stomach ached, but I wouldn’t let them stop me. I grabbed my backpack and trotted innocently down the stairs to the shop class and thumbed the hidden latch of what looked like a service door and let myself into the long, gloomy cement corridor that let me into the back of my laboratory.

  Ray had gotten there first and was screwing together another outlet. As I threw open the hatch, the elevator hummed. A few seconds later, the gate opened, and Claire lugged in an apparently heavy ice chest.

  Ray and I looked at it. Claire opened up the lid and explained, “Mom thought we needed some food if we intended to spend all afternoon messing with wiring.”

  On top were what looked like individually wrapped cuts of fried chicken, a cheese wheel, a tub of the crazy, spicy stuff Miss Lutra pretends is potato salad, and several bottles of root beer packed in ice. The kind that came in brown glass bottles that looked like real beer, of course. Claire’s Mom loves that.

  “I’m starving after all that exercise,” I realized.

  Ray gave a screw one last twist and left the new outlet in the socket. “You sure you can put off a power outbreak long enough to eat?” Hopping to his feet, he flipped the breaker back on and trotted over to join us.

  It might have been a serious question. “I hope so. My arms are killing me,” I answered as I dug under the chicken. I pulled out a tub and opened it up to reveal either macaroni and cheese with a lot of extras, or casserole with a lot of gooey cheese.

  “So is mine,” Ray echoed, flexing the hand he’d held the screwdriver with. “Can I request your next invention be an automated outlet installer?”

  I fed myself a forkful of the macaroni-and-everything-else-and-cheese and considered that as I chewed. That seemed simple enough. It could be purely mechanical. All it had to do was hold wires into place and tighten five screws at once.

  That was as far as the idea went. “No good. I still don’t have control.”

  “That invention might not be exotic enough. Your power seems to like the grandiose,” Claire suggested.

  “Too much practicality, not enough super science,” Ray conceded.

  I snorted.

  They might be onto something there. I couldn’t guess how the German grenade worked. Even Dad couldn’t guess how The Machine worked. The metal caster wasn’t super science, just diabolically involved mechanics. The itch to create usually came when I was thinking about science I only distantly understood, like when I was at lunch wondering about the chemicals that made up food.

  I closed up the tub of casserole-ish, and peered into the ice chest for something else. Was that strawberry ice cream, or bubblegum-flavored? I wasn’t placing any bets.

  “Why do they make bubblegum flavored ice cream, anyway? Isn’t regular bubblegum good enough? I guess the taste…” I rambled, then stopped.

  I could feel it. I could see it. More bubblegum. Don’t think too hard about it. I just wanted to observe and not black out.

  “Materials. Chemicals. We hardly have any chemicals!” I complained. Ray and Claire stopped and stared at me, mid-chew.

  “You have some salts and a lot of metals. What do you need?” Ray’s eyes were so wide. So were Claire’s. What did I sound like? What did I look like? They couldn’t see the picture in my head!

  “I need…” No! Don’t try to name it. You’ll lose it! “Organic chemicals! Lots of them!”

  “Can we break her out of this? We don’t have any raw materials like that!” Claire leaned over and asked Ray in a hush. I could hear her, but I didn’t have time for that. Didn’t we have—we had plenty of raw materials. They just weren’t raw enough!

  I activated The Machine and dropped it in the ice chest. “Eat!” I ordered.

  “There were cupcakes at the—it’s eating the ice chest, too!” Claire squealed.

  “Of course. Polyesters!” I barked at her. Didn’t she see what I could?

  The inspiration faltered. Just ride it, Penny. I could see what I needed. I didn’t need to describe it.

  I rushed over and pawed through my equipment until I found a bunch of heating coils, then lined them up in a row. Containers! I had so many metal and plastic tubes and cups and bowls. No problem!

  Metal feet clicked as The Machine waddled sluggishly back over to me and began vomiting powders, grains, and blocks into bowls. I grabbed the one I needed, ran back, and scooped up a handful of ice, tossed the ones I didn’t need to The Machine, and dumped them into the bowl. I split the last ice cube before putting just the amount I needed in. Now to heat it and let it—

  Walking the edge between slipping into that wordless world and slamming the brakes was hard.

  I couldn’t pay too much attention to what I was doing. My hands scraped and mixed and poured, and I set things to heat. It took a delicate touch to put in exactly the right amount sometimes.

  “I’m still in here, guys. I think,” I told Ray and Claire as I added this stuff to that stuff drop by drop so that they would combine the way I saw in my head.

  “Do you need us to talk to you?” Ray asked.

  “No!” I barked back, then took a deep breath. “No. I’ll lose the idea. I’d rather lose me.”

  I ran a tube between one container and another, so the gas could bubble through. As it did and purple stuff formed blobs around the edges, Claire asked, “What is that smell?”

  It was bad. This stuff smelled terrible. Of course, it would. It was downright dangerous.

  Fum
es! I had a few seconds. I bent down and grabbed The Machine, and slapped it on top of the desk. “Filter the air!” I snapped at it. It spread its mouth wide and inhaled, and kept inhaling. Not perfect, but that would do. The chemical residue pellets might be useful later.

  I wouldn’t need them in this invention. I could see all the steps along the way.

  I did need… need… don’t lose it, just one word.

  “Glycerol!” I yelped.

  “What about it?” Claire asked from behind me.

  I shook, trying to hold myself back long enough to explain this. “I need it. I need it bad. I can’t make it fast enough. Go get it!”

  “There’s bottles full in the science lab, but I don’t know how to get it,” Ray said.

  “Find a way. Get it! Please!” I begged.

  I was losing it. I couldn’t lose it. Just look at the picture. I understood the whole process in my head. A hatch clanged behind me. I had good friends. I hoped they could find what I asked for, but all I could do was walk through the steps and hope the glycerol was there when I needed it.

  It was. That step was coming right up on me when Claire pressed a glass beaker into my hand. That sweet smell. This was what I needed!

  “Now, wood. That’s all I need now, is wood,” I told them as I stirred the glycerol in to be chewed up and reassembled into my elegant organic mix. Almost alive.

  “Will paper do?” Claire offered.

  “There’s a broken chair left in there,” Ray noted. I didn’t care where they got it. I cared that, just as my gooey mass sat warm and ready to be fed in its bowl, Ray laid a wooden pole in my hand, and I slid it in to be absorbed, inch by inch.

  “What is that?” Claire asked over my shoulder. As the lump ate the wood, it turned pink. Just like I wanted.

  “Bubblegum!” The glow of success lit me up. The process was so close to complete, it didn’t matter if I lost the image. Even now, I wasn’t sure how I got here. How did it work?

  It made bubblegum, that’s how it worked. What else mattered?

  “Is it safe?” Claire asked again.