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

by Richard Roberts

  “Yes. Yes, I remember. It’s safe. It’s bubblegum. The purple thing in the middle will burn your hand, but the pink is regular bubblegum.” More pink frosted over the top, enough I could twist off a knot and toss it into my mouth. I’d been able to see what it did to humans while I made it. It was perfectly harmless.

  It tasted like bubblegum. Pretty good, actually. Sharp flavor, very sweet, and the flavor lingered as I chewed. As Claire stared at me, Ray snapped off a bit and started chewing himself. Pursing his lips, he blew a bubble. Aww, man. I didn’t know how. His bubble was big. It stretched out farther and farther, growing to the size of his head before he sucked it back in.

  Pulling the chewed up chunk out of his mouth, he tossed it into The Machine’s. The Machine stopped ventilating and gobbled it down happily.

  Ray approved. “I don’t know if it’s the best bubblegum in the world, but it has to be in the running.”

  “How much is it going to make?” Claire asked, bending over the bowl to peer at the big, squishy pink lump.

  I grabbed at memories as they tried to pour away. “It’s like a catalyst. As long as it’s fed, it will keep making bubblegum, and it’s not picky about food.” It liked wood. I remembered that. Wood was the best, but I’d also known that the core would eat the dead skin off my hands.

  Claire rephrased her question. “I mean, how big is it going to get?”

  How big? I hadn’t fed it much, but I didn’t need to. “I think… maybe… room-sized?” I guessed. That couldn’t be right, but that was the picture I’d left in my head. A ball of bubblegum the size of this room. After that, it would run so short on conversion material it would slow down to a crawl.

  Until then…

  “Penny, it’s growing faster.” Claire’s voice went up a notch.

  “Yeah, it will do that.” Now I felt sheepish. That’s what she meant. The ball of bubblegum was the size of a soccer ball already.

  “Are we in danger?” Ray asked calmly. That was the important question.

  “No. There’ll be a big mess,” I answered.

  I really needed to contain that.

  I took a deep breath. “Guys, give me quiet for a few seconds.” They did.

  We could throw the stuff out, or fill a back room with it, but any way around it’d be a giant problem. Containment was what I needed. Not just a container, a container that slowed down the reaction, let me control it. Reactions only happened until they met too much resistance, right? Equilibrium.

  That was the spark. I’d fitted together the first pieces of the puzzle, and the rest of it laid itself out in the back of my head.

  I didn’t have time. I had to be fast. I pressed the bowl into Ray’s hands. “Hold this!” I ordered him. Then I turned and grabbed some insulating circuit board. I had to…

  I couldn’t balance it all. I chose to stop thinking.

  There were only two more soccer-ball-sized lumps of bubblegum ripped off and sitting in buckets as I locked the plastic shell into place. That hadn’t taken too long. I opened the hatch on one side, let enough bubblegum bulge through to rip off a chunk, then sealed it again.

  “We’re safe?” Ray asked, his voice quiet.

  “We were never in danger, but yeah. It’s controlled. The hatch on the other end even lets you feed it more wood. As long as the shell is shut, it can’t grow.” I wheezed. I was tired again. My arms had been sore, now they trembled. Whew!

  All of a sudden, I had to laugh. “Super bubblegum. That has to be the most ridiculous invention, ever.”

  “No.” Claire and Ray said it together. They were right. I’d seen the elephant attracting umbrella in the Museum Of Unsolved Science myself. I was a mad scientist piker.

  “If you don’t want it, do you think I could have it?” Ray asked me, his voice cautious and trying not to press.

  Way too much concern for a question like that. “Sure, but why do you want it?”

  “Part of it is the last invention Penelope Akk made before she gained control of her powers, and the other half is the first invention Penelope Akk made when she gained control of her powers,” he explained.

  Still way too much effort to sound calm-

  He was right. I’d made the containment unit absolutely deliberately.

  HA! And it was only Wednesday.

  Thursday.

  Oh, yeah. There had to be a next day after I’d mastered my powers. This time Dad was up early. He wasn’t making breakfast, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. As I walked past his office to take my shower and then walked back to dress, he sat in his office looking at three different computer screens, and on one of those screens he was designing a schematic.

  I wandered in to have a chat. You know, super brain to super brain. “What are you making?” I asked over his shoulder.

  “Aren’t you up a little late, Pumpkin?” he asked back.

  I pointed to the jar. When he didn’t look, I turned his head. “I’m about to go to school. You’ve been up all night again.”

  He had to stand up to get a dollar out of his wallet and drop it in the jar. That produced a groan. “Thanks, Pumpkin. I got wrapped up in a new idea. There’s no reason I can’t finish after a few hours sleep.”

  I tapped the jar. He put another bill in it.

  “What are you making?” I asked again.

  He pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Quantum machines. I think I’ve finally got a teleporter design that conventional science can build.”

  I looked at the screen. I saw math. I didn’t recognize half the symbols. The schematics did look molecular. “How does it feel when you use your power?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what it feels like to not use it. The science makes sense, like it makes sense that it takes two one pound weights to balance a two pound weight. If I study enough, someone’s figured out the answers already. I just have to make an object out of their math.” Now he sounded tired. His voice was getting soft.

  I looked at the screen. The math was math. I couldn’t attach it to anything. I looked at the second screen. Some paper entitled “Distances, Cohesion, and Quantum Tunneling.” I looked at the schematic on the final screen. It was wrong. It wasn’t what I saw in my head!

  I shook my head, hard. Which hurt. Could you get super power hangovers? “You get to bed, Dad. I’m running out of time to eat breakfast.”

  “Patience, honey. You’ll know what it feels like in a few years,” he mumbled as I walked out.

  I’d been hoping for a third Pumpkin.

  “What are you working on?” Claire asked me while our sugars decomposed in science class.

  “I’m trying to come up with a good presentation for The Machine for the science fair,” I explained.

  “You deserve an A. You deserve a college degree, or something,” Claire whispered.

  “I’m not going to get it. I’ve decided to go Ray’s route. I can still get an A in the class if I get a zero on the science fair, so I’m not going to let it get to me. It would just be nice to make it fit the scientific method rules so it can win. I don’t think I can do it, but I’m trying.” I shrugged, and it felt surprisingly casual.

  Ray inched a little closer along the table and hissed, “It’s wrong that you can’t get a good grade on this. If it doesn’t fit the rules, then the rules are wrong. A student got her super powers right here in school. The principal should have declared a holiday just to celebrate!”

  I shrugged again. “I don’t need the grades, but they keep me in school and I need the classes. I can make stuff way beyond anything I understand, but knowing theory seems to be the spark. That happened yesterday. I thought about reaction equilibriums, and my brain took off to make that shell.” That popped another thought into my head, and I segued. “Where did you get the glycerol? Mr. Zwelf doesn’t seem upset, like he’s got ingredients missing.”

  “We only took a few ounces from a gallon bottle. He doesn’t know it’s gone,” Claire mumbled. Yeah, we should keep our voices low a
bout this.

  Still, I had to glance over at the chemicals closet. “You really stole it? Did he leave the door open?”

  Claire unsubtly leaned up to peek inside our crucible. She wasn’t going to answer, so Ray did. “Guess whose mother taught her to pick locks?” he whispered with considerable glee.

  I gaped. “No way!” Then I felt a little dumb, because I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Claire still didn’t say anything. Quietly again, I asked, “Claire, is something wrong?” Had we upset her? She was usually proud of being The Minx’s daughter.

  “Nothing big. I’ll tell you later,” she murmured back. Ray scooted down to the other end of the table, and Claire took our crucible down with the tongs and set it on the scale. I took the hint. Mr. Zwelf was watching us.

  Later came. Specifically, Ray and I were waiting to pounce when Claire sat down with us at lunch.

  “Spill the beans, girl. What’s wrong?” I ordered.

  She did not spill the beans. She took them out of her lunchbox in a big covered bowl, and scooped us both out a portion. How can cafeteria chili be meat goo, but this stuff is red and packed with whole beans and has a smell as sharp as a knife?

  I refused to be distracted with good food. I kept giving Claire the eye until she confessed, “It’s not a big deal. It’s just annoying. I can’t be a cheerleader because I’m out of shape.”

  Ray must have physically bit his tongue not to say anything. I wanted to hug Claire and curse the world for her, but, “I have to admit, that almost sounds reasonable.”

  “Almost, except the only reason Sue and Helga are in shape is because they attend cheerleader practice.” Now she was letting it out, at least enough to scowl angrily at her chicken salad.

  “And it has nothing to do with Marcia wanting to be tyrant princess of her own little clique,” Ray observed, his tone sharp with sarcasm and disgust.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Just let it drop. It’s like you and the science fair. Cheerleading seemed like fun, but it’s not important. My best friend got her super power. That’s important. My second best friend’s winning streak with his junk yard abomination is going to end tonight. That’s important. This is a nuisance.”

  “It’s still not fair,” Ray said for both of us.

  “Topic over,” Claire told us firmly. “New topic: What should Penny build to surprise her parents?”

  That did make for a more pleasant lunch between bites of chili even more tangy than it was hot.

  Not that we got to discuss it much. We had to eat, and then there were afternoon classes. Afterward, Claire, Ray, and I ended up outside the door at the corner of the building at the same time, and then stepped in and descended the elevator together. Ray and I, of course, stared fixedly at the big brown bag Claire carried until the gate opened at the bottom.

  “Yes, it’s food,” Claire admitted as we stepped into my lab. “Mom said that if you’re going to destroy her ice chests, you’ll have to be happy with sandwiches and a fruit basket.”

  “Sandwich” hardly described the corned-beef-on-toast monster half the size of my head that I pulled out of the bag. I did my best to look sorry.

  “Before I build anything else, I need more equipment,” I told Ray and Claire as I unwrapped it. “I’ll need to shape glass and plastics, better chemistry containers and tubing, pressure chambers, a microcircuit presser, lifts and braces… and that’s just basic stuff so I can make sophisticated tools. I may have to dig out my savings and buy some of it. The super noggin doesn’t seem to like building anything simple.”

  “How does that work, Penny? Inside, I mean?” Ray asked as he rooted through the fruit basket. He didn’t like any fruit that I knew of, but I couldn’t identify half of these. One was covered in big thorny spikes, for pity’s sake.

  “I haven’t done it enough to be sure, but so far I focus on some scientific concept and I get an image… it’s not a picture exactly, just an understanding of how to do something with it.”

  “So, if you started thinking about how to make Claire athletic enough to join the cheerleaders, the answer would pop into your head?” Ray inquired, in the absolute worst attempt to sound casual I’d ever heard.

  Claire was as shocked as I was and squeaked, “Ray!”

  My own voice spiked. “That would be cheating, Ray!”

  “Cheating who? How? She’ll attend practice. She’s not doing this to win a competition. Does it matter how she gets in shape, if she really is in shape by tomorrow morning?” He didn’t sound the slightest bit guilty, and he stared at me really hard, like I was the one who had to be convinced to do the right thing!

  “Yes, it does. It’s like taking steroids!”

  That ought to have ended it, but he was ready for that argument. “No, steroids are banned because they’re unhealthy. If vitamins were that effective, no one would care. I know you wouldn’t give her something that would poison her like that.”

  No, I wouldn’t. Anyway, it wouldn’t be steroids. They were so inefficient. Everything came down to the quality of her muscle fibers and the nerve…

  “I can see it. It would be so easy. Why hasn’t anyone done this already?” The wonder in my own voice recovered my focus. I gave my head a shake.

  Claire’s hand settled on my shoulder. “I agree with Ray. It’s not wrong; it just sounds wrong.”

  “What?” I asked, looking up at her. I could barely see her. Chemicals drifted in my head.

  Had I ever seen Claire look shy, before? “Can you really do it? Just get me into shape so they won’t have an excuse to turn me down? Nothing more?”

  “Easy, Claire. Easy! There’s only one big chemical, and it wants to be made. Everything I need is in… is in that fruit basket!” I clenched my fists to stop myself from grabbing The Machine.

  She leaned in, resting her forehead against mine, our glasses clinking together. Very softly, she said, “Then let me worry if it’s right or wrong. Do this for me. Please?”

  I stirred the metal bowl very gently. I shouldn’t have used metal, but the contaminants wouldn’t make a difference.

  Oops. I’d blacked out again.

  “How much time did I lose?” I asked cautiously. I didn’t feel exhausted, so that was a good sign.

  “Not much. Less than an hour. It only took that long because you said the chemicals had to mix slowly,” Claire answered. I looked back in time to see the hungry expression on her face. “Is that it?”

  “Yeah. It’s stronger than you wanted, but that’s the only way it works. It’s funny, because, you know, supervillains try to make this stuff all the time, but they keep trying to make soldiers. They design it to make people more aggressive, better fighters, and that always goes wrong. If they just tried to give you better muscle tone and stuff, it works. So I’m calling it the Super Cheerleader Serum. Do I sound drunk?” I had to tack on the last, because I sounded drunk to me. Drunk on pride, maybe. Like creating life, this was another milestone every super-powered scientist went through, but mine would work because I hadn’t overreached.

  Claire reached out and took the bowl gingerly in both hands. “So I just drink this?”

  The image in my brain objected. “No! This is way too much. Here.” That plastic bottle cap would do. I poured just enough in, and set the bowl down on the table. “That much. About a milliliter.” I knew because…

  The picture in my head was gone. I let out my breath heavily and leaned against the bench. “It’s up to you if you want to drink it.”

  Claire grabbed me suddenly, yanking me up onto my feet and giving me a tight hug. “You are the best friend I could have, do you know that?” she whispered into my ear.

  “Say that after you’ve tried it,” I warned her. Now I was tired. Not in a muscle ache way, just drained.

  She let go of me, picked up the bottle cap, and drank it. That fast, with no ceremony.

  I stared at her. So did Ray.

  “I can feel it. It tingles! No, it stopped. Um,” Claire reported, sta
ring at nothing. She stepped away from the table, took another long step, stretched out her arms, and did a lazy cartwheel. She let out a loud giggle, turned, and took two much faster steps, then jumped up and did a front flip in mid-air, landing heavily on her sneakers. She wobbled, but didn’t fall.

  “It—” I started to say.

  I didn’t get the chance. Claire sprinted across the room and yanked me up off the floor, arms squeezing me tight as she spun me around. Ow. She was stronger, all right!

  “You are the best friend I could ever have, Penny! I wonder what more of the serum would have done?” she crowed, while I got dizzy from the spinning.

  Ray picked up the cue. “Only one way to find out.”

  Claire put me down, hopefully to tell him that she wasn’t going to take more. Instead, we watched Ray lift the bowl and drink the whole thing in three swallows.

  Holy carp.

  “Ray, that’s dangerous!” I squeaked.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” he snorted, setting the bowl down. Then he grabbed his shoulders, and his voice turned hoarse. “Did you say it tingled? Because my muscles are burning!”

  “Ray!” I bolted a step toward him, only to be met with raised hands.

  “I’m kidding! I’m kidding! It only works on Claire. You talk to yourself while you work,” he assured me with a huge, sly grin.

  I punched him in the shoulder. Hard. Of course, I personally have the muscle tone of a plate of spaghetti noodles, and I winced more than he did. “You idiot. It wasn’t funny this time!”

  His grin didn’t falter. “Claire, who’s your best friend?” he asked over my shoulder.

  “Penny is!” Claire let out a squeal, and I got yanked off the ground and hugged from behind again. Then she let me go and started cartwheeling around the room in circles.

  The Super Cheerleader Serum was a success. Could I make some for myself?

  Apparently not. Nothing popped into my head. Maybe the super brain didn’t like repeating itself.

  Friday.

  It had been quite a week. I ate breakfast in silence and lurked in the seat of Mom’s car. I was looking forward to a quiet day, and then the weekend. Maybe I’d talk to Ray and Claire about skipping out on rebuilding the lair this afternoon. We could go shopping instead, or get in a few games of Teddy Bears And Machine Guns, or both. There had to be one day this week without a major life event.