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

by Richard Roberts

  “I’ll be there as soon as I finish breakfast,” I assured Claire.

  First things first. I stuffed myself to bursting with pancakes.

  I took my bike over to Claire’s. Mom wanted to drive me, but I’d have felt like a heel. Claire’s house was closer than school after all. Even on the edge of Bel Air, I wasn’t going to leave my bicycle outside and not locked up, so I walked it up to the front door and pressed the doorbell. Then I tried not to yelp as Ray jumped off the roof, landed next to me like it was nothing, and opened the door for me without waiting for it to be answered.

  As I tried to force my heart back down my throat into my chest again I turned on him. “You are really getting a kick out of this super agility thing, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, voice sharp with glee.

  After last night I wanted a little less glee and a little more apology, but Claire met us at the door, grabbed both our hands and dragged us inside.

  “You know I could hear your footsteps on the roof, right?” she asked Ray.

  “I’ll know from now on,” he assured her.

  “Mom could give you some great cat burglar advice,” Claire suggested as she pulled us through the living room. I knew Miss Lutra must tidy up occasionally, because the clutter on the pretty red furniture in the pretty white room was entirely different from the clutter the last time I’d come over.

  I felt like no one else was taking this seriously. “Aren’t we in enough trouble as it is?”

  “Not as long as you don’t get caught,” Claire’s Mom commented as she stacked my bike against the clutter. Oh, of course, she knew.

  “Just let me show you something, Penny. Okay?” Claire begged. She gave me the puppy dog eyes and everything. I reluctantly kept my mouth shut long enough for her to drag me into her room and up to her computer.

  Flipping on the screen, she grabbed her mouse and clicked on a bookmark on her web browser. In half a second, a website called Villain Hunting popped up, the latest entry trumpeting the headline “THE INSCRUTABLE MACHINE.”

  Holy…

  I couldn’t complete the thought. I had to start over. The blurb was tiny. The supervillain team that destroyed the Northeast West Hollywood Middle gymnasium but left behind the alien device were rumored to be named The Inscrutable Machine. That was all they knew, but they could make a lot of guesses because a single still frame from the battle had leaked out to the public.

  In front of me the screen displayed a huge black and white image from the security cameras, blurry and out of focus but clearly showing me blasting Miss A off her feet, with Claire and Ray watching.

  There could not possibly be over a thousand comments on this picture. I had to be imagining that. Then Claire clicked another tab on her browser, and another, and another. Two more web sites with almost identical articles. The last was a forum instead, with thread after thread entitled “The Inscrutable Machine.”

  Ray gasped. “We. Are. Famous.”

  Claire’s take was more smugly practical. “There’s all kinds of speculation about what our supervillain names are. We’ll have to come up with something fast, or there’s no telling what the fans will name us.”

  “We’re not supervillains!” I yelled at them suddenly.

  Ray looked theatrically over at the computer screen, then back at me. “I’d say we are.”

  “I was hoping we could cover this up! How are we going to be superheroes now?” I wailed.

  “From personal experience, it’s never too late to switch sides,” Claire’s Mom called from the other side of the house. I’d been a bit loud, but shock and anger still boiled hot through my blood.

  “Of course, we’re going to be heroes after all, Penny.” Claire sounded so calm about this, although if she smiled any wider her head would fall in half. “Brand new villains find their conscience all the time, and everybody’s fascinated by the superhumans who you never know if they’ll rampage through a neighborhood or foil a bank robbery next. Lucyfar’s got to have three times the fan pages Mech does.”

  “That might have something to do with the outfit.” Ray leaned back against the wall, folded his arms and tucked his hat down enough to show off only his grin.

  That he pulled it off just infuriated me more. “Ray, you ought to be a little more sorry. You got us into this!”

  He lifted his head again and smirked. “Sorry? Sorry I made a fool out of an arrogant bully? Sorry I trashed a science fair rigged by that arrogant bully? I’m only sorry about one thing.” He took the hat off, holding it in both hands, and suddenly he did look sorry. In fact, his face pulled away from mine, and he obviously had to force himself to look in my eyes as he explained. “I sold your bubble gum invention to buy my suit. Leased it, technically. I’ll get it back eventually. I know it was ungrateful, but there’s a fortune in mad scientist collectibles and I got a little bit crazy. And about that, I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.”

  I wanted to be even more mad, but his confession took too big a weight off my shoulders. “Yes, you got crazy. I was worried you’d stolen the money to buy that stuff. I thought you wanted to be a supervillain.”

  “It was a lot of fun, and we can switch to being heroes whenever we want,” Ray half-answered. That speculative tone indicated he didn’t mind how things had gone at all.

  I did. “We’re switching to being heroes right now.”

  Claire waved her arms in mock grandeur. “The scientific mastermind is always the leader. We, her minions, can only obey.”

  I nearly snapped at her, but I caught that glance between her and Ray. Oh. They were teasing me. I really needed to lighten up. I’d just been so nervous!

  “We have to do something. Immediately,” I insisted. I sounded sullen, but that was better than mad, right?

  “Then it’s a good thing we’ve got all weekend free, and I had a long talk with my Mom already about this, right?” Claire nudged. She beamed at me. Tension I didn’t know I’d had eased out of my shoulders.

  “You’ve worked out a plan already?” I really wanted to believe they did.

  “I kinda got lucky. When I show you, you won’t believe how stupid some people are. First, you two have to see some of these comments threads. In one of them a guy actually guesses I’m The Minx’s daughter and then gets laughed off the forum because the pajamas are so unsexy.” A little more tension went out of me, and Claire slipped up and gave me a quick, tight hug. “See? We’re not in any trouble. We can start fixing our reputation tomorrow. Right now, come see how famous you are!”

  y sense of urgency might not have been universally shared. I had great friends. Everything turned on its head on Thursday, and, thanks to Claire, by Saturday I was poised to set it all right. It’s just that while I folded my arms and tapped my foot and tried to not draw attention from the street, Claire…

  “These are so much fun!” she squealed as she slid down the concrete drive on one foot. She held the other foot raised, perfectly balanced despite the clunky bear pajamas, then pirouetted and zoomed back in the other direction.

  “Somebody’s going to see us!” I hissed. In the sense that someone had already seen us. Quite a few people. The street our school is on isn’t busy by any stretch, but pedestrians still passed by. The last couple took photos of Claire skating around in her frictionless bear feet. With me standing next to her.

  I wouldn’t mind, but there was the whole “wanted supervillain” thing.

  “It’s fine!” Claire assured me. The Super Cheerleader Serum had done wonders for her. She looped around the driveway in quick circles, usually on one foot, leaning wildly but always balanced. As I watched her skate she explained. “I think I’ve found just the right level of juice to give my powers. They see a couple of kids in costumes, sure, but they’re not thinking about us. We’re too cute to be supervillains.”

  She had me. When I saw a middle school girl in hoodie bear pajamas skating around like she had butter on her feet, evil supervillain was not the first thought in my head
.

  Claire swooped and swooped in tighter and tighter circles. I watched her feet. I’d made the inserts hidden between her feet and the soles of her pajamas, and I still couldn’t tell her feet didn’t really touch the cracked pavement. She glided like an ice dancer, right up until she grabbed my shoulders with both hands.

  “Did you try them? They’re so fast, and so much fun at the same time, and I love them! Have you been keeping them as a surprise? When did you find time to make them?” She made no attempt to hide her bubbling glee.

  “Yesterday, after I left your place. I was too nervous to go home, and I thought building us some equipment for today would take my mind off of things.” I was fudging. I’d wanted to putter around in my lab until I exhausted myself, yes, but I didn’t have a plan. My power came up with this latest round of toys in a blackout. That thought felt creepy, but I’d have to get used to it. My parents got one thing right. My powers were here, but controlling them wasn’t even on the horizon.

  Fidget fidget fidget, fret fret fret. I couldn’t even enjoy watching Claire sliding around on her… what? Reverse friction pads? They pushed away instead of clinging?

  Claire let go of my shoulders and pushed off again, spinning in tight circles, hopping from one foot to the other. Her voice lilted, spiking with giddy enthusiasm. “No wonder the mad scientist is always the team leader. These were exactly what we needed! What do Ray’s do?”

  I fiddled with the pouches on my jumpsuit, and the half dozen fat bracelets they held. “Teleport, I think. I don’t actually know.”

  My heart only lost one beat as Ray landed on the ground in front of me. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t need them!” Ray assured us.

  “Is this jumping off roofs thing going to be a habit?” I asked sarcastically. Okay, I was kind of grinning a little.

  “Did you find our target?” Claire asked. Maybe I wasn’t the one with her mind on business.

  Not too far away, a girl shrieked. That brief yelp sounded strangled.

  Ray become mostly business. “That would be a ‘yes.’ Follow me. I’ll take the slowpoke.”

  I was the slowpoke. That became really clear as he swept me off my feet and into his arms, and it felt like I’d leaped fifteen feet into the air all at once. Then I heard his shoes hit the roof and he crouched over me to take the impact. Oh. We had jumped fifteen feet into the air.

  His feet pounded over the flat rooftop as he held me to his chest. Wait, he’d jumped from ground level onto the roof carrying my weight? How strong had I made him, anyway? That heart-taking-off sensation signaled another jump, and I got enough sense to peek down and see a fence pass by under us before we landed on the roof of… next on this street was a string of shops, right?

  I could feel his chest heaving next to me. Okay, running like this while carrying me must have been a strain, but he seemed completely steady about it. Even carrying my weight he tore up the distance. The scream hadn’t been far away. After the shops was…what? That boarded up auto depot? Ray jumped again, landed, jumped again, and seemingly light as a feather we landed in the parking lot behind the car sales place. The shop might be abandoned, but the parking lot sure wasn’t. Cars in disorderly lines, and, in the corner of the building, a bulging mass of gray muscle held a high school girl against the wall by her throat.

  Well, Claire had been right. One of our schoolmates wasn’t just a budding supervillain. He wasn’t just planning to go on a rampage to prove himself just like we had; he’d also been dumb enough to post that plan on the internet.

  The thing heard Ray land, and looked back at us over his shoulder. His eyes widened, which merely left them tiny, piggy, and black. “You brought her. You really are The Inscrutable Machine!” His transformation had given him a wheezy, squeaky voice I couldn’t hope to match up to one of my classmates. I might even be imagining how excited he sounded; it was that garbled.

  And boy, the transformation. I had to feel bad for him, inheriting a power like this. He had all of the ugly. All of it. He hadn’t left any ugly for anybody else. No hair, his head fusing into his shoulders in a mass of blubbery gray muscle, skin like armadillo or rhino hide, and the grossly distended face that brought attention to his sharp teeth—that was just the first glance. He couldn’t look more like a supervillain if he tried.

  Speaking of…

  I lifted my air conditioner cannon and pointed it at his hideous face. “That’s us. I’ll sign your head just as soon as you put down the girl. This is your first time, so I’ll give you a hint—hostage dramas give us more time to surround you.”

  That set off a wheezing gusher. “You would sign my head? Really? What about my shirt? You can’t write on this monster skin, I’ve tried. Meeting you means so much to me. My uncle and his friends are always telling me that I’m not ready, and a superhero would clean the clock of any kid my age, but I’m stronger than any of them. Everybody knows Miss A couldn’t touch you, and she—” He leaned toward us as he babbled, and the girl behind him got enough free room to let out another yelp and start squirming. Pressing her back against the wall and choking off her scream, he finished lamely, “Sorry.”

  “Listen, Lumpy—” I started.

  He cut me off. “Sharky.”

  My silence must have said it all. “I can come up with something better,” he mumbled.

  “There’s, like, six guys bigger than you already using it,” I pointed out. With any luck, my voice dripped contempt.

  That thick skin didn’t show expression well, but the way he lowered his head looked pretty embarrassed. “I know, I know. I just didn’t expect to need a good name ‘til I was eighteen, and then you happened!”

  “Yeah. About that,” I echoed, scrambling to get my thoughts back on track. Drama. I needed to scare him. My cannon didn’t need to be cocked like a shotgun, but I grabbed the levers for the settings and yanked them from one side to the other so they clacked loudly. “You’ve been dangerously misinformed. We’re not on your side. Put the girl down and surrender, and we’ll give you a chance to convince us not to give you to the police.”

  Was he shaking? I was a little girl in a tight, gray spacesuit with a china pipe on my arm! I couldn’t be that scary! Those were definitely big breaths he was taking. He couldn’t possibly be psyching himself up to fight me. Except that’s exactly what he was doing, and, by the time I forced myself to believe it, he rasped, “It’s okay. I get it. I knew it would happen when I came out here. I just got a little star struck, right? It’s your territory, and that means I’ve got to take it from you.”

  It was going to take a lengthy explanation of the difference between a superhero and a supervillain to make those shark brains understand which side I was on. Before I could even find the words to start, his body bulged. Muscles swelled like inflating balloons. He grew another six inches. That stony hide couldn’t cover him anymore, and big gaps ripped in it, then flapped slowly like gills. He’d actually found a way to get uglier. The wet, pink crud showing through those flaps was hard to look at. So much yuck.

  At least he dropped the high school girl. Sharky’s foot thudded as he took a clumsy step toward me. Compared to that, Ray slid in front of him as smoothly as a snake. Sharky swung a wide punch, and it couldn’t have been that slow. It just looked that slow when Ray ducked under it.

  I cleared my throat loudly, looked straight at the cowering teenager, and gave my head a jerk. Even through the visor she figured out that was for her and ran hunched over down the length of the wall toward the street.

  I’d also gotten Ray and Sharky’s attention, and I pointed my air conditioner cannon upward and announced, “I think I’m the one he wants to fight.”

  Sharky nodded clumsily. “Yeah. Yeah!” He lurched toward me. Ray stepped out of the way, and I shot Sharky dead on.

  He was tough. I liked the setting that blew Marcia off her feet, but it only pushed him back a half step. It might as well have been a stiff breeze.

  He couldn’t dodge. I turned the force way up, l
eft the focus wide, and, as he took a step to charge me again, blew his legs out from under him. He hit the asphalt with a wet, loud smack as gross as the holes in his skin. I slid the focus lever tighter, let the visor’s magnifier help compensate for my lousy aim, and, as he tried to lift his head, I shot him in the face with a cannonball of pleasantly chilled compressed air. That rolled him over onto his back. Had I hit him too hard? No. As long as he lived, no such thing.

  With that in mind I shot him again, rolling him back over onto his belly. He didn’t seem eager to get up this time, but I still stayed out of arm’s reach when I walked up toward him. “You’re so not ready for this, Sharky. Not now, not ever. Go home and think about it. Think about how you’d be going to enhanced-abilities jail right now for mugging if I was on a regular superhero patrol.”

  “I’m a superhero on patrol, and that sounds like a great idea. In fact, why don’t I send all three of you together?” Marcia’s snide voice announced.

  Not this! I looked back to see her drop lightly off the roof down by the street entrance, all dressed up in her Miss A costume. People jumping off roofs still looked weird to me. I’d have to get used to it.

  I tried really hard to keep hold of my temper. “I’m pretty sure I just stopped the mugging and beat up the mugger.”

  “And I’m pretty sure there’s a charge for gang war. That’s the DA’s job to figure out. Mine is to leave you gift-wrapped for his convenience.” She sounded so snippy..

  As an alternative to shooting her in the face, I played the shrew right back at her. “A job you’re doing so well. Outnumbered against opponents who’ve beaten you once already, you just gave up the element of surprise so you could get in some quality sarcasm time.”

  That only made her smirk more annoying, and she upped the gratingly snide tone another notch. “I’m sure your mirror is all quiet and appreciative when you give your villainous monologues. I’m so sorry to spoil your moment. Would now be a bad time to point out I’m also not outnumbered?”