Rogue

by Lyn Miller-Lachmann

  “Do it in your pants, then.” The kid laughs. I want to tell him how mean he’s acting, but I know not to mess with Chain Saw Guy either.

  The kid sets the chain saw on the ground, unsnaps the top of one of Chad’s saddlebags, and peers inside.

  “Stay out of there!” Chad screams. He lets go of his bike and shrinks back into the woods.

  “Hmmm. Soda bottles,” the kid says. He sticks his hand inside. “Hot soda bottles.” He pulls out a clear two-liter bottle with the label ripped off and a churning white liquid inside, like the sizzling blood in my ears or the inside of an upset stomach.

  Chad calls out, “Put that back!”

  The kid carefully returns the bottle to the saddlebag and leans the bike against a tree. He walks toward me, leaves squishing under his sneakers. My mouth goes dry, and my insides churn like the contents of the bottle.

  “Get away,” he says. I back toward Chad in the woods. The kid draws from my saddlebag a green two-liter Mountain Dew bottle with the label still attached. “You the shake ’n’ bake twins or what?”

  Shake ’n’ bake? What is that? My face turns hot, and my knees go weak. Could this be like smurfing? Did Chad lie when he said he wouldn’t use me, when he promised to tutor me and be my friend?

  “We … We’re … l-leaving,” Chad says. “Give us our bikes back, and you’ll never see us again.”

  The kid puts the Mountain Dew bottle back in my saddlebag, steps slowly toward us as if he’s thinking about what he’s going to do, and grabs Chad’s shoulder.

  “Want to know how I know?” the kid asks.

  Chad shakes his head. His hair flies into his face. His face is so pale even his lips have gone white.

  I have no idea what shake ’n’ bake means, except that Chad used me again to do something illegal and dangerous. But I have to save him, like Rogue swore to save Gambit. And by saving him, I’ll escape too. “Let him go!” My voice squeaks, un-Rogue-like. I lower my gaze to the crumbly dark brown leaves at my feet.

  “Leave the bikes here for now.” The kid pushes Chad forward. “You too.” He glares at me. Feet numb, I follow.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE KID LEADS US TO A NARROWER PATH OFF THE MAIN TRAIL that ends in a clearing. The pine needle floor gives way to a bed of ashes surrounded by the charred trunks of young trees and a canopy of dead, bare branches, all black against the cloudless sky. The kid stops about ten feet from the ash and holds out his tattooed arm, keeping us behind him.

  I suck in my breath. “Wow! A forest fire.” I’ve never seen one this close up. Sometimes when the band traveled, we’d pass sections of forest that had burned. But then, we were going sixty-five miles an hour. Now I’m standing right in the middle of one. I step toward the ash.

  “Get away from there,” the kid says. “It’s full of poison.”

  “What happened?” I ask. It doesn’t smell like poison. Or a fire. Instead of the rotting-leaves odor of the rest of the woods, it doesn’t smell like anything.

  “You don’t know?”

  “N-no.” It occurs to me that those bottles I didn’t even know I was carrying might also be full of poison.

  Sweat beads on Chad’s face and his throat moves up and down, like he’s about to throw up.

  The kid folds his arms across his chest. I stare at his LIVESTRONG tattoo. His muscles. His tattoo again. “Six months ago, some loser was riding through the neighborhood on his mountain bike with a bunch of chemicals in two-liter bottles. Like yours.”

  “Wasn’t me. I just moved here,” Chad says.

  “Didn’t say it was. It was an older dude. Cops chased him in here. He crashed, a bottle busted open, and … kaboom!” The kid spreads his arms wide.

  “Can t-these b-b-bottles b-b-blow up?” I ask.

  “Yea-uh. Loser ended up in the hospital. Then in jail.”

  “You idiot.” Chad glares at me. “Can you shut up? For once?”

  “Don’t talk to her like that.” The kid pokes his finger into Chad’s chest. Chad steps backward and almost trips on a root.

  “She’s retarded. She has nothing to do with this,” he says, hands out in front of him as if to protect his already-bruised face.

  I nod. “He told me he wanted to see the mountain bike trail. So I brought him here. He didn’t tell me he had this … this shake ’n’ bake, or whatever you call it, in the bags.”

  The kid approaches me, blocking my view of the ruined clearing. “What grade are you in?” he asks.

  Was in. “Eighth,” I answer.

  He turns and looks Chad up and down. “And you?”

  “Seventh.” Chad stands up straight and pushes his shoulders back, as if trying to make himself taller.

  “Okay, I get it,” the kid says. “No one would think twice about kids on bikes. Cops wouldn’t stop you.”

  “You’re n-not g-going t-to call them?” A bead of sweat rolls down the side of Chad’s face. And my knees are knocking together. It was bad enough when I got suspended from school. What will Dad say if I get arrested? Will I end up in reform school because I’ve already been in trouble?

  A scream rushes up my throat. “Don’t!”

  The kid takes a step back and holds out his hands. “Whoa. Calm down.”

  But panic has seized my voice. “I can’t go to juvie!”

  “Why would you go to juvie?” The kid nods at Chad. “This little turd put you up to it. And whoever he works for.”

  “Don’t call the cops, okay,” Chad says quickly. “We’ll leave.”

  “Wait a minute.” He squints at me. I notice my UVM lanyard, twisted around my index finger, cutting off the circulation. My finger is swollen and red.

  I shake my finger loose and rub it with my other hand.

  “That a UVM thing around your neck?” the kid asks.

  “Yeah,” I mumble, eyes fixed on the ridges the lanyard cut into my skin. I wish he’d let us go because, like Chad said, we’ll never come here again.

  “Lemme see.” The kid holds out his hand and adds, “I’m starting there this fall.”

  I take the lanyard from around my neck, key dangling from the end, and hand it to him. Now he knows I’m a latchkey kid wandering the town, getting into trouble …

  But then he says, “Hey, I know you. You’re Max’s sister.”

  CHAPTER 12

  NOW I’M REALLY IN TROUBLE. MY LUNGS DEFLATE; HOT AIR rushes past my lips. I can barely get out the words. “Don’t tell Max about this.”

  “Why would I?” the kid says. “Max would just love to hear that his little sister blew herself up doing something stupid.”

  “He … would?” My voice cracks. Of course. I’m the accident. The one who shouldn’t have been born.

  “No.” The kid cuts off a laugh. “Big brothers don’t like their younger sisters to blow up.”

  He gives me a funny expression. A smirk, which is supposed to mean he’s joking about big brothers and younger sisters. But he hasn’t told me whether or not he’s going to rat me out to Max. Maybe if I’m extra nice to him, he’ll let me go.

  “So which of his friends are you?” I ask after a long moment. I don’t recognize faces and have no memory for them, though I have a photographic memory of everything I read.

  “Antonio. Trail name’s Wheezer.” He pulls an inhaler from the pocket of his cargo shorts. “For this, not the band.”

  “I’m Kiara,” I say, my manners on automatic.

  “Yeah, I know. Sure didn’t expect I’d run into you like this.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat and dig my toe into the ground, defeated. Busted. I have nothing more to say. My gaze jumps to Antonio’s wavy hair that falls over his forehead, to his brown leather necklace with a tooth pendant at his throat, to his shirt, unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, and lower, where he’s tucked it into his jeans. His body is solid, pure muscle. The body of Wolverine. His gloved hands like Wolverine’s retractable claws.

  “How’d you get mixed up with”—Antonio jerks h
is thumb toward Chad—“that loser?”

  Chad hides his face behind his hands.

  “His family moved in across—”

  “Don’t tell him where I live, Kiara,” Chad interrupts.

  Antonio shoves his gloved hands into the pockets of his shorts. “Kid, what you and your people do is your business. Long as you don’t mess up my backyard. But she’s my amigo’s baby sister, and I gotta look out for her.”

  “He told me he was my friend,” I continue, trying to explain to Antonio how Chad and I ended up here together with four bottles’ worth of chemical reactions.

  Antonio touches his thumb to his own chest. The bare part, below the tooth pendant. “I’m your friend. He’s trouble.” He starts walking toward where we’ve left the bikes, staying close to me and far away from Chad. “You know, Max helped build this trail. It took about a dozen of us for the mountain bike trail and another dozen for the BMX track.”

  “I ride BMX,” Chad calls out.

  Antonio whirls around. “Did I ask you, dirtbag?”

  Chad shrinks back, head lowered.

  “It’d be cool if you could come here after school and work with us on the trail, Kiara. Keep up the family tradition,” Antonio says. “I won’t say anything to Max about the … the other thing, but I’ll tell him you’re helping out.”

  “Promise?” My muscles unclench as I see my way out. I’d never thought of my brothers’ friends becoming my friends. They were just a bunch of guys who would hang out in our living room talking and laughing, and crowding our backyard with their bikes.

  “I promise,” Antonio says.

  I survey the path we take back to our bikes. This part is wide, but splitting off from it are narrow tracks carved out of the side of the hill. I can see why Max liked riding here and why Antonio got so mad at that guy who caused the explosion.

  When we get to the tree where I left my bike, Antonio lifts the two bottles from my saddlebags. He holds one in each hand by its neck and moves in slow motion toward Chad’s bike. There, he rearranges the bottles to fit upright rather than lying on their sides. He rolls my bike away from the tree and holds it out for me.

  “You need to stay at least a hundred feet behind him.” Antonio pats the seat. “In case he falls or runs into something and this stuff blows up.”

  “It only blows up if you open the cap,” Chad mumbles.

  “Yeah, right. Now get out of here and don’t come back.” Antonio picks up the chain saw and waves it in Chad’s direction. “And keep away from Kiara. She doesn’t need to be involved in your garbage.”

  I give Chad a head start and stay a hundred feet from him, as Antonio told me to do. Even though this part of the trail is a gentle uphill wide enough for two bikes, I worry with every little bump that Chad will wipe out and blow us both up. My sweaty palms make it hard to grip the handlebars. My mind returns to the bottles Antonio pulled from Chad’s saddlebag and mine. Chad had promised to leave me out of his family’s business, and he broke his promise. Like Gambit in the X-Men movie, he turned evil. He couldn’t get away from his family’s criminal activities even though he promised Rogue he would be her friend and join the X-Men. That’s why I’ve always liked the comic books better than the movie. In the comics, Gambit was Rogue’s friend and he was good.

  I don’t think Antonio will tell anyone about the bottles. And I believe him when he said he’s my friend and Chad’s trouble. I’m done with Chad, I tell myself. It’s the first time I’ve ever dumped a New Kid. Antonio will be proud of me for doing it. But I’ll have to figure out how to make Max’s old bike get me all the way to College Park. I’ll have to scrape off the rust so the bike looks nice, straighten out the brakes so they don’t rub against the tires, and tighten the derailleurs so the gears shift like they’re supposed to.

  Antonio will be a better friend than Chad. He’s way older, like Wolverine. He’s the kind of friend who’ll protect me when other kids pick on me or take advantage of me. He won’t make me do things that are wrong and dangerous.

  Chad’s bike wobbles on the uphill part of the trail. Right before the spot where the trail meets the road, he stops.

  I don’t want to stop for him. I don’t want to ride anywhere near him. Cruising past him, I call out, “Meet me at the park for your bike.”

  He doesn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t hear me. I circle back to where he has stopped to rest.

  “At the park. I’ll give you back your bike.”

  Chad’s head was lowered, but now he looks up at me. And then he screams, drowning out the birds in the trees, the distant whine of a leaf blower, the crunch of my bike tires.

  He tugs at his hair. Strands cling to his fingers and fly loose into the air. I’ve never seen a boy pull out his hair before.

  I spit out the words. “Why are you flipping out? You’re the one that lied to me.”

  “Think I want to do this?” He gulps. “Our house stinks. Brandon’s not getting better, and all they care about is their batches.”

  “But you said you wouldn’t use me.”

  Chad covers his face with his hands. His entire body stiffens when he touches the bruise that I made worse yesterday. “Dad made me ride with you today. So I could carry more.”

  My stomach twists. I remember what he said yesterday right before I beat him up—about his parents and the people they work with, what they’ll do if we try to stop them. Don’t you dare! We’ll kill you and your dad. They might hurt Antonio too.

  Once again, I’m trapped. In a dungeon with no special powers to help me escape. Not knowing if beside me is evil Gambit or good Gambit.

  “You’re carrying four now just fine.” He really isn’t. He’s wobbly and out of breath, but he shouldn’t have lied to me and broken his promise.

  “Yeah, I thought about leaving you behind and not telling him. But I wanted to ride the trail you told me about on Sunday. And see the BMX track ’cause I do freestyle.”

  “Freestyle?”

  “BMX tricks. There was a big skate park where we used to live.”

  I point to his saddlebags. “You weren’t going to do BMX tricks carrying this.”

  “Not today. I have another bike for BMX.”

  “So you brought me when you didn’t have to so you could see bike trails?”

  “Not exactly. You asked me to be your friend. So I was your friend. We were supposed to do fun things together.”

  “That wasn’t fun. It was scary.” Now I have to do what Antonio told me to do. I scrape the toe of my sneaker along the ground. “I can’t ride with you anymore. I guess that means we can’t be friends.”

  I turn the front wheel in the direction of the road, to leave Beresford Estates and Chad with his four bottles of chemicals.

  “Kiara, don’t go! Listen to me.”

  I try to push Chad’s childlike voice from my mind. My tires bump onto the road.

  “Please!” Chad’s shout reaches me.

  Maybe he really does want to be my friend. Nobody has ever begged to be friends with me. I let him catch up, even though I’m supposed to ride a hundred feet from him.

  “You know what it’s like,” he says, voice small and choked. “Watching other people have fun and you can’t.”

  “Because you’re too weird,” I add.

  “Or your family makes you do things.”

  “Gambit’s family.”

  This time, Chad doesn’t warn me not to talk about the X-Men. Because he really is Gambit, and he needs me to help him escape.

  If I agree to be Chad’s friend and ride with him, he’ll have to carry all four bottles by himself and my saddlebags will be empty. That’s not the way friends are supposed to do things.

  But if Antonio’s really my friend, maybe he can help both of us, like Wolverine swooping in to rescue Gambit and Rogue from the families of criminals and the evil mutants.

  CHAPTER 13

  EXPECTING DAD TO BE IN THE KITCHEN OR IN HIS LITTLE recording studio, I unlock the front door and tiptoe up
stairs to my room. On the way, I listen for his music and sniff for the aroma of dinner. Nothing. I go into my room and bounce a few times on the bed before turning on the computer, making enough of a mess that he’ll think I was in my room all along.

  My stomach rumbles. All the bike riding and scary stuff have made me hungry. After finishing a page of social studies homework and watching the sunset from my window, I go downstairs.

  The kitchen counter is bare. Dad leans against the back door, talking on his cell phone. I strain to hear what he says and if he’s talking to Mami. It’s Tuesday night, her usual night to call, but she already called on Sunday night this week. She didn’t say she was coming home.

  “If I can get off work, I’ll come to New York … I’d like to get something started again.” Definitely not Mami. He turns his back. I expect him to say something about me. “Money’s tight. I have to get paid … Twenty bucks playing in the subway isn’t going to cut it.”

  Nothing about me. He doesn’t even notice me. And he didn’t mention me, only that he’s trying to get off work to go to New York. What does he plan to do with me? Take me to New York to pass around a bucket on the subway while he plays?

  Dad snaps his cell phone shut. I wait for him to turn around, but he stands frozen by the door, staring through the dark windowpane into the backyard. I know he can’t see anything with the kitchen light on except his own reflection. That’s what I see from the other end of the room—his reflection and above his shoulder, a tiny me.

  “Where’s dinner?” I ask, breaking the silence.

  He jumps. “Oh, hi there.” Not exactly the where were you? I expected.

  “I’m hungry.”

  He opens the refrigerator to reveal a bag of wilted lettuce, a carton of milk, and mostly empty shelves.

  “That’s it?” Don’t push it, I tell myself. You were the one who disappeared all afternoon. Doing bad stuff too. But this time I can’t stop myself. My blood thumps in my ears. “Are we so poor we can’t afford groceries? Or you just don’t care?”

  His eyes slice through me. I look away. “Maybe we should order a pizza,” he says.