The Phobia of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  I swallow down my food. “It’s about our assignment for Advanced Heroism.”

  “Oh.”

  “And you’re not going to like it.”

  “I haven’t liked anything about this assignment so far, so, yeah, probably not.”

  “We’re working with Kat and Tristan.” I hold my breath after saying that, waiting for his reaction.

  He stares at me. He picks up the last bite of his sandwich, then sets it down again. He presses his hands against the table.

  “Perkins—”

  “You didn’t even ask me.”

  Because if I asked, he might have said no. Or, like, thought he had a choice in this. “Kat figured out the same info we did, and she has the same plan. She and Tristan are going to be staking out the exact same robbery at the exact same time—”

  “We can’t work with them, X.”

  “If we don’t work with them, we’re competing against them. And…” And given our track record lately, I’m not so sure we’d come out on top. “I can’t compete against Kat.”

  “She goes to Vilmore. You go to Heroesworth. You kind of already do.”

  “Not directly. Not like we would be with this.” I look over at him. “Sarah will get over it.”

  He glares at me. “This isn’t about Sarah.”

  I tilt my head.

  “Okay. Maybe it’s kind of about Sarah. But it’s also about them going to Vilmore and about how their assignment involves stealing a painting.”

  “A painting someone else already stole.”

  “That doesn’t make it better.”

  I shrug.

  “X.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not really okay with that, are you?”

  “I…” I pick part of the crust off of my sandwich, crumb by crumb. “I’m not not okay with it.”

  “We don’t even know who they’re stealing it for.”

  “We don’t need to know.” It’s probably better if we don’t. “And if they steal that painting back before we get a chance to prove who took it the first time—because, Perkins, we are not turning in Kat for this—”

  He holds up his hands. “Of course not. I didn’t say—”

  “—then we’ll be screwed. Plus, I mean… You know what happened at the train station.”

  “We wouldn’t win if we had to compete against them, you mean.” He sighs. “I still don’t like it.”

  “It’s the only way we’re getting this done.”

  “We told Sarah we weren’t working with them.”

  “We weren’t. And look at it this way—it’ll be way less dangerous than working on our own.”

  “You mean because there’ll be four of us?”

  “That and because if anything dangerous happens, we can just push Tristan in front of it.”

  Riley smirks at that, though then his face falls. “If we get caught—”

  “We won’t.”

  “But if the school found out we were working with villains, from Vilmore, there’s no way we wouldn’t fail the assignment. And I’d lose my scholarship, and you… well, you wouldn’t have to worry about passing the flying test anymore.”

  “If we get caught, which we won’t.”

  “I don’t know. Helping them steal a painting…”

  “We’re not helping them steal anything. We’re just finding it. Stealing it is their problem. And at least this way we have a chance of pulling this off. If we don’t work with them, we might as well drop out now.”

  “And what about Sarah?”

  “We’ll simply explain to her that working with Kat is better than flunking out of school. And that it’s totally my fault because I really, really miss Kat and I dragged you into it. And, I mean, that’s not even a lie, so… so if she’s mad at someone, it should be me.”

  “She’ll be mad at both of us.” He glances over at me. “You really miss Kat that much? I mean, is that was this is about?”

  “It’s about us not flunking out of school.”

  “You could tell me. If it was.”

  “It’s not about Kat.”

  “But—”

  “Geez, Perkins, how many times do I have to say it? It’s about actually finishing our assignment. And figuring out if we still love fieldwork. And, like, not to put us down or anything, but right now, at this particular juncture in our academic careers, we could really use the help.”

  “And?”

  “And yes, fine, I really do miss Kat that much. But that’s not the reason we’re doing this.”

  He studies my face for a second. “Okay.”

  “What, because I miss my girlfriend? That’s a really stupid reason.”

  “Because you’re right, this is kind of our only option. And Kat seemed pretty upset at Prom about the whole long-distance thing.”

  “We’re fine. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do because of… because of whatever you think is going on.”

  “I’m not. Like I said, you’re right, and I don’t see any other way we’re going to get through this assignment.”

  Chapter 24

  “HEY, ZACH,” ANOTHER BIRTHDAY guest says when Zach goes to answer the door. “I— Oh, my God. Is that—”

  “Yep,” Zach says, sounding really proud of the fact that yes, I am at his birthday party. Something I guess none of his friends believed would happen, considering how almost this exact conversation has played out every time someone new shows up.

  “Oh, my God, oh, my God!” the person at the door says. “I can’t believe Son of Flash is here!”

  Um, what? I glance up from my phone to glare at him.

  The friend has thick glasses that make his eyes look extra big, and he gasps when we make eye contact.

  I quickly look back down at my phone.

  “Sorry, man,” Zach’s friend says. “I know what you said, but I didn’t really think…”

  “It’s okay,” Zach tells him. “Nobody else did, either.”

  They go join the rest of the guests, who are gathered around the TV, trying to decide what video game to play first. Well, the rest of the guests except for me, Riley, and Sarah, since we’re standing off by ourselves, against the far wall by the kitchen.

  “I know you’re mad,” Riley tells Sarah, trying to keep his voice down.

  “I’m not mad,” Sarah says, though her teeth are clenched and she sounds pretty angry. Either because she really is mad at us, or because she’s tired of him asking about it. My money’s on both.

  “Upset, then. Because—”

  “Renegade,” Sarah snaps, turning to me.

  “Uh, secret identity anyone? Don’t use our code names where just anyone could hear.”

  “They think your superhero name is Son of Flash—they’ve all said it, like, a million times. They’re not going to be listening for another one.”

  Erg. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Anyway, tell him I’m not mad.”

  “Um.”

  “I’m not. I know what Kat said is true, about me not having a right to complain about you guys working with her. That means I can’t be mad. So I’m not.”

  “Sarah,” Riley says, “you can’t just decide that.”

  “Yeah,” I tell her, “and I’m sure ‘not mad’ is why you exploded that bag of chips earlier.”

  She glares at me. “Maybe I tore the bag with more enthusiasm than I should have, but it wasn’t on purpose.”

  “Chips. Everywhere.” I wriggle my fingers, acting out how they all fell to the floor. “And in my experience, telling people it wasn’t on purpose when you explode something doesn’t make it any better.”

  “And,” Riley says, “if you were mad, we’d totally understand.”

  “But you’d still work with Kat,” Sarah says. It’s not exactly a statement, but not really a question, either.

  He sighs. “See, that’s not something someone who wasn’t mad would say.”

  “Except that it is, because I’m not mad, therefor
e anything I say is something someone who’s not mad would say!”

  I pretend like I have a really important text so I don’t have to be part of this conversation anymore. I really do have a text, only it’s from Amelia, and it’s not at all important. It says, I know you’re at Zach’s party. Who else is there?

  I type back, Lots of hot girls. In bikinis.

  She writes back instantly. HA HA. That’s SO not funny. Then, two seconds later, Megan’s not there, is she? Or Krista?

  I scan the room. It’s a mistake, because several of Zach’s guests notice and rush over, like I invited them or something. I try to pretend I don’t notice them, but they’re standing right there, staring at me. And Riley and Sarah have moved to the kitchen and are arguing in hushed tones, so I can’t use them as an escape.

  One of the guys staring at me—because, despite Amelia’s fears, there are no girls at this party; well, except for Sarah, I mean—is the one with the glasses who just got here, and the other has a T-shirt with stylized artwork of… of someone who looks a lot like me blowing up the roof of a school gym with their lightning power. Across the bottom, it says, Be Truthful, whatever that means, other than that I should probably be getting some kind of royalties.

  “I can’t believe you’re really friends with Zach!” T-shirt Guy says, with this total look of awe on his face.

  “He said you were,” Glasses Kid says, “but we thought he was just exaggerating, because, like, you know. You’re you.”

  “Yep, I’m me. I—”

  “You’re on my shirt!” the other one blurts out, like he just remembered he was wearing it. “Oh, my God, I’ve watched that video of you so many times.”

  I wince at that, though I try not to show it. “Great.”

  “Not that there’s just one, ‘cause there’s, like, so many versions. But I’ve seen all of them, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Matthew,” the one in the glasses says. “Seriously. You sound so dumb right now.” He looks almost embarrassed for his friend, but then he turns to me and says, “Can we take a picture?”

  I glance over at the kitchen. Riley and Sarah are still talking—though maybe not quite arguing now, it’s hard to tell—and Sarah’s eating one of the cupcakes I was told were off limits until after dinner. In the living room, Zach’s playing video games with his friends. He looks happy—really happy—and not like his heart was recently smashed to pieces.

  “Yeah, sure,” I tell them. “Usually it’s ten bucks, but since you’re Zach’s friends, I’ll settle for royalty rights on any related merchandise.”

  They laugh—a little too hard—and take a selfie with me. Actually, three selfies, since everyone blinked in the first one and Matthew’s T-shirt wasn’t visible enough in the second one. Then they run back over to the group to show everybody.

  My phone chimes.

  Oh, my God, Amelia says. I KNOW Megan’s there! She’s there, isn’t she? Is she wearing her purple T-shirt that says I heart boys across the chest? Because she’s SO OBVIOUS. Nobody even thinks she’s cute when she does that.

  I write back, She’s not here.

  How do you know? You don’t even know Zach’s friends.

  Because there are, like, no girls here?

  There’s a pause, then, There’s not? Then why didn’t you text me back?!

  Because it doesn’t matter who’s at his party—you broke up with him.

  Silence.

  I probably shouldn’t have said that, even though it’s kind of true. I almost text her that I didn’t mean it, but then she says, I hate you, and I shove my phone in my pocket instead.

  “Do you really live with the Crimson Flash?” another overly eager party guest asks. I don’t know where he came from, but he’s standing really close. He seems to realize that and takes a step back, but only a tiny one, like he’s afraid he might miss his chance to gawk at me if he gets too far away. “I mean, is he really your dad?”

  “I’m not Son of Flash. But yeah, he’s my dad.”

  “Can I get a picture? My girlfriend just loves that video of you.”

  “Blowing up the school?”

  “No, the one you made after that. The What Heroism Means to Me video.”

  Great, my favorite. At least there isn’t a T-shirt of that one. That I know about, anyway.

  “She watches it literally every night. She even has a recording of that whole episode of The Crimson Flash and the Safety Kids, with your video interrupting part of it. Actually, could you record a message on my phone for her? She would flip out.”

  “Well—”

  “Just say something like, Hey, Bethany, this is Damien and you’re really amazing and I love you.”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “Whatever you want to say then.” He presses record on his phone and holds it out to me.

  I don’t really want to say anything, since I don’t know either of them or why anyone would want to watch that video of me more than once, if ever. “Hey, Bethany, um, be Truthful.”

  I know I’ve said the right thing because his eyes light up and he smiles at me and says, “Oh, my God, thank you so much!” Then he snaps a quick photo of me and runs off. A few seconds later, I hear him playing the recording for everyone.

  Heads turn toward me. Matthew, the one with the Be Truthful T-shirt, looks almost disappointed when he hears the recording, like maybe he should have asked for that instead.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” Sarah says from the kitchen.

  “Once, if you really meant it,” Riley tells her.

  Yep, friends still fighting. And Zach, a.k.a. the only other person I know at this party, seems pretty busy playing video games and having his friends hang on his every word, or at least every word that’s about me.

  “We hang out all the time,” he says. “I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that.”

  I’m, like, this close to texting Amelia and telling her Megan’s here in her boy-catching T-shirt and that she should probably get over here as fast as possible. I figure her showing up would either end the party, or it would mean I’d have someone to hang out with. Er, not to hang out with, obviously, because it’s Amelia. But she is good at getting in the way of people who want to take pictures of me and informing them that she happens to live with the Crimson Flash, too, and that I’m not as great as they think I am.

  But it’s Zach’s party. So I probably shouldn’t, like, purposely cause drama. Especially when I happen to know that no matter how happy he looks right now, he’s been completely miserable all week.

  The doorbell rings. Mrs. Perkins answers this time, since Zach’s in the middle of his turn at Aliens vs. Dinosaurs.

  “Hi, Mrs. Perkins,” the new guest says. “Sorry I’m late. I forgot Zach’s present and we had to go— Oh, my God. Is that him? Is that Damien Flash?!”

  That is so not my name. Like, seriously.

  Mrs. Perkins glances over at me with a slightly apologetic look, like she’s pretty sure this is awkward for me. Or maybe she’s just acknowledging how painful hearing Damien Flash was. “Yes, that’s Damien,” she says, only sort of correcting him.

  “Can I talk to him?!”

  “Well… I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you said hi.”

  What?

  The kid runs to the gifts table to drop off the present he brought, then rushes over to Zach to say hello as fast as humanly possible—because, you know, manners—and then hurries over to me. He’s actually so out of breath when he gets over here that he can hardly get the words out.

  “You… Damien… Oh… My… God.”

  “Yeah, I can’t believe I’m here, either.”

  “I’ve never seen a real supervillain before. Crap!” He claps his hands over his mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that. That was stupid. It’s true, though. And your girlfriend’s a supervillain.”

  “Yep. Great fact spewing.”

  He blinks. “Can you do this?” He holds up his hands and flexes them.r />
  I repeat the gesture.

  “No, with lightning, duh.”

  At the word lightning, all of Zach’s guests turn to stare at me, their eyes wide, like they’ve been waiting all night to hear that. There are only eight of them, but it feels more like a million.

  “No lightning in the house!” Mrs. Perkins says, a horrified look on her face, like she thinks I might actually do it.

  I mean, I have used my lightning in her house before, but only when she wasn’t around, so it’s not like she knows that. And I didn’t break anything, so it shouldn’t even count.

  “We can go outside,” the kid in front of me says.

  “I don’t really have lightning power,” I tell him. “That’s just something people add in on YouTube.”

  He doesn’t buy it. “Come on, just do it a little bit.”

  All eight of them are hurrying over here now, the video game on pause. They all have their phones out, and I think a couple of them are already recording.

  “I’m not doing it.”

  “Guys,” Zach says, “let it go. Mom said no lightning.”

  Mom said? What about Damien said?

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Perkins says in her sternest voice. “Absolutely no lightning.”

  “But he could fly, though,” Zach adds absently, like he just thought of the solution to a problem instead of the worst idea ever. Then it dawns on him what he’s said, and he looks pretty horrified. “I mean, he can’t! I was just saying that!”

  “Whoa, you can fly?” Matthew says.

  “No,” the kid who told me I’m a supervillain and have a supervillain girlfriend says. I guess he doesn’t have all the facts. “That’s a rumor. It’s been disproven on three different conspiracy sites I follow.”

  “Well, they’re wrong!” Zach tells him, defending me on autopilot. He immediately winces and says, “I mean, I guess they… they must know what they’re talking about.” He does not sound like he means it, though. He mouths Sorry at me.

  “If you can fly, then do it,” Facts Kid says. Only he doesn’t just say it like a normal person, he says it with his phone already on record and this eagerness in his voice that kind of creeps me out, like either way, whether I prove I can fly or not, he’s going to have the best video ever to post on all his conspiracy sites.