The Phobia of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  Conspiracy sites that are apparently about me being able to fly or not and apparently have no credibility whatsoever.

  “Guys, come on,” Zach says.

  “Boys, that’s enough!” Mrs. Perkins tells them.

  But nobody moves. Actually, that’s not true, because they all move closer.

  Electricity runs up my spine. Sparks twitch across my arms. I feel like I can’t breathe, and I have to get out of here.

  “He can’t do it,” someone whispers. “I knew it.”

  Then somebody tries to move even closer, knocking into somebody else, who stumbles into me. Their hand touches my arm, and there’s a zap. They cry out and back off, and then everybody moves the hell out of my way like I have a disease or something.

  “I didn’t mean—” I hold up my hands, trying to show that it was a mistake, but everyone just gasps and backs away in horror, like I’m about to fry them all.

  I leave. Okay, I don’t actually leave as in leave the house, because it’s Zach’s birthday and because I’m too freaked out and because I spend so much time here, I’m pretty sure I belong at this house more than any of these people do. If anyone should have to leave, it should be them. So I retreat to Riley’s room instead.

  Except I didn’t expect it to be occupied.

  Riley and Sarah are standing there, making out, but they jump apart when I barge in.

  I guess I lost track of them after their argument in the kitchen.

  Which explains why neither of them had anything to say about a mob of birthday guests wanting me to use my lightning and/or fly. And they were pretty quiet when I accidentally zapped someone from said mob, though obviously now I see that’s because they weren’t there.

  Sarah adjusts her glasses. Riley’s face turns bright red. He looks super embarrassed about me walking in on them, even though, as far as I can tell, it was just kissing. Really intimate kissing that I wish I could erase from my brain, but nothing that will scar me for life or anything.

  Still, I feel really awkward. And like this is actually the last place I belong right now, probably because it is.

  So even though Riley says, “X, wait,” and even though I really don’t want to risk the mob again, I turn and get the hell out of there.

  Chapter 25

  ALL I WANT TO do is go up to my room and not have to see anybody, like, ever again. Except Kat, who I will of course invite to go live on a desert island with me. I think between my lightning power and her shapeshifting ability, we could survive pretty well. It would suck to not have internet, of course, but after what’s probably already been posted about me tonight, I think I could go without it for a while.

  But when I get home, Gordon’s talking to Ted in the dining room. Ted is at our freaking house.

  There’s a moment where pure rage boils up inside me, because while part of me thinks Gordon definitely would not talk to him about me after I freaked out the other day, part of me also kind of thinks he would. Because I wasn’t supposed to be home again tonight, so, like, what a perfect chance to go behind my back and invite Ted over so they can talk about me.

  But Gordon doesn’t seem alarmed that I’m here or anything. In fact, he smiles like he’s actually glad to see me and says, “Damien, you’re home early.”

  Ted looks over at me, too. He looks as disdainful of me as ever, but… not like he recently learned my greatest weakness or anything. More like he was promised I wouldn’t show up and is disappointed.

  So, maybe Gordon wasn’t talking to him about me.

  “Is everything okay?” Gordon asks. “I thought you were staying over.”

  “Change of plans, that’s all. Everything’s fine.” Or at least it will be, once they both stop staring at me, because there’s no way I’m going up the stairs in front of Ted.

  Gordon seems to take my lack of immediately leaving as an invitation to keep talking to me, mistakenly thinking I could possibly be interested in anything he and Ted are doing. “Ted and I were just discussing our glory days in the League.”

  Uh-oh. The League and Ted are pretty much my two least favorite subjects, and putting them together in the same sentence like that can’t be good.

  Ted kind of glares at Gordon, like he can’t believe he’s talking to me about this, either.

  “I’m actually really tired,” I say, trying to sound as uninterested as possible so maybe Gordon will take the hint and leave me alone.

  He doesn’t. In fact, he actually comes over instead, like he wasn’t even listening. “Neither of us have been happy about leaving—”

  “Dad, seriously, you don’t—”

  “—or about, well, about how things turned out in the end.”

  “How you felt like your whole life was a big fat lie, you mean?”

  Ted scowls at that. “Gordon, please. He couldn’t possibly understand.”

  I search Gordon’s face, wondering exactly what it is they’ve been talking about.

  “We were discussing what I told you,” Gordon says, “about upholding what I believed were the League’s ideals and about wanting to do something more, and… Tell him.” He nudges Ted with his elbow.

  Ted kind of gapes at him, looking appropriately horrified with the situation.

  Gordon ignores him and tells me himself. “Ted suggested we start our own superhero group. As soon as he said it, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it first. There were moments where I had glimpses of similar ideas, but they never fully formed into—”

  “Dad.”

  “What?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Ted rolls his eyes at my outburst, like this is proof I don’t get it.

  “Well, you see, neither of us have been very happy about having to leave the League. Of course, neither of us could stay after what happened—”

  “Really?” I raise my eyebrows, because I seriously doubt Ted quit the League because heroes were shooting at me and my friends.

  Gordon sounds a little annoyed. “Yes, of course.”

  I point at Ted. “He hates villains. He hates me.”

  Ted glares at me.

  “Damien,” Gordon scolds. “That’s not… Well, you shouldn’t…”

  “I left the League because it was corrupt,” Ted says, saving Gordon from trying to claim that me and Ted don’t hate each other. “And hating someone and wanting to see them tortured are two very different things.”

  “Great, well, as long as we cleared that up. And seriously, Dad, I get that you miss the League, but do you really have to team up with him?”

  “He’s my brother, and of course I—”

  “Oh, my God,” Amelia calls from the stairs as she comes tromping down. “What did you do?!”

  Crap. Crap crap crap.

  She comes to a stop halfway down the staircase when she sees that Ted’s here. “Oops,” she says, clutching her phone. “I didn’t realize we had company. I’ll just go back to my room now—”

  “Amelia,” Gordon says, “what happened?”

  “Nothing,” we both say at the same time.

  That only makes both of them more suspicious.

  Amelia sighs, making it sound all dramatic, and says, “It’s personal, okay? Damien, um, he talked to Zach about me when he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “Oh.” Gordon seems relieved. “Well, if that’s all—”

  “Gordon,” Ted says, showing him his phone, “I think you need to see this.”

  Amelia bites her lip and shoots me an apologetic look.

  I don’t watch the video or anything, but I hear it. The phone makes everything sound tinny and chaotic. Everyone wants me to fly, expressing various stages of disbelief, and then… then you can hear the crackle of electricity as someone gets zapped.

  I cringe inwardly. My heart pounds during the moment of stunned silence as everyone’s suddenly terrified of me, and then—

  Ted pauses the video and shoves his phone in my face. It’s frozen with me holding up my hands like I’m
about to blast everyone with lightning. “What did you think you were doing?” He doesn’t shout that, but says it quietly, with barely contained rage.

  My voice comes out hoarse. I want to tell him to get the hell out of my face and leave me alone. But instead I look over at Gordon and say, “It’s not what it looks like.”

  Gordon nods, and I know he believes me, but he looks kind of sad, too. Like maybe he feels sorry for me. Or maybe… maybe he wishes he didn’t have a half-villain kid who made him look bad all the time in front of his stupid relatives.

  Ted’s obviously made up his mind about me, though. He holds his phone up at Gordon. “I don’t know how you can just stand there after what you’ve witnessed. It’s high time you faced the facts about him.”

  “Ted, he just told you, it wasn’t what it looked like.”

  Ted scoffs. “And you believed that?”

  “It wasn’t,” Amelia says. “Theo posted that, and he’s way into conspiracy theories and stuff. He probably made it look way worse than it really was, because Damien wouldn’t hurt anybody. Especially not at Zach’s birthday party. And, like, you can see in the video they’re all ganging up on him.”

  “So, all these innocent hero children are ganging up on a dangerous villain who could murder them all in one move?”

  “Well, probably not one move,” I tell him. “I mean, I could, but realistically I think it would be at least two or three.”

  Ted’s eyes go wide and his face goes pale.

  Gordon puts a hand to his temple. “Damien.” Then, to Ted, but sounding kind of worn out, “He’s a good kid. I know it doesn’t look like it in that video, but I promise you—”

  “Honestly, Gordon, what would I have to show you about him for you to stop saying that? The evidence is everywhere. You have a dangerous villain living in your house.”

  “I’m not”—electricity crackles across my arms—“dangerous!”

  “I just watched a video of you electrocuting a boy at a birthday party.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Damien,” Gordon says, “I think you should go to your room.”

  “What? Seriously?!”

  “Everyone needs to calm down. So head up to your room and we’ll talk about this in a bit.”

  I gape at him. I jerk my chin toward the stairs, hoping he gets the hint, but he doesn’t. “Dad, I’m not doing that.” Not with Ted here, anyway.

  “Damien, you’re not in trouble, but, please, just—”

  “You let him talk back to you like that?” Ted asks, making it sound like that’s the most shocking thing he’s heard about me all night.

  “He’s not in trouble,” Gordon says. “If he doesn’t want to go to his room—”

  “You’re being a pushover. And I don’t know how you can stand there and say he’s not in trouble after what he did.”

  “He didn’t do anything,” Amelia says. “I just texted Zach, and everyone at the party’s fine.”

  “He lucked out, then. But that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.”

  Gordon squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Ted, I’m handling it. And, Damien, I mean it, go to your room before I change my mind and you really are in trouble.”

  “Dad, I told you, I’m not doing that.”

  He gives me this pleading look, like he just can’t understand why I’m being this way. Why I can’t just behave for once when someone’s actually watching. “Then I’ll… I’ll have no choice but to ground you.”

  “And, what, then you’ll send me to my room?!”

  “Don’t make this harder than it is. I just need to talk to Ted about this situation, and that would be a whole lot easier without you around, making things worse!”

  I swallow. “Well, if that’s all you wanted, you should have said so.” I move to leave. Not toward the stairs, of course, but toward the front door.

  “Damien, I didn’t mean—”

  “Are you just going to let him walk out like that?” Ted asks.

  “Ted. I said I’m handling it!”

  “Your dangerous and violent son who already electrocuted one person tonight is going off to do God knows what, and you’re just letting him? You’re not even going to ask where he’s going?”

  Gordon says something to that, but I don’t hear it because I’m already out the door.

  “The What Heroism Means to Me video?” Kat asks. “Seriously?”

  I nod. “He said she watches it every night. And apparently he’s okay with that.”

  We’re sitting on her bed in her dorm later, eating leftover pizza and not looking at our phones. Or at least I’m not. Kat keeps getting texts from people asking her if she’s seen the video, and she paused once to look up that T-shirt I told her about.

  She grins at me. “Do you think that girl watches it so much because you’re all sweet and vulnerable in it—”

  “Hey.”

  “—or because you’re practically naked?”

  “I’m practically naked in both videos, so… That first one. But, for the record, I’m not, nor have I ever, ever been ‘sweet and vulnerable.’” I make a face.

  Kat smirks. “Yeah, right.”

  “Shut up.” I grab her pillow like I’m going to throw it at her.

  She holds up her pizza and says, “Do not get sauce on anything!”

  “Fine. But as soon as you finish eating that, you’d better watch out.”

  She takes a tiny bite of crust and chews slowly, making eye contact with me the whole time and trying to keep a straight face. Neither of us can, though, and we both burst out laughing. Then Kat accidentally sprays bits of chewed-up crust everywhere, which only makes us laugh harder.

  When the laughter dies down, she pokes my leg. “Then what happened?”

  “He wanted me to record a message for her—”

  “He what?”

  “—and to tell her she’s amazing and that I love her.”

  “Oh, my God.” Kat snorts with laughter and has to take a drink of her pop so she doesn’t choke on her food, but she almost gets it up her nose instead. “He didn’t.”

  “Yep. Like it wasn’t even weird.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Not that. I said, ‘Be Truthful.’”

  “Who knew Zach had such crazy friends?”

  “It gets worse. One of them belongs to three separate conspiracy sites about me. Apparently they’ve proven I can’t fly or something.”

  “Amateurs, obviously.”

  “And then he started demanding I show everyone my lightning—”

  “I thought they wanted to see you fly?”

  “Well, yeah, after Zach let it slip that I have two powers.”

  “Supposedly,” Kat says. “I hear it’s been disproven.”

  I grin at her. “That’s when things really got out of hand.”

  “And then what? That’s when you left? Poor Zach.”

  “Poor Zach? Poor Zach? What about me?”

  “I mean, he’s going to feel so bad about this. But I’m sure he understands why you left.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t leave. I hadn’t humiliated myself enough yet, so I walked in on Riley and Sarah.”

  “What?!”

  “Making out. But, like, alone in his room, so… who knows?”

  “With his little brother’s birthday party going on? Scandalous!”

  “I know, right? I mean, it was crazy awkward. I don’t know how I’m going to face either of them ever again. And then I left.”

  “Wow.”

  “It gets worse.”

  “No, it does not.”

  “Ted was at our house when I got there. He had this brilliant idea that he and Gordon should start their own superhero group.”

  “Gross.”

  “I know. And then Amelia sort of spilled the beans about the video, which didn’t go over too well.”

  She chews her lip. “So, your dad’s mad at you?”

  “I… I don’t know. But I think if the word disappointme
nt got thrown around, it wouldn’t be unfair.”

  “Ouch.” She winces.

  I shrug. “It’s okay. I mean, all things considered—”

  “You’re not a disappointment, Damien.”

  “Yeah, well, he didn’t need another video of me losing control of my lightning.”

  “It’s not that bad. The video, I mean.”

  “It looks like I’m about to obliterate an entire birthday party. And I did zap someone.”

  “Uh, no, someone grabbed you while you were covered in electricity.”

  “But nobody’s going to be looking at it that way. And everybody knows I zapped that superhero last semester.”

  “Okay, but your dad knows you wouldn’t do that on purpose, right?”

  “Right, but…” I draw up my knees and rest my chin on top of them. “If I’m not a disappointment, I’m at least an embarrassment. He wants to start a superhero group with Ted. The guy who hates me. He cares what he thinks, and… He really didn’t need to find out about this in front of him. Gordon said I wasn’t in trouble, but Ted got all in his face about it, like Gordon should have been punishing me or something. Supposedly Ted doesn’t believe in torturing villains, but I’m pretty sure he believes in torturing me.”

  “What did your dad say?”

  “He got mad, and then… I don’t know. I got out of there.”

  “It’s nice having a car, isn’t it?”

  “I left Tom at home. I took the train.”

  “What? Damien.” She reaches across the bed and swats my arm. “What’s the point of having Tom if you never drive him?”

  “I didn’t want Gordon to think that getting me a car just gave me, like, the means to run away.”

  “Uh, I think you’ve proven you can run away on your own plenty of times.”

  “I didn’t want Ted to use it against him. I didn’t want him to be able to say that they shouldn’t have given it to me.”

  “You could have taken the car.”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “Have you ever even driven it?”

  “You know I have. On Prom night, when I took Amelia home.”

  “That doesn’t exactly count.”

  “It’s her car. They only said it was for both of us because they didn’t want me to feel left out.”