The Phobia of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  Or from Amelia telling everyone what a complete and total jerk I am, which I would definitely deserve and which she will probably do anyway even if I don’t show up.

  And all of that isn’t even taking into account the fact that I’m way too busy staring at my phone and reading all the stupid articles people are writing about me. I mean, I read the first couple, and now I’m mostly just skimming them, because you can only read about yourself dooming the entire world so many times before it gets repetitive.

  Whoever’s at the door knocks again.

  “I’ll eat later!” I shout.

  “X? It’s me,” Riley says.

  I tell him to come in.

  He has his backpack with him. He drops it on the floor and then comes over. “You look like hell.”

  And he’s the one with the stitched-up gash on his forehead. “Great, Perkins. Is that what you came to tell me?”

  “No, I—” He notices what’s on my phone and snatches it away from me. “Seriously? How can you read this stuff?!”

  “They’re all just saying what I already know.”

  “What, that you secretly conspired with Frank to steal that weapon? Or that you lied about there even being a weapon just for attention?”

  “No, that I’m not hero material. That I was never cut out for this and had no business ever going to Heroesworth or endangering you guys—”

  “You didn’t endanger us.”

  “You wouldn’t have gone down in that basement if I hadn’t insisted. You and Kat got hurt, and we all almost died. If it wasn’t for Tristan, we would have.”

  “And you. You blasted the door open.”

  “None of us would have been down there if it wasn’t for me.”

  “But Frank would have figured out how to get the fear ray even if we didn’t show up. And then we wouldn’t have known about it at all, and nobody would have had any warning.”

  Nobody would be panicking about it, he means. “Look, Perkins, I know what you really came here for, and you don’t need to say it.”

  “Yeah, I do. You didn’t have to do that today.”

  He means when I told Mrs. Deeds and Dean Scott that I was the one who was working with students from Vilmore and that Riley didn’t know anything about it until they showed up at the abandoned Heroes Hideout, and that he was against it, and that any involvement he had was only because he didn’t want to abandon his partner in a dangerous situation.

  “You would have failed Advanced Heroism and lost your scholarship.” Because apparently that’s the punishment for working with the enemy—automatic failure. Or at least it is at Heroesworth. Kat and Tristan have to do extra work to make up for not completing their assignment, but nobody even brought up the idea of failing them.

  “I know, but—”

  “There’s no point in both of us going down for it. And I was the one who insisted we work with them, and that we wouldn’t get caught. And I’d have had to repeat all of first year anyway, if I was going to stick around, so it doesn’t matter if I failed the class.”

  “But I still went along with it. We were both guilty this time, and… you shouldn’t have to take all the blame.”

  “It’s done, Perkins. Just forget about it.”

  He takes a deep breath, not looking happy about that. “None of what they’re saying about you is true, you know. You are hero material, and—”

  “If you came here to convince me not to quit, you should probably just leave.”

  “Why, so you can go back to reading all that garbage people are posting? And I’m not going to tell you not to quit. I mean, I wish you weren’t, and I’m really going to miss you next year, but I get why you’re doing it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. It really sucks that this happened. And the stuff they’re saying about you isn’t true. But… what happened Saturday was awful. Between that and the gala, and what happened with your flying test, I get it.”

  “Okay. I mean, thanks.”

  “And I’m not going anywhere. I brought my stuff. I’m staying over.”

  “I didn’t ask you to do that. You didn’t even call first.”

  He gives me a look. “Like you ever call me first?”

  “I could have had plans.”

  “Like staring at your phone all night?”

  “I just… You don’t need to be here. I already made Amelia cry, and I might say something stupid to you, too.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  “You don’t know what I said.”

  “Well, whatever you say to me, I know I’ll get over it. And I get it if you don’t feel like hanging out, and we can just sit here silently if you want—I brought a book—but I’m not going anywhere. And I’m confiscating your phone.”

  “I’m supposed to call Kat later.”

  “Fine, but that’s not the point and you know it.”

  “You really want to hang out with me right now? Even if I just want to sit here and think about how much my life sucks and not talk to you the whole night?”

  “Yep. Even then. If that’s what you want.”

  “It’s not. I mean, the thinking about how much my life sucks part. And the not talking to you part. I don’t really want to do either of those. So I guess you can stay.”

  “Good, because I already told you I was.”

  “Though maybe you could go downstairs and see if dinner’s ready. And bring some back up here if it is.”

  “What, you can’t just fly down there and see for yourself?”

  “Shut up. I’m avoiding everyone. And I’m never flying again. So if you’re staying, I’m appointing you to get dinner.”

  “Okay. I guess I can do that.”

  “What book did you bring?”

  His face lights up. “Scourge of the Elflands. It’s book four in the Elf Plight trilogy, which I know sounds wrong, because you can’t have four books in a trilogy, but really there are seven books total now, they just didn’t know it was going to have that many when it started.”

  “How many pages is it?”

  “Er, around twelve hundred?”

  “So you really thought I wasn’t going to talk to you all night?”

  “I thought it was a possibility. But also it’s a really good book.”

  “I doubt that.”

  He scowls. “It is. I have the whole series. You can borrow the first one sometime.”

  “That’s not going to happen. But… thanks, Perkins.”

  “It’s fine. If you change your mind, let me know.”

  “No, I mean… thanks for coming over here. Even though you thought it might be so boring you’d be reduced to reading some lame fantasy novel all night.”

  He huffs at that. “It’s not lame. And I’m your friend, X. Of course I came over.”

  Chapter 34

  KAT DOESN’T PICK UP until after the tenth ring, and when she does, she sounds like she was asleep. “Damien?”

  “Hey, Kat. Did I wake you up?” I know it’s a weeknight, but it’s only nine o’clock. Kat’s usually up until at least midnight. “I was supposed to call, right?”

  “What? Yes! Oh, my God, I can’t believe I fell asleep! I was reading my Observing Heroes textbook for class tomorrow, and it’s so boring.”

  “If you want to ‘observe’ a hero, I think that can be arranged. And you will not fall asleep.” I say it out of habit, before I catch myself and remember I’m not a hero anymore.

  “Dude,” Riley says. He’s sitting in the corner, reading the gigantic book he brought. “I’m right here.”

  “Riley says hi,” I tell Kat.

  “No, I didn’t, I—”

  “Oh, sorry, Kat, Riley specifically isn’t saying hi to you, which is pretty rude.”

  Kat laughs. “Tell him I said hi back.”

  I shake my head at Riley. “She says she’s never going to forgive you for your slight.”

  He rolls his eyes at me. “Whatever. And if you want me to leave the room, just say so.”
>
  “I don’t know why you would think that.” I haven’t said anything I wouldn’t have said if we were all here in person. I ignore him and go back to my phone conversation. “Anyway, I might have spoken too soon—or more like too late—about observing a hero, since there aren’t any here.”

  “Hello?” Riley says. “Still in the room.”

  “You want my girlfriend to observe you? Inappropriate.”

  “What? No! I was just— You know what I meant!”

  “Hey,” Kat says, sounding really groggy, “if you guys are busy, maybe”—she yawns—“maybe we should just talk tomorrow.”

  “No, no, I’m not busy.” I pause. “Are you okay? You sound a little off.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. I think I feel weird because I just woke up.”

  “If you want me to call you back in the morning—”

  “No, it’s alright. I need to wake up anyway, since I still have to get through the rest of my homework.” She yawns again, which makes me yawn, too, even though I’m not that tired. “How was school today? Was it super weird?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Were people jerks to you? Because I can come down there and beat them all up for you if you want. I don’t go to your school, so I can’t get in trouble.”

  I laugh. “You’re going to beat up pretty much everyone at Heroesworth?”

  “If I have to. But maybe… maybe next week.”

  “You don’t have to do that. And I won’t be there next week.”

  “Why? Did something happen?”

  “I…” I turn away a little, so Riley can’t see my face, even though he’s pretending to read his book. And maybe I should have had him leave the room for this, but that would make it too real. That would mean that what I’m about to tell Kat is too horrible to have someone else in the room for, and I don’t think I could handle that. “I’m dropping out of school.”

  She sucks in a breath. Then she’s quiet for a second. “You’re dropping out? Why? What happened?”

  “You know what happened. I failed the flying test—”

  “You could retake it!”

  “In a year. That’s… That would mean another whole year of Heroesworth.” And I’d have to keep practicing my flying, probably that entire time. “And what if I still failed after all that?”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  She doesn’t know that, though. She didn’t even see me do the routine. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t do it. I shouldn’t be doing it. You’ve heard everything people are saying about me. There’s no way you haven’t.”

  Riley glances up from his book but doesn’t say anything.

  “None of it is true,” Kat says, her voice pleading with me. “You know that.”

  “Some of it is. And even if nobody said anything, I would still know.”

  “You’d know what?”

  “That I’m not cut out for this. I got an X for my sixteenth birthday, and maybe I got it for a reason. I’m not enough of a villain or enough of a hero to be either one. I thought I could choose what I am, but it turns out I’m just nothing.”

  “That’s stupid. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I watched you get hurt! Because of me! A knife went through your hand. Right in front of me, because I was dumb enough to almost get myself killed.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “I make too many.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “I watched Riley get hurt again, too, and…” I trail off, knowing he can hear me. “What happened at the gala really screwed me up. And if I was really meant to be a hero, it wouldn’t have.”

  “That’s not true,” Kat says. “You know it’s not.”

  “People keep getting hurt because of me, and I can’t let that happen.”

  “You saved us, Damien. You blasted a hole through the door. And you saved everyone at the gala, too.”

  “Yeah, but nobody would have even needed saving if it wasn’t for me. I can’t pretend I’m a hero anymore. I get it if you’re mad at me—”

  “I’m not mad. I’m… I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “I know this isn’t what you wanted.”

  “It’s not what you wanted, either. What are you going to do if you’re not a hero or a villain?”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

  “Being a hero made you happy. How are you—”

  “I don’t know!” I swallow. “I’m sorry, Kat. I just… I don’t know.”

  “The scandal will die down. People won’t be talking about this forever.”

  “It’s not about that, okay?”

  “You’re supposed to be somebody. We both are.”

  “But you’d still love me if I wasn’t, right?”

  “Of course.” Her voice is kind of choked up, like nothing about this is actually alright. “I didn’t mean that I wouldn’t. But we both know you’re making the wrong decision. You are meant to be a hero. It’s who you are, even if you can’t see it right now. Anything else you do is going to be settling. You get that, right?”

  “This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what’s right. Enough people I care about have gotten hurt because of me. I used to love fieldwork, but I don’t anymore, and I don’t know how to get that back. And… I tried really hard, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “You mean for the flying test?”

  “I mean for everything.”

  She’s quiet. Except maybe I can hear her trying not to cry.

  “Kat?”

  “I have to go,” she says. “I have all this reading to do.”

  “I love you,” I tell her. “None of this changes that. Nothing will ever change that.”

  “I love you, too,” she says, definitely sounding like she’s crying now, and then hangs up.

  I stare blankly at my phone. My throat feels kind of tight.

  Riley’s watching me, not even pretending to read his book. “Me getting hurt wasn’t your fault.”

  I shake my head. “You wouldn’t have been in that basement or at the gala if it wasn’t for me.”

  “I would have still been at the gala.”

  “But you wouldn’t have been being chased by heroes from the League. The same organization you spent your whole life wanting to join.”

  “Don’t remind me. But… I wanted to help you. And you’re not the one who pushed me and left me for dead under a pile of rubble.”

  “But—”

  “Mason’s the one who did that, and if I’d just listened to you about him, I wouldn’t have even been in that situation. I’ve thought about it a million times—all the things that could have gone differently—and there are so many different choices I could have made, and if I had, neither one of us would have ended up where we did.”

  “My grandpa was only able to attack the gala because I helped him build up the Truth.”

  “But that’s on him, not you. You thought you were helping villains get more rights, which you were. And if I hadn’t ditched you for Mason, I never would have won that award and I wouldn’t have been at the gala. I mean, I would have, because I would have been helping you stop that massacre, but it would have gone differently. And Mason wouldn’t have been there.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t yours, either. There are a million different choices either of us could have made, but none of them make what happened our fault. And obsessing over those choices doesn’t change anything. And… maybe what happened that night was already the best possible outcome. Maybe if we’d done even one thing differently, it all would have gone even worse. But we don’t know. We can’t know.”

  I think about that. “And what about now? How do I know if I’m making the right choices?”

  “I don’t think you can. I think we just have to do what seems right in the moment and hope for the best.”

  “So, it’s hopeless?”

  “I didn’t say that
.”

  “Kat was really upset. About me quitting.”

  “For the record? Everyone is. Well, everyone who matters.”

  “I thought you said you were okay with it?”

  “I said I get it. I didn’t say it’s what I wanted to happen. You were supposed to be there next year. We were supposed to be partners. And maybe I don’t know what I’m doing after I graduate, but I just assumed you’d be part of it.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  “But now you’re not. Because you think you’re not hero material. Which is stupid, because if you’re not hero material, then I don’t know who is.”

  “You think I’m making a mistake?”

  “I think you have to do what’s right for you, and I think you’re the only person who can decide that. But everyone’s going to miss you.”

  “Not everyone. Maybe you guys will miss me, but the rest of the world will be glad I’m getting out. They’ll be relieved that I’m just going to live a normal life where I don’t bother anyone or put anyone in danger.”

  “Yeah, well, screw the rest of the world,” Riley says. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

  Chapter 35

  I’M SUPPOSED TO BE helping Helen move boxes around the back room of her antique shop, but I’m kind of distracted. I mean, I am helping—I’m just also checking my phone every five seconds. It’s past noon, and Kat hasn’t answered any of my texts.

  I’ve sent seven of them. Okay, eight, but only because I accidentally hit send before I was done typing, which doesn’t count. I’ve kind of been having a one-sided conversation with myself all day, getting more and more worried. She probably forgot to charge her phone. Or she put it on silent, because she’s in class or at the library, trying to catch up on homework. She’s not ignoring me, or thinking it’s really pathetic that I’ve continued to text her all day when she hasn’t answered.

  Kat’s not like that. We’re not like that. Sometimes we end up sending each other way more texts than that before the other one ends up writing back. Usually about funny stuff that happens to us, though. Not about, like, how sorry one of us is that his life fell apart and that he’s quitting school and is never going to live up to his potential.