The Phobia of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  Ouch. “If my destiny is to screw up over and over again while my friends keep getting hurt,” I tell her, “then I don’t want it. And yeah, I can just stop. The whole city’s freaking out about this fear ray. That means real heroes are working on finding it and getting it back. I’ve caused enough damage, and they don’t need me getting in the way and making things worse. Because that’s what I do—I make things worse. And the city’s made it pretty clear that they’ve had enough of me. So I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit into your plan, but I’m quitting school, I’m quitting being a hero, and I’m quitting this group.”

  Me and Alex are sitting on the couch, playing a racing game he got for Christmas. It’s about seven o’clock, and I still haven’t heard from Kat. Which is freaking me out so much that I actually ate dinner with everyone instead of hiding in my room, since I needed the distraction. Even though it meant putting up with Amelia telling everyone how amazing it was to be back with Zach, and how in a few years from now they won’t even remember this little blip on the road map of their relationship. And about how she can’t wait until next fall, when they’ll both be going to Heroesworth.

  When she mentioned Heroesworth, Gordon looked over at me with this really hurt look on his face, like he was a puppy I’d just kicked, and all my insides kind of shriveled up. I pretended to be real interested in my phone, which I had out next to my plate so I wouldn’t miss it if Kat texted me back. Gordon hasn’t said anything to me about deciding to quit school, or about how badly I screwed up on Saturday, but I figure it’s only a matter of time. Not that he seems mad or anything, since he would have yelled at me by now if he was, but he definitely seems sad. And disappointed. And I don’t really know what to do with that.

  “Yes!” Alex shouts as he narrowly avoids a giant cake that rolls across the screen. The racing game is dessert themed, and this is the baked-goods level, which is his favorite. I know that not only because he told me, but because he’s had us play it, like, five times in a row. “Did you see that? That’s the first time I— Hey!”

  He’s mad because I just hit pause. Because I’m pretty sure my phone just chimed. I grab it from the arm of the couch.

  “It’s no fun if you keep pausing all the time,” he says.

  “It’s important.” Except it’s not, because it’s not from Kat, and it’s not even a text. Just an email from Sarah detailing all the reasons why she thinks I’m screwing up my life, as if she hadn’t made it clear earlier. Oh, except her email includes a list of colleges she’s thinking of applying to next year, along with some programs she thinks I might be interested in that would help facilitate a career in superheroing. Because even if I’m “taking a break,” it doesn’t mean I won’t still need some skills when I come to my senses.

  Which is so wrong because, for one thing, I already have skills. And for another, the programs she listed are things like robotics and chemistry and astrophysics. Which sound more like programs she would be interested in, not me. As if I could even get into a program like that, let alone actually finish it. I’m not even sure I could get into any of the schools she mentioned, especially since I don’t plan to go back to regular school with her next year. I mean, I thought about it, but it turns out that a year of Heroesworth isn’t exactly transferable, on account of us studying completely different things. So I’d be held back a year there, too. Figures.

  Her email is at least a page long, but I only write back two words: Not happening.

  “Okay, ready,” I tell Alex as I hit the start button to unpause the game. Jumping back in where we left off is kind of disorienting, and we both end up swerving around and almost missing the next checkpoint.

  Alex’s car looks like an ice-cream sundae. Mine is a piece of tiramisu, which is one of the fastest cars in the game, even though it doesn’t look very aerodynamic. The steering is horrible, though, which Alex warned me about when we started. Now he keeps tutting and shaking his head whenever my tiramisu careens off the road, like I really should have listened to him.

  “Come on!” Alex screams at the TV. He leans forward as his sundae is just about to cross the finish line.

  My phone chimes again. I press pause.

  Alex groans. “This is your last pause. I mean it! After this, you can’t do it anymore.” He hesitates. “Unless it’s a real emergency, like if the house is on fire or if you’re about to throw up.”

  “I told you, it’s… important.” It’s just another email from Sarah.

  It says, You could go to GCU. They’ll take almost anybody, even someone with your reputation. It’s my safety school, but I’d be willing to go there with you if you got in.

  Wow, so inspiring. I’m so glad there’s a school out there with low enough standards that they’d still take a total loser like me.

  When I don’t answer right away, she adds, You could study something besides science. Riley just pointed out that it’s not your strong point.

  I write back, Tell Perkins that subtlety isn’t his strong point. Then I set my phone down. If she emails again, I’ll ignore it. I don’t want her getting her hopes up because she thinks that me responding means I’m actually considering this.

  “Please tell me you’re ready,” Alex says.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “That doesn’t sound ready.”

  “I—” I shut up as Gordon wanders in from the kitchen. I say wanders, but maybe it’s more like he’s deliberately coming over here. To talk to me.

  He sighs and rubs one side of his face. “Damien, I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m busy.” I nudge Alex. “Tell him.”

  “He’s busy, Dad,” Alex says. “We’re about to start playing again, and I told him he can’t pause anymore. We have to do at least one whole round without stopping, and then you can talk to him.”

  What? Who told him he could say that? “Actually, I have, um, something I have to do after this.”

  “We need to discuss what happened,” Gordon says. “I know I should have said something sooner, but I just couldn’t—”

  I press the start button. “Can’t talk. Seriously. This game is really intense.” Well, it is for about one second, and then Alex’s car crosses the finish line. “I need total silence for this next round.”

  “After this round, then.”

  “I told you, I have something to do. I’m, uh, going over college programs with Sarah.”

  “Oh.” He sounds dejected. And hurt. He’s doing that whole kicked puppy thing again. “You know, son, you don’t have to decide your future right away.”

  “But I’m really excited to major in business. Or maybe film studies.”

  “Is that where you get to watch movies?” Alex asks.

  “Yes. Definitely.” I have no idea what people in film studies do. I’m not 100% sure it’s even a real major. “I can’t wait.”

  “That’s… that’s great,” Gordon says, sounding like it’s anything but great. And like he might cry or something.

  I pretend I don’t notice and focus on the game.

  “Okay,” Alex says, “we’re playing this level one more time, and there can’t be any interruptions.” He turns and gives Gordon a stern look, apparently not picking up on how upset Gordon is.

  “Yeah,” I add. “Whoever wins this round gets a fabulous trip to the park tomorrow and one of the cookies I know Amelia has hidden in the cupboard.”

  Alex perks up at that. “I’m so going to win.”

  The race starts up. Gordon’s still standing behind us, sighing and just generally looming, like he can’t take the hint that I don’t want to talk to him. What’s the point? I screwed up. I made choices he doesn’t like. He’s upset about it. The end.

  “Oh, yes!” Alex cries. “I hit the first check point already! I can practically taste victory!”

  My phone rings. My heart pretty much stops beating when I see that it’s Kat calling.

  Alex shakes his head. “No. Do not pause the game! You promised.”

  I hit p
ause and drop my controller. “I forfeit. You win.” I’m already grabbing my phone and swiping to answer it. “Kat?”

  “Damien,” she says, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Forfeiting is lame,” Alex mutters. “You’re no fun.”

  I ignore him. “Sorry for what? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I overslept this morning—like, way overslept—and then I rushed out of here so fast that I forgot my phone. And when I came back this afternoon, my battery was dead, and then Tasha and Liv wanted to go meet up with everyone for pizza. And I was so tired, I almost didn’t go with them, but Liv said Tristan’s new girlfriend was going to be there and that she needed both of us for support. We only just got back a few minutes ago, and I turned on my phone, and, Damien, I had no idea you’d been texting me.”

  “I thought maybe… After last night, I thought maybe you just didn’t want to talk to me.”

  Alex looks over, even though he’s playing another round of the game on his own. Gordon’s still sort of hovering behind us. I motion for him to go away, and he sighs and goes back into the kitchen.

  “Of course I want to talk to you,” Kat says. “Even if I’m upset, I never don’t want to talk to you.”

  “I was getting really worried. About you. I thought you were either avoiding me or that something horrible had happened.”

  “You mean like when you disappeared and ran away to live with your grandparents without telling anyone?”

  Hot guilt slithers through my chest. “Yeah, like that. But I’m kind of irresponsible and inconsiderate. You’re not.”

  “I’m okay. I just haven’t been sleeping well the past few days.”

  I can’t help but notice that the past few days is basically the same amount of time that Frank’s been on the loose with the fear ray, no thanks to me. Not that I think Kat’s stressing that hard over the fear ray in particular, but getting stabbed through the hand and then almost dying in a fire and then being questioned by the police for hours wasn’t exactly a relaxing day off. “Are people being weird to you? About me?” Because it was already public knowledge that me and Kat are a thing, and now the fact that I was illicitly working with my supervillain girlfriend on a Heroesworth assignment is in pretty much every news segment and article being written about me.

  “No,” Kat says. “I mean, kind of. Not my friends or anything, but a couple of people have given me dirty looks or come up to me and asked why I let you give that fear ray to Frank on Saturday. Which isn’t what happened, and I told them that.”

  “So, people are harassing you at school. Because of me.”

  Alex looks over again at that, then quickly back at his game.

  “Just a few people,” Kat says. “It’s not a big deal. It’s not anything like what you have to deal with.”

  “But—”

  “It’s not your fault. And there’s only a few more weeks of school, and by next year everyone will have forgotten about it.”

  True. Hopefully, anyway, because by then I will have spent a whole summer being a non-hero and not getting into trouble or causing any scandals. “Listen, Kat, about last night.” I take a deep breath. This isn’t really a conversation I want to have in the living room, with Alex totally listening in and Gordon and Helen probably able to hear me, too. I should go up to my room, but I don’t think I can talk on the phone and go up the stairs at the same time, or at least I don’t think I can do it while talking about anything important. And after not hearing from Kat all day, I’m afraid to hang up, even if it’s just to call her back in a few minutes.

  “I overreacted,” Kat says.

  “No, you didn’t. I’m sorry for all the stupid things I said, and I’m sorry for not being who either of us wanted me to be.”

  “Damien. That’s not—”

  “Maybe this was always going to happen, and that night at the gala just made it happen that much sooner. Or maybe it screwed everything up to begin with. I don’t know. And I know you think I’m making a mistake, but this is what I have to do.”

  “I want you to be happy,” Kat says, her voice quiet. “I don’t want you to throw everything away.”

  “I know. And I don’t want you to be disappointed in me.”

  “I’m not. I’m just worried about you. You wanted to be a hero so bad. Enough to put up with going to Heroesworth for an entire year.”

  “I wouldn’t say an entire year. Just most of one.”

  “It’s still a big deal. And I was so excited to get to work with you. It made it seem like maybe me being a villain and you being a hero was actually going to work. Like maybe it took a long time to get there, but our original plans we had before you got an X might not have been so crazy. But then one stupid mission with me goes wrong and you want to quit.”

  I wince. “It’s not like that. It’s not because of you.”

  “You said you didn’t want your friends to get hurt. Well, I didn’t want you to get hurt. Because that knife was aimed right at you, and it… it would have killed you. You think that doesn’t bother me?”

  “Of course it does,” I tell her, though the truth is I hadn’t really thought about it.

  “Because I don’t know what I would do without you. And if that knife had gotten to you when I could have stopped it… I don’t even want to think about it. And yeah, it hurt like hell when it went through my hand, but I can heal. And even if I couldn’t, I still would have done it, if it meant saving your life.”

  “I don’t want you to have to get hurt because of me. Not you, not Riley, not anyone.”

  “It’s fieldwork, Damien. Sometimes it’s dangerous. Sometimes people get hurt. That’s just the job. It’s not because of you.”

  “We were there because of me. Tristan wanted to leave, and nobody wanted to go down those stairs.”

  “You didn’t force us to be there. And Tristan was just whining because it wasn’t his idea. He always does that.”

  “He does?” I mean, I can totally see that.

  “Yeah. I’ve gone on enough missions with him to know how he is. It didn’t help that it was your idea, either. And not because there’s something wrong with you, but because he’s jealous of you.”

  “Well… obviously.”

  “Even if you weren’t there, we still would have gone in, because I didn’t come all that way just to be scared off by some boarded-up windows.”

  “But you wouldn’t have gone down those creepy stairs.”

  “Probably not,” she admits. “But that doesn’t mean Frank still wouldn’t have come after us or gotten the fear ray.”

  “I set off the trap. I thought the fear ray looked cool, and I grabbed it without thinking.”

  Kat scoffs. “There was no way you could have known it was trapped.”

  “No, but I just… Maybe I didn’t mean for any of that to happen, but bad things still happened to you guys because of me.”

  “First of all, no they didn’t. But second of all, so what if they did? Because guess what? Making sure nothing bad ever happens to anyone isn’t your responsibility.”

  “Kat—”

  “And if it is your responsibility to make sure that everything goes absolutely perfectly, why even have a team, huh? I mean, you’re the only one who’s allowed to ever be in any kind of danger, right? So why not leave everyone else at home and just go by yourself.”

  “Because the school wouldn’t let me?” I say that to lighten the mood, because I hate that she sounds mad at me, but she doesn’t laugh.

  “The school wouldn’t let you work with us, either, but you still did it. But you don’t choose to go on missions by yourself. And if you tried, I’m betting Riley wouldn’t let you. I wouldn’t let you. And neither would Sarah.”

  “I… I didn’t say I wanted to do it alone.”

  “No, but you can’t handle working with anybody, so you’ve just decided to sit everything out. That’s the real reason you’re quitting, isn’t it?”

  “I told you. My friends keep getting hurt because o
f me.”

  “No, not because of you. Your friends choose to take that risk all on their own. And all you see is that you put them in danger, when really you do everything you can to protect them. You put everything on yourself, and that’s not fair.”

  “Everything that happened at the gala was my fault.” I hate how tight my voice sounds when I say that. How anyone listening couldn’t help but hear how much it messed me up. “I know Grandpa was responsible for most of it. I know that, but it still feels like… I should have been there.”

  “You were there. You did everything you could to—”

  “I should have been there when Riley got hurt!” I clench my fist. “He was trying to distract the League, so they’d leave me alone.”

  “So you could save everyone. Damien, you needed him to do that. Everyone at the gala would have died if he hadn’t done that for you.”

  “I know.” My voice sounds really tight now, and I know Alex notices, because he glances over again, a worried, kind of scared look on his face. “But I still hate that I wasn’t there.”

  “He was with Mason. You didn’t know—”

  “I knew Mason was a douchebag.”

  “But you still didn’t know he would do that. Nobody did. Mason probably didn’t even know.”

  “I could have stopped it. I could have—”

  “No, you couldn’t. You can’t control everything. You can’t control other people. They get to make their own choices, the same as you.”

  “But if I’d been there—”

  “Then everyone at the gala would have died, including Riley. Including you. We all took risks. Your arm got burned pretty bad when you came to help me and Sarah. You always downplay it, because of what happened to Riley, but someone from the League shot you with a raygun. I hate that that happened to you. But it did, and it happened because you were trying to save me, and that really scares me sometimes. But that doesn’t mean it was my fault or that we didn’t need your help, just like how you needed Riley’s help and how what happened to him wasn’t your fault. And if something had happened to me, then—”