“And things would get easier for me?” Because I don’t see how embarrassing myself on his show on a regular basis would contribute to that.
“It’s probably not that far off from what Other Gordon thought. He just took it too far.”
“I don’t know about that. You didn’t hear the stuff he said. I don’t think you should compare yourself to him.”
“Well, I still want people to know I’m proud of you. But mostly I just want to spend time with you, and that doesn’t have to be on national TV. Maybe we can find some other father-son things to do together.”
“Dad—”
“Things that we both enjoy. No pancakes, and no TV show.” He sighs.
“Like what then?” My voice is cautious, but maybe slightly hopeful.
“Well, for starters, we need to fix the gaping hole in your floor.”
Ugh. “Seriously? Maybe you enjoy that, but—”
“But you’re the one who put it there, so you’re going to help me fix it. And for the record, it’s not my favorite thing to do, either.”
I tilt my head at him, not buying that. “But you still enjoy it.” More than I’m going to, anyway.
“A little,” he admits. “But I’m sure with both of us working on it, we’ll get it done in no time. Then we can move on to something else. Something you like to do.”
“Really? Because I like blasting holes in things and then not fixing them.”
He laughs. “Well, I’m sure we can come up with something.” He gets up from the couch and is about to leave. He hesitates, then turns back to me. “I’m really going to miss Other Damien.”
“Who isn’t? He’s just so perfect and wonderful.”
“But not nearly as much as I would have missed you. I’m glad you’re back, Damien. I wouldn’t trade you for the world.”
Chapter 33
“WHAT WE HAVE HERE,” I say a couple days later, peering up into the tree in front of us, “is a classic seven-three-oh-nine… four?” I get my phone from my utility belt—since I’m wearing my Renegade X costume, which doesn’t exactly have pockets, not that I could really use them if it did, it being all spandex—and start looking through the giant file Sarah sent us.
“It’s a seven-three-five-seven-two,” Sarah says without looking it up. “Or, wait, maybe it’s an eight-five-nine-three.” She gets her phone out, too, and starts scrolling through the list.
“You’d think a cat in a tree would be, like, number three,” Kat says.
“Or at least top five,” I add.
Sarah shakes her head. A piece of tinfoil comes loose and floats down to the sidewalk. “My system’s based on categories, not on ranking. I thought about doing it like that, but there were just too many.”
Riley wrinkles his forehead. “Does it matter what number it is? Shouldn’t we focus on the rescue?”
As if in response, the cat lets out a desperate meow from the ungodly height it climbed up to in the tree.
“We need to be able to log it,” Sarah says. “But maybe that can wait until later.”
I nudge Riley with my elbow. “Go ahead, Perkins.”
“Secant,” Sarah corrects me.
“Turn invisible and climb up there.”
His eyebrows come together. “Why do I have to turn invisible first?”
“Because it’s broad daylight and you’re wearing a full superhero costume and you’ll look ridiculous.” Duh. “Plus, if you’re not using your ability, it’s not really a superhero mission so much as it is just you climbing a tree.”
“Okay, but why do I have to climb up there at all? Why don’t you just fly up there?”
“How about I use my lightning to bust down the tree, and you get ready to catch it?”
“The tree?!”
“The cat.”
“That’s a terrible idea, X.”
“Renegade,” Sarah corrects him. “And I have a new net gun I could use to capture it and pull it down.” She reaches for one of the weapons on her belt. “It’s still in the testing phase, but I don’t see why we can’t try it.”
I raise my eyebrows at her. “Maybe because we want the cat to still be alive after this?”
She scowls at me. “None of my test results so far have indicated that it’s unsafe.”
“And what have you tested it on?”
“Our mailbox. Which was only slightly dented afterward.”
Riley’s mouth slips open. “Sarah!”
“I said slightly! And it’s Cosine, remember?”
Kat rolls her eyes at us. She uses her shapeshifting power to stretch her arms way up into the tree, grab the cat, and bring it back down. It yowls the whole way, but otherwise is perfectly fine. “And that’s how it’s done,” she says, setting the cat down on the ground and then dusting off her hands.
“Sure, do that,” I tell her, “if you want to make it look easy.”
The cat’s black and white with short hair. It looks ready to bolt the second she sets it down, but then it changes its mind and rubs against her legs instead.
Sarah sighs, sounding really put out. “I don’t have a number to catalog what you just did.”
“Okay, wait.” Kat holds up her hands. “First of all, you have numbers to catalog… what? How we save things?”
“How we complete our missions. We log in codes for each type of mission and then for how we get them done. It’s just easier than having to write them all out. It’ll save lots of time in the long run.”
“Didn’t you read the manual?” Riley asks, holding up his phone.
“I didn’t join this group to do homework,” Kat says.
“Geez,” I tell her. “Even I read the manual. I think you need to step it up a notch if you want to be part of the team.”
Kat folds her arms. Her spandex costume is light purple and black. It’s similar to the rest of ours, except it doesn’t have a silver math symbol across the chest. Mine’s green with an X, Sarah’s is blue with a theta, and Riley’s is teal with a phi. Sarah’s been trying to get Kat to adopt a math-related name all summer, but Kat keeps putting her off. “You read the manual?”
“I read things, Kat. Lots of things.”
“Oh, yeah? When did you read it? Because Sarah only sent it to us—”
“Cosine,” Sarah says.
“Because Cosine only sent it to us last night, and you were at my house basically that whole time up until an hour or so ago.”
It turns out having a giant hole in your floor that opens into your parents’ bedroom isn’t exactly conducive to having your girlfriend sleep over, not to mention doing other things that don’t really involve sleeping.
Like trying to watch a movie, because no matter how much we turned the volume down, Gordon and Helen kept saying it was too loud.
Plus, sex was completely out of the question.
So we relocated to Kat’s house. In the middle of the night. Which would not have gone over very well with her parents, especially her dad, so we didn’t tell them.
“Fine,” I tell Kat. “I didn’t read it. But I at least skimmed it on the way here.”
Sarah gapes at me.
I point at Riley. “Perkins didn’t read it, either!”
She gasps in horror and puts a hand over her mouth.
“X!” Riley glares at me.
“What? You told me you didn’t.”
“I said I fell asleep reading it! That’s… that’s completely different.” He scuffs his shoe against the sidewalk.
“Second of all,” Kat says, pulling the conversation back on track, “you made this whole system, and you didn’t think to make a code for me using my power to complete a mission?”
Sarah adjusts her glasses and conveniently looks down at her shoes. “I was designing the system with expansion in mind. I want other hero teams to be able to use it. I got so focused on assigning numbers to a list of every possible superhero power that I forgot to include yours.”
Kat grits her teeth. “Right. You didn’t think
to add in all of our powers first?”
“To be fair,” Sarah says, “I didn’t add in numbers for my possible contributions yet, either. It turns out there are a lot of hero powers and that assigning numbers to them is really tedious.” She yawns, like even just thinking about it is draining.
“Oh, my God!” a woman’s voice screams, startling all four of us.
We look over to see a lady with dark hair running toward us. She’s wearing a black supervillain costume with what look like stink lines drawn across the front.
“You found Thimble!” she shrieks as she scoops up the cat from the ground. It immediately starts purring. “I’ve been looking all over for her!”
“Thimble was in that tree,” Kat says, pointing to it.
“Way high up,” I add.
“And you got her down?” The supervillain’s eyes are shining. Then she notices us making weird faces at the symbols on her costume. She gestures to them while still holding tight to Thimble. “I’m Ground Shaker. It’s supposed to represent an earthquake, but everybody always thinks it looks like stink lines.” She makes a face.
“Whaaat?” I say. “I don’t see that at all.”
“Anyway, I can’t thank you enough for saving him. I don’t know what I would have done without my wittle shnookums.” She presses her face into Thimble’s fur and starts muttering in baby talk, finishing the whole thing off by kissing her on the head.
Right as someone across the street points and goes, “Oh, my God, is that Son of Flash?!”
“He just saved that villain’s cat!” someone else shouts.
Then a bunch of phones come out and camera flashes start going off.
Kat rolls her eyes, and Sarah starts muttering something about how we really should have come up with a group name already.
Me and Riley exchange a look, and then he sighs and says, “Well, here we go again, X.”
***
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHELSEA M. CAMPBELL grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where it rains a lot. And then rains some more. She finished her first novel when she was twelve, sent it out, and promptly got rejected. Since then, she’s earned a degree in Latin and Ancient Greek, become an obsessive knitter and fiber artist, and started a collection of glass grapes.
Besides writing, studying ancient languages, and collecting useless objects, Chelsea is a pop-culture fangirl at heart and can often be found rewatching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Office, or dying a lot in Dark Souls. You can visit her online and sign up for her newsletter to get a free copy of Damien Locke’s Guide to Golden City at www.chelseamcampbell.com.
The Rivalry of Renegade X Page 28