The Betrayal of Renegade X (Renegade X, Book 3) (25 page)

Oh. “So you don’t want to be seen with me. In your own house.”

He scowls. “I stood up for you this morning. I ate lunch with you. And I shared my textbook with you in Rescue Techniques because you forgot yours. So shut up about me not wanting to be seen with you and don’t start anything.”

He doesn’t wait for me to agree before going inside. Curtis is talking on his cell phone while shuffling through a stack of folders on the dining table.

“I don’t see the Trentons’ file,” he says, right before he looks over at us. His forehead immediately wrinkles with disapproval. “Hold on, honey. Riley’s here.” He starts to cover the phone with his hand, then changes his mind. “Actually, let me call you back in a minute. And I’ll check the cabinet one more time. I’m sure it’s there.”

Riley hangs his coat up on the wall, along with his knit hat and scarf. Then he motions toward his room, meaning we should hurry before Curtis gets the chance to talk to us.

Too late.

Curtis hangs up and clears his throat. “Riley.” He says that all authoritative, as if he has any right to tell him what to do. “What’s going on here?”

What’s going on here?
Is he serious with this crap?

“We’re going to hang out in my room. What are
you
doing here?”

“Your mom thinks she left a file behind this morning. The Trentons want to look at more townhouses. I did an early patrol today, so I had time to help her out. And it’s a good thing I came by.” He glances at me, then at Riley. “I know you saw that broadcast yesterday. So what’s he doing here?”

“Damien’s my
friend
.”

“He
was
your friend. Before he betrayed the League.”

You tell someone your honest opinion
once
, and this is what happens. “The League betrayed themselves.”

Curtis’s face gets kind of red, and he twists up his mouth, like something tastes bad. “I want him out of this house. You’re too young to know better, but this is for your own good. You’ll thank me later.”

Riley gapes at him in shock. “It’s not your house.”

“I’m the adult here, Riley. This is how it works.”

“You don’t make the rules. You don’t even live here. And you might be dating my mom, but that sure as hell doesn’t make you my dad.”

The front door opens right as he says that, and Zach walks in. I can tell from the look on his face—kind of scared, kind of excited—that he heard the whole thing.

Curtis sighs. “You know your dad wouldn’t approve of this. He believed in the League. What do you think he’d say if he were here right now? Do you think he’d be happy that you’re friends with a villain? With a
terrorist
?”

“Whoa! I am
not
a terrorist.” Why do people keep thinking that?

Zach stands next to me. “You want to talk about what Dad would want? Because I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want you sleeping with our mom!”

Curtis winces at that. “Zach, stay out of this.”

“No. Damien’s my friend, too. We actually
want
him here. And if he says the League did all those things to villains, then it’s true and they deserve it!”

“
Zach
,” Riley says.

“And that’s exactly why I don’t want him here. He’s a bad influence on you kids. Your mother and I talked about this, and—”

“You
what
?!” Riley clenches his fists. “You talked to her about us? Behind our backs?!”

Curtis holds up his hands, motioning for Riley to calm down. “She was worried about what she saw yesterday. So we decided it would be best if you didn’t see him anymore.”

“
You
decided, you mean,” Zach snaps. “Mom wouldn’t say that.”

“Well, she did. And until further notice, you two aren’t going anywhere except school and back. You can still have friends over,” he adds, as if that makes it okay, “but only ones we’ve met and approved of. Riley, we’re happy to have Sarah and Mason come by anytime. And Zach...” He hesitates, like he doesn’t want to finish that sentence. “We feel it would be best if you stopped seeing Amelia.”

“C
OME ON, AMELIA.” I’M standing outside her door later. “I need to talk to you.”

“No!” she shrieks. “I’m never speaking to you again!”

I’m about to say that at least
something
good came from all this, but I stop myself. She’s been crying in her room for about half an hour, after spending at least that long crying on the phone with Zach. Peppered with intermittent shouts at my wall about how much she hates me and that this is all my fault.

Which it
isn’t
—it’s clearly Curtis’s fault—but listening to it is making my exile to my room kind of unbearable. Not that I’m officially exiled or anything. Gordon and Helen “aren’t mad” at me, they just look at me like they don’t know who I am, which makes me feel like I’m about to throw up. And like I don’t belong here.

I tried to ignore all that and got Alex to play dinosaurs with me for a while. He got some new ones for his birthday last month, and the whole collection now includes three T-Rexes, his old Velociraptor, a Stegosaurus, and the Brontosaurus I got him, which he tells me isn’t a real dinosaur anymore. So we’ve been pretending that it’s an experiment gone wrong. Specifically the Velociraptor’s experiment, since he gave up the spy business, married the Stegosaurus, and started a mad science lab. The T-Rexes are all brothers and also cowboys—one’s the sheriff—and their posse is always trying to take down Velociraptor and co. Which was recently made a lot easier, since they discovered that Velociraptor has a lot of unpaid back taxes.

That’s how it usually goes, anyway. Today neither of us was really that into it. Velociraptor wasn’t devious enough, the T-Rex brothers caught him too easily, and they weren’t even that thrilled about it. Eventually I looked up at Alex and said, “I’m
not
part of the Truth.”

He shrugged one shoulder and said, “I know,” but unenthusiastically, like he either didn’t believe me or didn’t care, because I still said those things. I still said everyone who cares about me is letterist.

We were quiet for a while, our hearts
really
not into the game now. Then he made an excuse, saying he had homework to do, even though it’s Friday, and gathered up all his dinosaurs and disappeared into his room.

That just left Jess, who I’m pretty sure isn’t mad at me or having any conflicted feelings about what I did or didn’t do, but she was taking a nap.

And Riley’s not allowed to hang out with me anymore. And Sarah’s helping out with Bingo at the retirement home tonight. She did call me, at least, when she got to Riley’s house. She put me on speaker phone and I was able to explain everything that happened. They got pretty quiet after that, and the suspense was killing me. Finally, they said they didn’t hate me or anything—though kind of begrudgingly—and Sarah said she understood why I kept my grandpa’s secret. Riley didn’t get a chance to say much of anything, because right then his mom got home and he couldn’t get caught talking to me on the phone.

But no matter what they
said
, I still got the feeling things were a little different between us. Like they had a lot to process before they could really decide how they felt about all this.

So.

My exile isn’t official, but it might as well be. It’s Friday night, but Kat’s not coming home this weekend. She didn’t say it was because of that incident with Sarah last Saturday, but she didn’t really need to, either. I tried to call her a few times this week, but she didn’t pick up. The only time I really talked to her was after Grandpa broadcast that video of me, when she called to see if I was okay and to find out what was going on. At least she’s mad at me for a different reason than everybody else. It’s kind of refreshing.

But that does mean that while I’m stuck here, it’s really hard to block out the sound of sobbing and the occasional yelling at me coming from the other side of the wall.

So even though Amelia says that she’s never speaking to me again, I open her door and come in anyway.

She’s lying face down on her bed, though she quickly sits up so she can scream, “Get out!” Her eyes are red and puffy, making them look extra beady as she narrows them at me.

I close the door behind me and lean against it. I can’t believe I’m doing this. “It’s going to be okay, Amelia.”

“No, it’s not!” She hurls her pillow at me. Her aim is pretty terrible, though, so it misses and hits the door with a
thwack
.

“It’s not like he broke up with you.” I know this not just because Zach wouldn’t do that, but because I could hear almost every word of their conversation, or at least Amelia’s side of it.

“He just can’t see me or talk to me anymore! We don’t even go to the same
school
.” She reaches for her pillow—either to hug it or throw it at me again—and remembers it’s not there. She uses her power to teleport it over to her. I get ready to dodge, but she buries her face in it instead. Her words come out muffled when she says, “He’s going to forget about me.”

I sigh and make my way over to her, wincing as the floorboards creak. I sit down on the edge of her bed. “He’s not going to forget about you. And how long can Curtis really ban him from seeing you, anyway?”

“I don’t know—how long can you go without screwing up?”

“He’s just their mom’s stupid boyfriend.”

“But his mom agreed, too.” Amelia sniffs dejectedly. “I thought she liked me! But they don’t think I’m good enough for him now, because I’m related to
you
.”

I thought their mom liked me, too. Obviously she didn’t like either of us more than Curtis. “They’ll get over it.”

“Not before Zach forgets about me. And don’t say he won’t, because that’s what boys do. If you don’t see them for too long, they forget about you and go after someone else. Someone they actually see every day.”

“Uh, you know I’m still with Kat, and I don’t see her every day.”

Amelia shakes her head. “That’s different. She’s more...
memorable
than me.” She makes a vague hourglass shape in the air with her hands, as if that looks even remotely like Kat, and as if Kat being hot is the only reason we’re still together. “And you get to call her all the time and she can at least visit you on weekends. But even with all that, I bet she still worries about it. About all the girls you
do
see all the time.”

“Kat knows she has nothing to worry about.” But I can’t help thinking about last weekend, when Kat overheard me practically begging Sarah to be part of my future plans. Which I wouldn’t have done if I knew Kat was coming home, but I guess that’s part of the problem. Maybe a big part of it. I swallow, a guilty ache spreading through my chest. “I mean, I wouldn’t do that, and neither would Zach.”

“Not on purpose, but it happens. It happened to Tiffany’s sister, Leslie, when her boyfriend went away to college this year. He was totally in love with her before he went. They spent
all
their time together. And”—Amelia glances back and forth, then lowers her voice—“they’d even had
sex
.” She pauses a second to let the gravity of that sink in. “He swore nothing was going to change between them, and at first he called and emailed all the time. Then he just stopped. And
then
he brought a different girl home for Christmas! He didn’t even tell Leslie they were broken up first! And when she confronted him about it, he said he needed someone who was there, at school with him. Who wasn’t still in high school and who was going through the same stuff he was. Like that was supposed to make it okay.”

“Just because that guy was a selfish douchebag doesn’t mean Zach is. Besides, you and Zach don’t exactly have a long-distance relationship.”

“We’re not going to have
any
relationship if I never get to see him.”

“I think
if
is the key word here. You really think his mom and Curtis are going to lock him up and never let him use the phone or the internet? Even if they say they’re gong to, it won’t last. It’s too much work—they’ll get lax about it. And, worst case, Zach can turn invisible.”

“So?” Amelia raises an eyebrow at me.

“So, it’s kind of hard to keep tabs on someone you can’t see.”

She stares blankly.

“I’m talking about sneaking out. You’re allowed to leave the house, and they can’t really stop him. Problem solved.”

Amelia doesn’t look too happy about it, though. She chews her lip for a second, then scratches at some of the tear tracks on her face. “You think he’d really do that? Just to be with me?”

Well, that and to defy Curtis. “I don’t think he’s going to just give up and find someone else because it’s easier.”

“I guess you’re right,” Amelia says. “I mean, he’s still friends with
you
, and there are tons of people it would be easier to be friends with. Way easier.”

“That’s not what I was getting at. I’m a great friend, and totally low maintenance.”

But she’s smiling now, and her eyes don’t look as red. “If he can put up with you, then he’s not going to give up on me.”

“Zach doesn’t have to ‘put up with me.’ Zach, like my many other friends, thinks I’m awesome.”

She’s already reaching for her phone. “You can go now.”

“Wow. That’s the thanks I get?”

She scoffs. “Why should I thank you? You’re the one who caused the problem.”

I’m also the one who hooked her up with Zach in the first place, though neither of them knows that.

Amelia holds her phone in one hand and makes a shooing motion with the other.

But I just sit there, staring at my knees. How is it that Amelia has people to talk to and I don’t? When did that even happen?

“Damien?”

“I...” I almost blurt out the whole thing, about Kat being mad at me, because I don’t have anyone else to talk to about it. Or anyone else to talk to, period. But the last thing I need is to tell Amelia my business. And it’s not like I don’t know why Kat’s mad. I’d be pissed, too.

“You should call her,” Amelia says, even though I didn’t tell her anything. I guess my problems are that obvious.