Amped: A Kid Sensation Companion Novel (17 page)

I only had one other visitor, who came by a short time later: BT. It was the female clone this time – the one I was used to seeing around Alpha League HQ.

At the time, I had been staring out the door of my room, watching Esper and Vir in the hallway. They were facing each other, standing close together, and holding hands. It was like one of those romance movies where you just try to get the boy and girl to kiss through sheer strength of will. To my surprise, they seemed on the verge of doing just that when BT stepped into the doorway, blocking my view.

“Hey,” she said as she came into the room. “Just thought I’d check up on you.”

“Thanks,” I said, trying to see around her.

BT gently closed the door before taking a seat in a chair next to my bed. If there was a kiss about to happen, I was going to miss it.

“I’m glad everything worked out,” she said. “That you got the information you were looking for.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I had to break the law, battle supervillains, and almost get killed to do it, but I got the goods.”

“Excellent,” BT said, and then sat silently.

I stared at her, and then decided to just say out loud what I’d already figured out.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I asked. “You knew all about my background the whole time.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Oh yeah, that would have gone over real well,” BT said sarcastically. “‘Electra, your mother’s an insane seductress, your father’s in prison, and your grandfather is a megalomaniac and the head of a secret criminal empire.’”

“Okay, you might have needed to spin it a little.”

“Maybe,” BT said. “But it also wasn’t my place to say anything. Esper was your aunt – the closest thing you had to a mother – so everyone tried to respect her wishes.”

“Wrong,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s not the closest thing I
have
to a mother. As far as I’m concerned, she
is
my mother.”

“I’m sure she’d love to hear that.”

“What she’d like to hear, I’m sure, is my father saying he loves her.”

BT laughed. “Esper reads minds. You think she doesn’t know?”

“Probably. How long has this thing with them been going on?”

“You’re asking
moi
?” BT said, feigning surprise. “You think
I
know?”

“Of course you do.”

BT sighed. “Apparently it began sometime after he started serving his sentence. Exactly when is anyone’s guess.”

I was sure BT could do better than that, but I didn’t see a need to pressure her for the exact date and time this particular romance began.

“Anyway,” BT went on, “I’m not staying long. I just wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Why would there be?”

“No reason, I suppose. I just didn’t want there to be any confusion about why I didn’t just blurt everything out. Aside from Esper’s wishes, it just seemed important to let you figure this out on your own – let you decide when you’d found out enough and either did or didn’t want to know more.”

I nodded, completely understanding BT’s point. A lot of people would have stopped looking into their past when they found out that their birth mother didn’t want them. Or that their father was in prison. Or when they found out a million other things. The truth of the matter was that nothing had been forced down my throat here, and everything I’d found out was the result of me continuing to push. Other people helped me, but I had been the driving force here, and if I found out things I wasn’t comfortable with or wish I didn’t know, it was on my own head.

With that in mind, I turned to BT and said, “I don’t have any problem with how you handled things. It was kind of you to help me as much as you did. And if it’s okay with you, from now on, I’d like to think of you as
my
friend, and not just my boyfriend’s friend.”

BT smiled. “I’d like that very much.”

Before I could say anything else, there was a knock at the door. A moment later, it cracked open and my father stuck his head in.

“They’re here for me, Amp,” he said. He didn’t have to say who. “There’s every possibility that they’re going to drag me off in chains, so if you prefer not to see that…”

“No, no, no,” I declared, swinging my feet to the floor. “I want to see you off, Dad.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” he said. “I’ll tell your aunt.”

He stepped away, only to stick his head back in the door a moment later.

“One other thing,” he said. “I almost forgot. They told me to tell you that some guy named Jim is looking for you.”

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