Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (10 page)

Fully dark? “How long did I spend building that?” I asked.

Ray flipped open my smart phone and pressed the button. A glance at the welcome screen later, he answered, “About four hours.”

I looked back up at the metal caster. It was huge. It would be so useful. Something I felt told me that and itched to try it out.

Looking up at Ray, I asked him, “End of the week?”

“I’d say, yeah,” he chirped back smugly.

Tuesday.

“Were your parents suspicious?” Ray asked me as I sat down for lunch.

“Nope. A little grumbling about how hard it is to put Dad’s junk back together, and they think it’s a phase I’ll get over. I’m going to blow their socks off when I get this under control. What do you think I should build first?” I gushed. It was a little much, but we’d had no chance to talk all morning!

“It’th not my plathe to thay, Marther,” Ray played Igor back at me.

“Ho ho ho, mad scientist humor.” I didn’t get to tell him I was serious. He suddenly looked too puzzled.

“You don’t remember?” Ray asked. Claire slid into the seat next to me, all attentive curiosity and ostentatious lunchbox opening.

“Not a thing. I go into a world without words when my power turns on. I can’t hold onto it afterward,” I explained to Ray. To both of them, really.

“Oh, you had words,” Claire corrected me. She and Ray had the same pinched, failing to-control-a-smile expression.

“They weren’t very good words, so she might be onto something.” Ray tried to juggle being almost serious with dancing around an explanation.

“Spill it, minions. You’re creeping the mad scientist out,” I ordered.

“That’s how you acted, like we were minions. Every few minutes you’d surface to shout at us to help you rearrange your tools,” Claire supplied, finally.

Not that I liked the answer. “Wow. I’m sorry.”

Ray raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t nasty, just impatient. Maybe desperate. You might be right about the words, because it was all ‘Move that here!’ and ‘Plug that in!’ This isn’t ringing any bells?”

“Total blackout. It’s a little bit disturbing to find out I turn into someone else and can’t remember it when my power turns on.” Understatement. Maybe I needed help?

Claire passed me a plastic dish with a slice of chicken on a bed of rice, then poured a thick, transparent sauce on it from another little container AND laid a slice of her Mom’s fudgy brownies on my tray. “Here. This will make you feel better.”

I cut off a slice and took a bite. It was sweet, peanut-ty, and, after three seconds, I grabbed my milk carton and drank the whole thing. My tongue was burning! It was so good, but…

I twisted The Machine desperately on my wrist, and, when it let go, I ordered, “Water! Bring me cold water!”

Then, of course, I had another bite. My tongue screamed at me. This stuff was great!

I opened my mouth to thank Claire and realized there was no way I could talk like this. My glasses were fogging up, and my body wanted to bolt to the nearest water fountain. That duplicitous little minx!

Ray leaned in to reassure me. “Don’t let it worry you, Penny. Your powers are supposed to get a bit crazy when they first emerge. In Evolution’s biography, I read he turned into a tree for a week when his powers came out.”

“I heard about that. It was in that article in National Geographic about whether he was the cause of the super power boom, with all the pollen he released and all. They can find traces of his DNA in every human on Earth,” Claire chatted back to Ray.

Ray waved a forkful of pasta at her. “Think if it’s true. Ten years later he fights Bull and Chimera, getting even more powers from villains whose powers he created in the first place.”

This was what they talked about when I didn’t set the topic. Claire had outmaneuvered me, and there was nothing I could do about it. Oh, thank Tesla, The Machine was waddling back, distended like a gallon jug. I heaved it off the floor and drank. Ice cold water from the fountain!

Claire still had me. Any time not spent finishing the chicken or slugging down water was time with my mouth on fire.

I had the best friends.

They conspired against me after school, too. They were both waiting in the lab, arms folded identically, and, as I opened the hatch, Ray announced, “No working yourself until you collapse this afternoon, Penny. We’ve taken a vote and decided you need a break.”

“More specifically, we’ve decided we haven’t had a game of Teddy Bears And Machine Guns all weekend. I put too much work into my zombie rag doll army for you to sneak out of being on the receiving end of it,” Claire filled in.

That sounded pretty good. I’d made a pile of money off the Pumpkin jar, and those zombie rag dolls were in for an ugly candy chainsaw surprise. Except for one thing.

I held up my hands. “I provisionally surrender. I have only one condition. I need to try and build something, and remember doing it.”

Claire looked suspicious. Ray figured it out. “You’ve been freaking out all day about this, haven’t you?”

I let out a huge sigh. “Yes! I know it’s fine, it’s just been needling me. I don’t remember anything from yesterday. I don’t even know how that works.” I flapped a hand at the metal caster, and went on. “And you say I ordered you around while building it? I’m going to be creeped out until I try to explore this, and there’s no way I could do it in class.”

“Okay, but keep it small,” Claire warned me.

Like I had that kind of control. That was part of the problem. Could I even turn this on? A three-second invention made out of a pencil wouldn’t count. It wouldn’t tell me anything.

If I didn’t get this figured out, I’d be on edge all night. I picked up a screwdriver and one of our spare outlets, and went over to another wiring gap. Dropping down onto my knees, I looked at it.

Wiring gap was the problem. There had to be something I could do with it.

My brain remained blank. The wrong kind of blank.

At least we had electricity. I didn’t know if it was part of the school’s circuit or what. I could plug in most things, and, if I needed higher voltage or amperage equipment, maybe I could…

I’d started something. Wires. I twisted The Machine to rev it up, and, as I scrambled to pick up a pile of copper wires, I ordered, “Plastic sheets, quarter-inch thick. No, better idea.” I hadn’t turned off the circuit breakers yet. Who needed to? I smacked The Machine into the open gap. “Divert and store the electrical flow.”

What was I—don’t think about it. Just do it, but pay attention. I grabbed pliers and twisted around a length of wire. The loops had to be exactly this width apart, because the electricity would flow…

I lost it. I’d tried to put words on it and strangled the understanding in my head. Bah.

I grabbed The Machine, and told it, “Let go.” It did.

“You still in there, Penny?” Claire asked.

“Clap once for Penny, and bark twice for Mad Scientist Penny,” Ray suggested.

That did it. I snickered. Pushing myself back up to my feet, I snapped The Machine back onto my wrist. “I messed it up, but I messed it up in a way that makes me think I can get it with practice,” I confessed.

“So you feel fine now?” Claire asked, all sweet and careful.

“Yeah, as long as I know it’s not totally out of control,” I assured her.

“Good.” She nodded at Ray, and they stepped forward together, grabbed my shoulders, and pulled me toward the elevator. “You can’t spend all week down here,” she lectured me. “Your powers don’t need a push, they’re already racing. We’re going upstairs, you’re going to call your Mom and get us all a ride home, and then you will be crushed under the unstoppable might of my zombie rag dolls.”

“Uh-huh.” I pretended to concede. I’d let her find out about the candy chain saw the hard way.

An hour later, she found out about the candy chain saw the hard way. I found out that zombie rag dolls had a nasty reassembly mechanic, and, as fast as I could kill them, she could spawn two more. Then we both got ourselves stomped by some horrible hybrid thing Ray had been building without telling us. He called it “The Thresher,” and we might as well have been standing in front of a combine harvester when he launched it at us.

Who was the mad scientist here, anyway?!

Wednesday.

Mom was awake when I got up. It was Pancake Day. Nobody told me it would be Pancake Day, but a wise superheroine never questions good fortune. Needless to say, I questioned my good fortune. While shoveling buttermilk pancakes soaked in more butter and maple syrup into my mouth, of course. What was going on?

“Are you going to need a ride home this afternoon?” Mom asked as she passed the dishes through Dad’s latest model of dishwasher.

So that was it. Mom didn’t make me these pancakes. The Audit did. Another tell—you could have set a metronome to the rhythm of my mother’s hands through the dishwasher. Dishes were stacked, then slid into place on the shelves with perfect efficiency.

No point in lying to her. “Probably the opposite. I’ve got a lot more work to do on the clubhouse. I want my lab assembled as soon as possible.”

The Audit smiled, and walked over to the table, and it was Mom who bent down and kissed the top of my head. “You’re in such a rush. Your powers will arrive when they’re ready.”

Yep. I was guessing Friday. Or maybe tomorrow. One week after first emergence? That’d be perfect.

But that wasn’t what Mom meant. She was so sure about the four years thing she’d gone in totally the wrong direction. HA! I was out of the woods!

Honesty was now an even better policy. “I still want a lab. It’ll make me feel better.”

My Mom gave the head shake of adults dealing with children. My secret was safe for another day.

One morning of classes later, I slid my lunch tray down onto the table across from Ray, eyed the ravioli suspiciously, and wondered if I could get The Machine to recycle it into raw starch and tomato sauce and cheese proteins. If I just ate the ingredients raw, they’d taste better than this mushy paste.

“That’s quite a smile. It’s as if you won last night, instead of being churned into sugary goo.” Ray gloated as he unpacked his sandwiches.

“Sugary goo would be better than pasta frappe.” I poked whimsically at the ravioli with my fork.