Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (12 page)

It made bubblegum, that’s how it worked. What else mattered?

“Is it safe?” Claire asked again.

“Yes. Yes, I remember. It’s safe. It’s bubblegum. The purple thing in the middle will burn your hand, but the pink is regular bubblegum.” More pink frosted over the top, enough I could twist off a knot and toss it into my mouth. I’d been able to see what it did to humans while I made it. It was perfectly harmless.

It tasted like bubblegum. Pretty good, actually. Sharp flavor, very sweet, and the flavor lingered as I chewed. As Claire stared at me, Ray snapped off a bit and started chewing himself. Pursing his lips, he blew a bubble. Aww, man. I didn’t know how. His bubble was big. It stretched out farther and farther, growing to the size of his head before he sucked it back in.

Pulling the chewed up chunk out of his mouth, he tossed it into The Machine’s. The Machine stopped ventilating and gobbled it down happily.

Ray approved. “I don’t know if it’s the best bubblegum in the world, but it has to be in the running.”

“How much is it going to make?” Claire asked, bending over the bowl to peer at the big, squishy pink lump.

I grabbed at memories as they tried to pour away. “It’s like a catalyst. As long as it’s fed, it will keep making bubblegum, and it’s not picky about food.” It liked wood. I remembered that. Wood was the best, but I’d also known that the core would eat the dead skin off my hands.

Claire rephrased her question. “I mean, how big is it going to get?”

How big? I hadn’t fed it much, but I didn’t need to. “I think… maybe… room-sized?” I guessed. That couldn’t be right, but that was the picture I’d left in my head. A ball of bubblegum the size of this room. After that, it would run so short on conversion material it would slow down to a crawl.

Until then…

“Penny, it’s growing faster.” Claire’s voice went up a notch.

“Yeah, it will do that.” Now I felt sheepish. That’s what she meant. The ball of bubblegum was the size of a soccer ball already.

“Are we in danger?” Ray asked calmly. That was the important question.

“No. There’ll be a big mess,” I answered.

I really needed to contain that.

I took a deep breath. “Guys, give me quiet for a few seconds.” They did.

We could throw the stuff out, or fill a back room with it, but any way around it’d be a giant problem. Containment was what I needed. Not just a container, a container that slowed down the reaction, let me control it. Reactions only happened until they met too much resistance, right? Equilibrium.

That was the spark. I’d fitted together the first pieces of the puzzle, and the rest of it laid itself out in the back of my head.

I didn’t have time. I had to be fast. I pressed the bowl into Ray’s hands. “Hold this!” I ordered him. Then I turned and grabbed some insulating circuit board. I had to…

I couldn’t balance it all. I chose to stop thinking.

There were only two more soccer-ball-sized lumps of bubblegum ripped off and sitting in buckets as I locked the plastic shell into place. That hadn’t taken too long. I opened the hatch on one side, let enough bubblegum bulge through to rip off a chunk, then sealed it again.

“We’re safe?” Ray asked, his voice quiet.

“We were never in danger, but yeah. It’s controlled. The hatch on the other end even lets you feed it more wood. As long as the shell is shut, it can’t grow.” I wheezed. I was tired again. My arms had been sore, now they trembled. Whew!

All of a sudden, I had to laugh. “Super bubblegum. That has to be the most ridiculous invention, ever.”

“No.” Claire and Ray said it together. They were right. I’d seen the elephant attracting umbrella in the Museum Of Unsolved Science myself. I was a mad scientist piker.

“If you don’t want it, do you think I could have it?” Ray asked me, his voice cautious and trying not to press.

Way too much concern for a question like that. “Sure, but why do you want it?”

“Part of it is the last invention Penelope Akk made before she gained control of her powers, and the other half is the first invention Penelope Akk made when she gained control of her powers,” he explained.

Still way too much effort to sound calm-

He was right. I’d made the containment unit absolutely deliberately.

HA! And it was only Wednesday.

Thursday.

Oh, yeah. There had to be a next day after I’d mastered my powers. This time Dad was up early. He wasn’t making breakfast, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. As I walked past his office to take my shower and then walked back to dress, he sat in his office looking at three different computer screens, and on one of those screens he was designing a schematic.

I wandered in to have a chat. You know, super brain to super brain. “What are you making?” I asked over his shoulder.

“Aren’t you up a little late, Pumpkin?” he asked back.

I pointed to the jar. When he didn’t look, I turned his head. “I’m about to go to school. You’ve been up all night again.”

He had to stand up to get a dollar out of his wallet and drop it in the jar. That produced a groan. “Thanks, Pumpkin. I got wrapped up in a new idea. There’s no reason I can’t finish after a few hours sleep.”

I tapped the jar. He put another bill in it.

“What are you making?” I asked again.

He pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Quantum machines. I think I’ve finally got a teleporter design that conventional science can build.”

I looked at the screen. I saw math. I didn’t recognize half the symbols. The schematics did look molecular. “How does it feel when you use your power?” I asked.

“I don’t know what it feels like to not use it. The science makes sense, like it makes sense that it takes two one pound weights to balance a two pound weight. If I study enough, someone’s figured out the answers already. I just have to make an object out of their math.” Now he sounded tired. His voice was getting soft.

I looked at the screen. The math was math. I couldn’t attach it to anything. I looked at the second screen. Some paper entitled “Distances, Cohesion, and Quantum Tunneling.” I looked at the schematic on the final screen. It was wrong. It wasn’t what I saw in my head!

I shook my head, hard. Which hurt. Could you get super power hangovers? “You get to bed, Dad. I’m running out of time to eat breakfast.”

“Patience, honey. You’ll know what it feels like in a few years,” he mumbled as I walked out.

I’d been hoping for a third Pumpkin.

“What are you working on?” Claire asked me while our sugars decomposed in science class.

“I’m trying to come up with a good presentation for The Machine for the science fair,” I explained.

“You deserve an A. You deserve a college degree, or something,” Claire whispered.

“I’m not going to get it. I’ve decided to go Ray’s route. I can still get an A in the class if I get a zero on the science fair, so I’m not going to let it get to me. It would just be nice to make it fit the scientific method rules so it can win. I don’t think I can do it, but I’m trying.” I shrugged, and it felt surprisingly casual.

Ray inched a little closer along the table and hissed, “It’s wrong that you can’t get a good grade on this. If it doesn’t fit the rules, then the rules are wrong. A student got her super powers right here in school. The principal should have declared a holiday just to celebrate!”

I shrugged again. “I don’t need the grades, but they keep me in school and I need the classes. I can make stuff way beyond anything I understand, but knowing theory seems to be the spark. That happened yesterday. I thought about reaction equilibriums, and my brain took off to make that shell.” That popped another thought into my head, and I segued. “Where did you get the glycerol? Mr. Zwelf doesn’t seem upset, like he’s got ingredients missing.”

“We only took a few ounces from a gallon bottle. He doesn’t know it’s gone,” Claire mumbled. Yeah, we should keep our voices low about this.

Still, I had to glance over at the chemicals closet. “You really stole it? Did he leave the door open?”

Claire unsubtly leaned up to peek inside our crucible. She wasn’t going to answer, so Ray did. “Guess whose mother taught her to pick locks?” he whispered with considerable glee.

I gaped. “No way!” Then I felt a little dumb, because I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Claire still didn’t say anything. Quietly again, I asked, “Claire, is something wrong?” Had we upset her? She was usually proud of being The Minx’s daughter.

“Nothing big. I’ll tell you later,” she murmured back. Ray scooted down to the other end of the table, and Claire took our crucible down with the tongs and set it on the scale. I took the hint. Mr. Zwelf was watching us.

Later came. Specifically, Ray and I were waiting to pounce when Claire sat down with us at lunch.

“Spill the beans, girl. What’s wrong?” I ordered.

She did not spill the beans. She took them out of her lunchbox in a big covered bowl, and scooped us both out a portion. How can cafeteria chili be meat goo, but this stuff is red and packed with whole beans and has a smell as sharp as a knife?

I refused to be distracted with good food. I kept giving Claire the eye until she confessed, “It’s not a big deal. It’s just annoying. I can’t be a cheerleader because I’m out of shape.”

Ray must have physically bit his tongue not to say anything. I wanted to hug Claire and curse the world for her, but, “I have to admit, that almost sounds reasonable.”

“Almost, except the only reason Sue and Helga are in shape is because they attend cheerleader practice.” Now she was letting it out, at least enough to scowl angrily at her chicken salad.

“And it has nothing to do with Marcia wanting to be tyrant princess of her own little clique,” Ray observed, his tone sharp with sarcasm and disgust.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Just let it drop. It’s like you and the science fair. Cheerleading seemed like fun, but it’s not important. My best friend got her super power. That’s important. My second best friend’s winning streak with his junk yard abomination is going to end tonight. That’s important. This is a nuisance.”

“It’s still not fair,” Ray said for both of us.

“Topic over,” Claire told us firmly. “New topic: What should Penny build to surprise her parents?”

That did make for a more pleasant lunch between bites of chili even more tangy than it was hot.