Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (14 page)

“Claire Lutra, I’m glad you’re having a good day, but—” Mr. Zwelf started to object.

She didn’t let him finish. She spun around, clasped her hands behind her back, and gave a little bow. I had to echo her sunny smile, despite my sore ribs. She even cocked her head to one side, a single ash-blonde curl hanging over her eyes as she apologized, “Sorry, Mr. Zwelf!”

He smiled back. “It’s all right. Just get back to your work and talk
after
the experiment. Okay?”

Claire gave a little bob of her knees. “Thank you, Mr. Zwelf!” Triumphantly, she turned back to the workbench.

Claire and I both had our super powers. It had been quite a week.

summed up the next week with a checklist:

1 expanded smelter, glassworks, and plastic shaper

1 utility jumpsuit

67 assorted crystal batteries

2 static cling gloves

1 projectile air conditioner

1 lie

1 psychotic episode, courtesy of Ray Viles

“Ow!” I flexed my hands. Those burns hurt!

I was getting better at staying conscious while I worked. This thing in front of me would be an expansion of my metal caster. I needed to mix and smelt metals and shape glass and plastics, and this baby would do it. In fact, all I had to do was twist this around to define the dimensions, then pull this lever—

POOF. Ow! Glass had burst out of the machine and hardened in a globe as designed, then rolled into a little catch tray. Pulling the lever also clued me into a burn way up on my arm. On my arm? I held out my arms and looked myself over. Criminy, I had black ashy smudges and little burned holes all over my blouse and pants. Nowhere seriously embarrassing, but what a mess! I’d been floating so high on inspiration I hadn’t noticed.

I’d be working a lot with high temperature materials. I was lucky these burns were only first degree, maybe just scalds. I needed safety equipment, and my super power wasn’t going to provide anything that blandly conventional. To get it interested, I’d need some kind of heat distribution network under the fabric.

Something moved in the back of my head. I tried to lure it out. I might need serious protection. A full body suit with layered materials. Could I composite a metal protective mesh with plastic threads? Embed a modular electrical system to plug myself into future inventions? Goggles were a must, but they’d need to adjust to my nearsightedness no matter which direction I looked.

There. I could see it. So many tiny details. I’d just built machines that could help. I fed chunks of plastic and metals into the parts synthesizer. Fibers. I needed conventional fibers. I could feed The Machine my hair—no. I needed fibers. I needed them! I kicked off my shoes, stripped off my thick socks and dropped The Machine on top of them to devour. Then I scooped up a pile of electrical components and grabbed the soldering rod.

I let myself drift. I had to watch out just enough to not grab the metal threads until they cooled and not bump the heated pressure core with my arm. Needles. Thread. I didn’t know how to sew. I knew where the threads had to be.
Stop thinking and just do it.

I didn’t seem to have any new burns when I pulled my blouse and pants off. I lifted a leg to slide it into the jumpsuit I’d made when the elevator whirred.

EEK!
Bad timing! “Ray, if that’s you, eyes shut right now!”

“It’s me. Your modesty is safe,” Claire promised as the elevator slid to the bottom and the gate opened.

“I haven’t been able to get a hold of Ray since Friday,” she added, giving me a worried look straight in the eyes. She had to look me in the eyes because… right. I pulled the jumpsuit the rest of the way on and zipped it up. Then I wedged my feet into the boots. This was unexpectedly comfortable!

“I didn’t see him online. We could try calling him,” I suggested.

Claire was ready for that. “I tried that on the way here. No answer.”

Hmm. “He’s only got a land line.”

“I wouldn’t be concerned, but last week was weird.” Claire was right.

I wasn’t too worried. A voice wrenched my attention away. “Requesting permission to see the scientist’s laboratory?” Adult woman’s voice—it took me a second. Claire’s Mom!

Well… she was here. There was no way to keep it a secret. “Sure, come on down, Miss Lutra!”

The elevator whirred up, then down again, and Claire’sMMom stepped out. I pulled my jumpsuit’s gloves on, wincing at the hot, sharp pains from touching my burns. I needed to test the flexibility. Nice. Very nice, considering the gloves were layered with tubes and circuitry whose purpose I couldn’t quite remember. The circuitry was so I could plug things in, right? I had little outlets along my arms and shoulders and waist.

“This is the laboratory of a starting mad scientist,” Claire’s Mom told us in a hushed voice. Then her finger pointed right at me. “You made that outfit yourself. I know Brian’s style, and that isn’t it. And this thing.” She walked up in front of my metal, glass, and plasticworks. Seeing her next to it made me realize just how big the machine was. “Amazing. Look at all those levers. It’s not a joke that the only thing a stranger can operate on most mad-science inventions is the self-destruct.”

“That’s over—” I clapped my hands over my mouth. Ohmygod. I’d built a self-destruct lever into my smelter.

To cover, I slipped off my glasses and tried on my helmet. The visor was supposed to… forget “supposed to.” All I had to do was focus on Miss Lutra’s eyes to get a close-up of a striated blue iris.

“Could I convince you not to tell my parents?” I asked. “They’re rock certain that it’ll be years before my powers fully emerge. I want to build up and bury them in proof that they’re wrong.”

The smile she gave me wasn’t just warm. She had a devilish glee in her stare. “Of course! That’s why I’m here to invite you to celebrate only the first hints of Claire’s power.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up. “You’re covering up Claire’s powers, too?”

“Half-truths make the best lies, girls,” The Minx lectured in a brisk, easy tone. “We all expect two girls who don’t quite have their powers yet to spend a lot of time together and keep secrets. Claire needs the time to learn control before I throw her at the super-powered world. Everyone wins!”

Scrunching up her nose, Claire commented, “It’s not hard to turn off my power, but it’s like keeping my fist clenched every waking moment.”

“Not just when you’re awake. Lucyfar dropped by to congratulate you after you went to bed last night and spent ten minutes watching you sleep before I took pity and dragged her away,” Claire’s Mom added with slyly deadpan amusement.

Claire gave me a stare of melodramatic resignation. “Mom’s immune.”

“One day, you’ll be grateful. I couldn’t handle the temptations my power put in front of me at your age, and your power is much more dangerous. It doesn’t seem like that without the boys drooling all over your shoes, but trust me.” Miss Lutra wasn’t saying this for Claire’s benefit. Instead, she looked right down at me again and told me, “You’re her chaperone from now on. Like I said, everyone wins!”

What? The Minx didn’t want her daughter having the same fun she’d had? I bit down on that before I said it. All this inventing had left my brain raw.

Claire felt no such restraint and shot back, “You don’t regret anything.”

You only had to glance at her Mom’s playful smile to know Claire was right. Miss Lutra didn’t look any more guilty as she bent down and put an arm around Claire and kissed the top of her head. “No, I don’t. If you followed the same path I did, I would still be proud of you, but, if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have made different choices. I’m hoping I can pass on my harder lessons and you can have all the fun without the mistakes.”

Failing utterly in her attempt to sound resentful, Claire snarked, “I’m not going to have half the fun you did. Boys want to pinch the wrong cheeks when I turn on my powers.”

Miss Lutra stood up straight. “Which reminds me.” A second later, I got yanked off the floor and squeezed in a savage hug as Claire’s Mom squealed, “You gave my daughter her super powers! Thank you so much, Penny! Come on, let me treat you to ice cream.” Serious deja vu struck, along with minor asphyxiation and the certainty that Claire had inherited her Mom’s personality down to the tiniest detail.

When my feet were allowed to touch the floor again, I wheezed, “Let me put my clothes back on.” I glanced down at the ragged, lightly charred pile of fabric. “And maybe take me home to pick out new ones.”

A hand rubbed the top of my helmet, expertly making a mess out of my hair even though she couldn’t reach it. Back to “brisk with a touch of playful,” Miss Lutra told me, “I’ll buy you some clothes while we’re out instead. Your secret’s covered, and your parents know I’m feeling generous right now. Everybody wins! I just wish we could find Ray.”

Ray turned up on Monday. Claire, Ray, and I all have homeroom together, for all the good that does us. There’s no time to talk in homeroom. It did reassure me when he turned up almost like normal. Exactly like normal, except for his clothes. All Ray wore was black today. Black tee shirt with no logo, black pants, black shoes, black belt. Here he was, and I wouldn’t have thought the clothes were weird if I hadn’t been wondering about him already.

There was no time to talk during math class either, but perhaps there would be while we walked across the street to Upper High. I kept an eye out as I stepped out of the building, and his black clothing made Ray easy to spot.

I drifted over and fell in next to him. As he gave me a welcoming grin I asked, “What’s with the black?”

“I think it might be my new look,” he half-answered. Sly blue eyes dared me to ask more. The smile had always been there anyway. Okay, Ray was just fine, and certainly himself.

Except for the black. “Why black?” I asked as we hurried across the street between momentarily stopped cars.

“I thought I’d look good in it.” I couldn’t tell if he was serious, except he had to be serious, because he looked good in it.

Sure enough, he asked, “Do I look good in it?”

He had to ask that question? What did he expect me to say? To come out and admit that wearing black gave him shoulders I’d never noticed before, and he looked sleek instead of gawky? That I’d thought he was cute already, but this made me want to invent a—