Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (4 page)

had my weird little machine, and I had my super power. Now I had to do the right thing. Before, that would have been humiliating and terrifying. Not now.

Claire tried to argue with me. It was her decision, blah blah blah. She shut up when I pulled the door to the biology classroom open.

“Claire Lutra, Penelope Akk, Ray Viles, what are you doing, and, Miss Lutra, why are you so late?” Mrs. Golgi demanded, pausing in her lecture to give us a frosty glare. I imagined Claire and Ray fainting behind me, but I was in front on purpose. I couldn’t feel her anger at all, just the wonderful high-tech metal bracelet around my wrist that I’d made myself.

The right thing would also be the smart thing, if I was brave enough to do it, but that wasn’t the point. It was the right thing.

“Mrs. Golgi, I’m here to apologize,” I told her solemnly. “I’m the reason Claire missed class. I’ve been having a hard time, and I broke down, and, if Claire and Ray hadn’t found me and gotten me through it, I don’t know what I would have done. I really lost it. I know I’m going to be in trouble, but please don’t blame Claire for being a good friend.”

It was all completely true. Talking about super powers would have confused the issue. What I’d said had been the important part.

Mrs. Golgi could tell. She looked stumped, like anyone caught between anger and sympathy. I’d had her last year, and she was a good teacher and a good person. All my teachers were.

Her face and tone never gave away exactly how she’d decided to feel, but she ordered, “Claire, take your seat. You’ll have just enough time to copy down the homework. You two, get to your next class. If you don’t show up on time, you can expect to be in even more trouble than you are now, Penelope.”

“Yes, Mrs. Golgi,” I agreed. I felt like doing the Japanese thing and bowing, but she’d think I was insulting her when I meant it. I did the next best thing and obeyed immediately, backing out into the hall.

“You have German. I’ve got to get back to computer science,” Ray told me sheepishly. Our classrooms were in opposite directions.

“You’re not abandoning me.” Lifting up my right hand, I showed off the segmented bracelet wrapped around my wrist. “See you in science,” I promised. I smiled, and it felt like contentment shot straight from the bracelet into my heart, then spread out everywhere. I had a super power. All that worry and tension were over.

So he went one way, and I went the other. I got to German class right as the bell rang to let out the last class. I learned immediately that my super power hadn’t opened up some awesome wealth of new brains. I spent the hour struggling to figure out which nouns had which gender.

I was fine with that. My German grade was a sideshow now. If I could pull it up, that would be great.

What was important was my invention, which I had no time to investigate while trying to give German the focus it desperately needed.

That had to wait until the next period, in science. Not the same as biology, or computer science. “Science” wrapped up chemistry and physics in one bag. It was often a fun class, and today we compared elastic and inelastic reactions, throwing cue balls and toy cars and rubber balls at each other and doing lots of calculations to figure out how much force was lost when they hit.

It was a perfect excuse for me, Claire, and Ray to huddle together. Plus, we had the measurements and calculations of each experiment finished in half the time anybody else did and didn’t even have to concentrate. It gave us time to talk.

And we had a much more interesting scientific conundrum on our hands. On my wrist.

“You still don’t remember what it does?” Claire asked as she scribbled down the calculated force of our slingshot.

“No! It’s not a blank. I remember putting it together, but I can’t make sense of it. I didn’t know any words for what I was doing,” I whispered.

“You may not remember long. Memories you don’t have words for disappear quickly,” Ray suggested as he smacked a toy car against a wall.

I measured the distance it traveled back. “There has to be some superhuman dexterity thrown in. These levers and gears are beyond tiny.” I peered into one of the open panels at the bracelet’s intricate guts, my heart burning with pride.

“I hope you can take it off,” Claire pointed out. We were all feeling pretty whimsical.

I was sure I could, but I wasn’t going to experiment while performing a lab experiment. It would have to wait until I had real freedom, during lunch!

I only had the patience to go through the cafeteria line because I knew I’d regret not eating big time by the time I got home. We get a lot of Bel Air kids whose parents don’t go for the private school thing, but the food is still bland. So bland that I picked up a couple of pieces of cafeteria pizza without enthusiasm. It’s all just different colors of cardboard.

Claire had to be developing superhuman lateness superpowers. Ray watched me and my machine approach the table like a hawk ready to pounce, but Claire was nowhere to be seen—

until the instant I sat down she walked in the door and made an impatient beeline to settle beside me.

“It can’t just be a bracelet. Look at all that machinery. And we saw it move!” Claire cooed over the machine. It was rapidly becoming The Machine in my head, the mystery device my life now orbited around.

Ray leaned over the table, adjusting his glasses like magnifying lenses as he squinted into one of the open panels. “The internals are purely mechanical. I noticed that while you were building. It doesn’t run on electricity. Your first doomsday machine is a malevolent, inscrutable wristwatch.” I left my right arm stretched out over the table for them to study while I ate limp brown cardboard with gooey yellow cardboard on top of it. I wasn’t going to ask for my hand back from Ray, nope. Not even after the “doomsday machine” crack.

“Does it run at all, now? It moved before. How do you trigger it?” Claire asked.

I washed the “pizza” down with milk. At least milk is milk. I minded more that having to eat something had kept me from my own investigations. Wiping my hand on a napkin to get less grease on The Machine, I made my first attempt to slide it off my wrist. That didn’t work. I was pretty sure the segments clenched tighter together when I pulled.

“It’s not stuck there, is it? Like, forever?” Claire asked, suddenly anxious.

I breezed that question aside. “Worst comes to worst, my Dad can get it off. I knew what I was making when I made it, even if I didn’t have words. I’m positive it wasn’t meant to hurt me.”

“We can mark off ‘malevolent,’ but we’re still left with ‘inscrutable.’“ Ray chuckled.

“Maybe your powers don’t have to do with inventing in general, but with this—” Claire started to suggest, but she suddenly stopped. Half the conversations in the cafeteria stopped when some adults opened the doors.

Not just any adults. My Mom and Dad. Brian “Brainy” Akk and The Audit didn’t have much of a secret identity, so a lot of the kids knew on sight that these were my parents.

I ought to have been mortified and terrified, but instead I had trouble keeping my expression solemn and apologetic like itought to be. I stood up, grabbed my book bag, and walked around to the door to meet them. Nobody in the crowd said anything mean. Maybe they knew, in some secret mob psychology way, that this was my moment of triumph rather than shame.

Ray and Claire fell in behind me. I wanted to tell them not to. As much as I no longer cared, there might be serious trouble on the way. I’d like to have kept Ray and Claire out of that, but that would be taking away their chance to share my triumph.

No teachers waited with my folks out in the hallway. Superheroes had to be trustworthy, right? Mom and Dad were trying to look noncommittal. They didn’t know what was going on, yet. Mom’s poker face is amazing, but Dad looked worried. “Penny, we got a call from the Principal’s Office. You told them you missed math class because of some kind of nervous collapse.” My heart thumped in my chest. He had the most serious expression in the world, and the sharply planed face for it. I had the best parents.

I couldn’t leave them in suspense. As solemnly and respectfully I could, I explained, “It’s true. I’ve been going crazy with stress, but I think that was a side effect. I had to get a little crazy to make this.” I held up my wrist and grinned. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. They’d understand, now.

They knew what it meant, but they didn’t want to just leap to the obvious conclusion. “You built this yourself? What does it do?” asked my Dad, taking my hand and holding my wrist up high so he could peek in at the machinery.

He ought to have turned around and told me what it did. That he didn’t got my Mom’s notice. “Even if it’s just jewelry, Brian, that’s not middle-school level craftsmanship. That’s not even prodigy-level craftsmanship.” Her eyes turned on me with her professional look. Yikes, now I knew why criminals sometimes surrendered without a fight. I felt like I’d been disassembled and weighed and every part tagged. “What tools did you use, and how long did it take?”

“I had power tools from the shop, and about half an hour?” I glanced at Ray and Claire for confirmation, and they nodded.

“Less than forty-five minutes, Mrs. Akk. We got Claire back to class before the bell,” Ray agreed.

“Even if it’s junk…” Mom began. She didn’t get to finish.

“Stop fighting the obvious, Beebee. Your daughter’s powers have arrived! Congratulations, darling!” Claire’s Mom squealed. I was suddenly engulfed in platinum blonde hair and strong, slender arms. Only Mom had seen her coming. Well, only Mom didn’t look surprised.

“We don’t know anything for sure yet, Misty,” Mom argued. Even she was starting to crack a smile. This argument was lost before it started.

“Can you think of any explanation that does not involve Penny having super powers?” The Minx shot back. She set me down, but gave me another quick hug. “This is the proudest moment of your life so far, Penny. Throw caution to the wind and enjoy it.”

“As for you two…” Claire’s Mom went on, rounding on Claire and Ray. She gave both of them a playful hair ruffle, and praised, “You two are such good friends. You’re not in any trouble at all, Claire. Skipping class to help a friend you’re worried about? Getting to see that shining moment when her power comes out for the first time? I’m proud of you. Both of you.”

That last came with a wink at Ray, who looked stunned. I could tell Dad was staring, just less obviously. Rather than having to work to use it, Claire’s Mom had to work
not
to use her powers. Her control must be slipping today. I hope I look that good when I’m nearing forty, but she had to be using superpowers to keep a boy as young as Ray mesmerized.

I was one of those people with super powers now!

My Dad had more self-control than Ray. He pulled his attention back to The Machine on my wrist. “What does it do?” he asked. The million-dollar question, right there.

“I don’t actually know,” I admitted.

“We’ll take you home and analyze it, Princess. We ought to do that anyway,” Dad assured me, placing his hand on my backpack to start me moving.

“Mom?” I asked. She understood what I meant and nodded. There’d be five more bucks in the Princess jar when we got home.