Free The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M. Campbell

I mutter, but he just laughs.
    I drag myself out of bed—which consists of nothing but a blanket and a hardwood floor—rumpled and still wearing my clothes from last night. I yawn and follow Alex into the kitchen, though not as sprightly as him, bringing Mr. Wiggles with me. Mr. Wiggles and I, we have to stick together.
    A slightly pudgy teenage girl with blond eyebrows and dyed black hair sits at the dining table, glaring at us. “You’re late,” she says. This is Amelia. Amelia is fifteen. She has one of those countdown clocks in her room, like the kind they sell for New Year’s, counting down the days until she turns sixteen. She made a point of bringing it down and showing it to me last night. She’s got 236 days left. I told her maybe she shouldn’t be so impatient, because she might turn sixteen and find out she has latent supervillain genes, and then won’t she long for the carefree days of her carefree youth?
    “Couldn’t you have gotten dressed first?” Amelia asks in disgust. I can’t tell if she means me, looking like I’ve slept in my clothes all night but being otherwise fully dressed, or Alex, who’s running around in pajamas with his shirt half unbuttoned.
    I sit down at the table directly across from Amelia and position Mr. Wiggles next to me.
    Amelia makes a face. She’s wearing mauve eye shadow, which I hope isn’t to impress little old moi , as I am her half brother, her mortal enemy, and altogether not interested.
    “What is that?” she says, scowling at Mr. Wiggles.
    “This is Dr. Wiggles, formerly Mr. Wiggles. He recently got his PhD in early-twentieth-century literature.” Even if he didn’t have his degree, I’d still venture to say he’s smarter than Amelia.
    “Freak,” Amelia mutters under her breath, as if her saying it like that makes it okay, even though I can obviously hear her. “Aren’t you a little old to be playing with kids’ toys?”
    “Dr. Wiggles is a highly sophisticated piece of technology. Plus, ‘kids’ toys’ don’t go on to get their doctorates.” I have her there.
    She gapes at me, then says, “Whatever,” and rolls her eyes.
    Helen, my father’s wife and the mother of my three half siblings, limps out of the master bedroom with Jessica, my two-year-old half sister, glomped to her leg. Helen’s a superhero, too, but I didn’t catch what her power is.
    So far, I like Jessica the best because she talks the least, refers to me only as “boy,” and has started her own garden in the yard. She has a couple of rows of dirt marked with signs she made herself that have scribbles of what the vegetables are supposed to look like on them. I think one of them might have been a tomato, the others some kind of mutant carrot-cauliflower hybrid. There may or may not be any actual seeds planted there.
    “Boy!” Jessica says, hiding behind her mother’s legs and pointing a grubby finger at me.
    “Yes, Jess,” Helen mutters. “It’s a boy!” She says that last part sarcastically, mimicking the balloons and greeting cards people get when they have a baby. Helen has shoulder-length blond hair and owns an antique shop downtown. She always walks with a slight limp, I noticed, even when Jessica isn’t trying to climb her leg.
    Jessica takes a risk, leaving the safety of hiding behind Helen, and runs over to the dining table, where she stares at me with wide blue eyes.
    “Jess,” Amelia says, patting the seat next to her. “Sit here, Jess.”
    Jessica ignores her and continues to stare at me.
    Amelia keeps calling her like a cat until Jessica turns around and says, “No,” very sternly. Another reason why I like her.
    Amelia makes a noise of frustration that sounds like a train colliding with a herd of mooing cows. “Nobody in this house ever listens to me!”
    I rest my chin in my hands, my elbows propped on the table, and stare at her. “I’m listening, Amelia. Tell me your problems.”
    That infuriates her even more, though for a second she