Free The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M. Campbell Page B

pretty sure they don’t, because according to Amelia, she’s the only superhero at this school. A fact she didn’t sound too upset about.
    Unlike everybody else, the black-spandex kids sit on top of their desks. Then there’s the teacher, Mrs. Log, who’s wearing a plain, flower-print dress and scribbling some equations on the whiteboard. Most of the other kids plowing into the room sit in the middle rows of desks and don’t make eye contact with the spandex kids. But nobody sits anywhere near “Kink,” the girl in the back.
    Kink has crimped, sandy-blond hair, with a hair band pulled over the top of it. It does nothing to stop it from looking wild and poofy and unkempt. A long braided strand of hair runs down the side of her face, with a couple of silver beads woven in that go with the choker made of tinfoil gleaming around her neck. She doesn’t seem to notice that nobody wants to sit by her, her nose shoved in a paperback about the world’s most notorious jailbreaks. By the looks of it, it’s a real page-turner.
    Hmm. Supposed freak, or the boring rest of the class? I shrug off the guy who thinks he’s doing me a favor and sit down next to Kink. She doesn’t look up at me or acknowledge my presence in any way.
    It was Gordon and Helen’s idea for me to go to high school. When I told Helen I’d never been before, she almost cried. Then I explained that I’d been homeschooled, but that didn’t help. She must have been picturing cavemen-like supervillains in capes grunting and showing me how to rub two sticks together to make “the pretty fire stuff.”
    There are high schools specifically for heroes, but thankfully Gordon doesn’t believe in sending his kids there. He thinks going to a school full of boring old regular kids brings you closer to the people you’ll be saving later. I asked him why, with that line of thinking, he didn’t send us to an old-people home so we could get closer to the people we’re going to help cross the street. His face kind of twitched, like he wanted to get mad at me, but instead he smiled and said I could volunteer at the senior center after school if I was concerned. Fat chance. But even if I won’t be saving anyone, I’m glad he didn’t try to send me to hero school. Regular school is going to be bad enough, and so is living with a bunch of superheroes—I don’t need to be surrounded by hundreds of them every day. Ugh.
    Gordon and Helen made Amelia walk with me on the way here, but once we set foot inside the building, she gave me instructions not to talk to her, called me a freak for good measure, and walked off. I will be, as they say, paying her a visit at lunch today. I look forward to it.
    “Class,” Mrs. Log says once “school” has started, “today we have a new student.” She beckons me toward the front of the room. People turn their heads as I pass by, making pointed looks at my gloves, and coughing the word “Poser” into their hands. Maybe word hasn’t gotten around that Amelia and I are related, and they think I’m pretending to be a hero. Or a villain. Or this school isn’t as hero-friendly as Gordon thought, and they’re pissed because I’m not ordinary enough to go here.
    Mrs. Log introduces me. “Kids, this is Damien Locke.”
    I take a bow, which earns me some snickering from the black-spandex kids, who are now sitting behind their desks like everybody else.
    “He’s, uh, coming to us from another school. Is that right, Damien?” Mrs. Log’s brow furrows as she checks over a piece of paper that must have my information on it.
    The Mistress of Mayhem’s Institution for Underprivileged Boys. “Eastwood,” I say, because that’s the school Amelia keeps telling me I should be going to. Eastwood is apparently where they send kids who can’t handle normal society. You know, delinquents, the insane, and pregnant girls.
    Saying I came from Eastwood gets me the reaction I wanted. Half the class looks away from me in a mixture of fear