Free The Trials of Renegade X by Chelsea M. Campbell

She’s been too busy having another kid. One she’s actually happy about. He might not have been planned, either, but at least he’s all villain. He even looks like her.” I pause, thinking about holding Xavier earlier. “I don’t want to like him.” I feel kind of ashamed to say it. Whatever Mom did, it’s not his fault. But that doesn’t change the fact that I wish he didn’t exist.
    “I used to wish my parents would have another kid,” Kat says. She’s an only child. We used to have that in common. “But that was when I was, like, two. If they had another one now? Ugh.”
    A girl’s voice in the background shouts, “We’re going to the student store, Katie, you want to come?”
    “Can’t,” Kat says. “I’m on the phone.” As if they were talking to her, even though they obviously used the wrong name. Crazy.
    “Ooh,” another girl’s voice says, “talking to your boyfriend ?” Whoever she is, she says the word boyfriend like it’s the most scandalous thing in the world. Kat must have told her all about me.
    Then both girls call out in a singsong voice, “Hi, Damien!” before giggling hysterically and leaving the room.
    “Sorry about that,” Kat says, sounding embarrassed. “Those are my suitemates, Tasha and Liv. I guess I kind of talked a lot about you today.”
    “Understandable. I mean, it is difficult to go a whole day without gushing about how awesome I am. I often have trouble myself.”
    There’s a thumping noise. Then Kat says, “That was me, hitting you with a pillow. Hard.”
    “I guess there are some benefits to this long-distance thing.”
    “Seriously, I was one of those annoying people who wouldn’t shut up about her boyfriend back home. I even showed them pictures of you on my phone.”
    “And they were so taken with me, they forgot to ask you why I don’t go to your school.”
    “I kind of let them think you’re a year younger than me.”
    Well, it’s better than them knowing the truth—that I go to Heroesworth, their rival school—or thinking I wasn’t good enough to get into Vilmore. Which is, er, sort of also the truth, since even before I got my X , I was apparently not an ideal candidate, or at least according to Taylor, my stepfather-to-be and the former dean of Vilmore. He resigned last year, after Pete, my ex-best friend and one of his star students, died during his and Mom’s attempt to take over Golden City. But not before he’d made his final decisions on who would be joining Vilmore’s freshman class this fall. Mom really should have waited to start sleeping with him until after the admissions process. But, as I said before, she never listens to me. “They’re going to be disappointed next year when I don’t show up.”
    “Well, I was kind of hoping ... I mean, you know, Heroesworth might not be your thing.” That’s an understatement. “And you could reapply. Taylor’s not the dean anymore. You just need to buff up your villainous extra-curriculars. I could help you. Between the two of us, we could pull off something really devious.”
    I’m silent a minute, taking that in. And even though I’ve decided I want to get my H , part of me is still tempted by what she’s saying. “Who’s Katie?”
    “Oh.” She swallows. “That’s me.”
    “Yeah, I figured. You didn’t tell them your name was Kat?”
    “Well, at role call this morning in Thwarting Heroes, Mrs. Thorpe called me Katherine. I said I go by Kat, but then this kid, Tristan, he started teasing me and calling me Katie instead and it kind of stuck.”
    I can’t picture her as a Katie. She’s always been Kat to me. “So some guy starts flirting with you and now you have a new name?” Some guy who better hope I never do get into Vilmore, because I will murder him. And probably get extra credit for it.
    “ Damien . It wasn’t like that.”
    But I can tell from the way her voice gets super high-pitched that it was like that. I switch my phone to my other ear. There’s a