Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (10 page)

I certainly felt relieved when the lunch bell rang. Still, the one person who hadn’t been staring at me during English class was the one person I absolutely knew had superpowers, and the person I really wished I got along better with: Claudia.

Seeing Claudia was different after meeting Mourning Dove. They were both totally serious about fighting evil, and they both had terrifying powers but still fought by stealth to wring every last advantage out of a fight. If it were possible for a cyborg zombie like Mourning Dove to have children, I’d wonder if Claudia was her daughter.

Mourning Dove had recognized we weren’t bad guys. I had to keep trying with Claudia.

With that in mind, the first thing I did when I walked into the cafeteria was stop at Claudia’s table. She sat all alone, so we weren’t likely to be overheard. I didn’t take a seat, but I did put my lunchbox down on the metal tabletop and lean over to say…

What?

I blurted out the first thing on my mind. “What do you think of Mourning Dove?”

She gave me a guarded stare, not quite blank. Her voice conveyed the same emotion, flat and just a bit suspicious. “So you were there.”

“She reminded me a lot of you.”

I’d meant it as a compliment, but the moment the words came out of my mouth, I knew I’d messed up. Claudia’s expression didn’t change, but her arms and shoulders trembled. Her answer came more bleakly emotionless than ever. “I don’t kill people.”

“That wasn’t what I meant…”

Claudia wasn’t listening. She picked up a spoon, her dark eyes staring up at me in disgust. “Your power is cute and fun, Penelope. I have to work day and night not to kill people, not to destroy everything I touch.” She bent the spoon in her fingers, mashing it into her palm, and then dropped the lumpy, rolled up ball of metal into her empty milk carton. No one else noticed. She might as well have been squishing a french fry. “I try. She doesn’t.”

So much power. “Criminy. Did you inherit that? Is your dad a superhero?”

I’d meant to ask about her mom too, but I didn’t get the chance. Claudia interrupted me. “Everyone tells me not to get personal. If it’s none of my business who Bad Penny’s parents are, it’s none of your business who my father is.”

I stammered, “I’m not trying to get personal. I mean, I am, but in the normal way. We could be friends, Claudia.”

She picked up her fork, and went back to eating mashed potatoes, not looking at me at all. Her expression had turned colder than ever. No, that was wrong. Now her cheeks were flushed. She looked like I’d punched her in the face, except I’d break my fist trying that.

I picked up my lunchbox and moved on. This had been about the same as the last couple of times I’d tried to make friends with Claudia, only this time the subject had been superpowers.

“Struck out again?” Ray asked as I sat down at our table.

I nodded.

“Then let me be the first to change the subject,” said Claire, her voice airy and sweet, and her eyes sharp with mischief.

I waved one hand while the other set my lunch box to unfolding. “I’ve had enough talking about Mourning Dove.”

Claire just grinned wider. I could tell by her pale hair that she had her power completely turned off. She leaned forward, spinning her spoon in her fingers and looking like a snake about to strike. “Not that. I’ve been wondering all morning why the change in wardrobe.”

Oh, criminy buckets. I thought I’d been smooth! I thought nobody had noticed! No, I didn’t normally wear dress shirts with a sweatervest over them, but it’s not like I looked bad. If Claire noticed, Mom had noticed last night AND yesterday AND this morning. Guaranteed.

My face hurt. They could both see me blushing. Maybe that would hide the mark, make things not look as bad.

I had to stop procrastinating. There was no point in waiting until Claire specifically pointed out that this outfit gave me a high, concealing collar. I leaned forward, and with one finger pulled the collar down a couple of inches.

Of course, before I could offer any explanation Claire squealed, “Is that a hickey?!”

With supreme effort, I kept my forehead from collapsing onto the table. Someone had to have heard that!

No, the lunchroom was really noisy. Nobody could hear anything at another table. I hoped. I hoped so bad. I put both my hands on the tabletop, and made myself look up. Claire was giving Ray exactly the gleefully knowing look I’d been afraid of. Ray just had his eyebrows raised.

Please, Tesla, please let them both believe me. “No! Not really. It’s from Archimedes.” I’d decided that was a good name for a mad scientist’s familiar/psychic cat symbiote. “He doesn’t eat. He barely breathes. He hibernates when I take him off. When he’s connected, he doesn’t just read my nervous system, he filters oxygen and nutrients from my blood.” Along with the name, I’d decided he was male. It was just a label. If it wasn’t, I didn’t want to check and find out.

Thank goodness. Claire believed me. She sank back into her seat with a sullen, “Awww.” Ray did too, but then I couldn’t imagine who he might think I was cheating on him with.

I noticed something else. “Which must be why I’m starving.” I dug into the bland, lukewarm lunch my mother had packed as if it were ambrosia.

I ended up staying a couple of minutes after the bell to stuff every last crumb of food down my craw, and had to run at top speed across the street to Geometry class, where… I learned things. Things about volumes of shapes.

There had to be a rule beyond just memorizing these equations. The area of a circle and the volume of a sphere were so similar, they were obviously connected. Triangles and cones were clearly linked. There had to be a system.

If only my superpower actually made me super smart, instead of just providing me with blueprints for random crazy inventions.

The fire alarm went off, interrupting my brooding over injustice. A couple of high school kids squeaked. We all looked at the teacher, and she waved her arms, so we shuffled out the class and down the stairs and out onto the lawn in a loose cloud.

Across the street, the crowd in front of Northeast West Hollywood Middle was a lot more concentrated, gathered in a ring around one corner of the building. I felt distinctly antsy. It was proooobably coincidence, but my secret lair was under that corner!

Ray and I were legitimately students of Northeast West Hollywood Middle, not high school students like the ones crowded around us. We had an excuse to make our way over to get a better look. This certainly didn’t look like a fire.

Someone ran across the street to meet us. ‘Zipped’ might have been a better word. Claudia lunged the last ten feet so fast that even Ray couldn’t react in time.

I wanted to worry about her secret identity. It was hard with her face suddenly in mine, shoulders set, so close I could barely make out clenched fists by her side.

“What are you playing at, Penelope Akk?” She stood so close I could feel her breath on my face, and the sense of barely restrained violence would have shocked anyone who only knew her as meek, depressed Claudia and hadn’t seen her as Generic Girl.

“I’m not playing at anything.” I had no idea what was going on!

Whatever she suspected me of, ‘lying’ must not have been on the list. She turned and stomped back across the street at a normal human pace.

Now I definitely had to find out what was going on. I ran across the street towards the crowd, listening to the fire alarm ringing inside Northeast West Hollywood Middle. At least no one paid any attention to the locked side doors that led down to my lair. They clustered around the regular exit, trying to get a peek inside. I resisted the urge to shout ‘Supervillain coming through!’ and settled for worming my way in with rude elbows. My passage became significantly easier when Ray caught up and used a fraction of his super strength to nudge people out of my way.

I did notice that one tiny blonde, probably a sixth grader, resisted his nudge with no effort. Another superhero’s kid?

At the door, teachers and a few particularly stubborn kids gathered around the entrance to the computer lab. Cracking noises clashed with the alarm bell. Hoo boy. Super-powered trouble, alright.

Well, super-powered trouble was my business now. The security guard grabbed for me, but Ray pushed me past, letting the guard grab him instead. I slipped under Mr. Geisser’s arm, and got my first look inside the lab.

Blue light flashed and crackled everywhere. A head-sized ball of lightning swooped and darted erratically around the room, reaching out arcs of electricity like fingers to trace black char over the walls and tables. The computers were already all blown. Some of the monitors flickered with actual fire, and ash fouled the ports of the towers. The three printers had been reduced to piles of half-melted scrap and scattered parts.

In the middle of one table sat a big battery, one of those oversized batteries for flashlights, painted yellow with a crude blue face and a zigzag mouth. In the air above hung a sign, written in twisting blue lightning letters. ‘TOP THIS.’

Mr. Geisser put his hand on my shoulder. He had to speak up to be heard over the crackling lightning and ringing fire alarm. “Don’t get involved, Penelope.”

“I’m already involved,” Isaid, before the thoughts finished forming in my head. I was. This had to be aimed at me.

Mr. Geisser’s hand tightened on my shoulder, and he turned me to look up at him. His red moustache curled into a bow around his frowning mouth. “No, you aren’t. Everybody knows the Inscrutable Machine go to this school. This is a challenge for Bad Penny.”

“Well, Penny Akk is going to answer it,” I snapped back, yanking my shoulder free and stepping into the room.

It was dumb. Mr. Geisser was right, this would only cause trouble, make me a target, and my fragile cover was strained to the limit already. One thing was more important than all that.

The modified battery sat on my computer desk. My workstation was a smoking mess. All my class projects were gone. My semi-sentient computer program was gone. Whoever did this would pay, oh yes, they would pay. I’d start by making them look like a fool.

The lightning wisp swooped towards me immediately. I held up my wrist, and the bolts of electricity that spat at me grounded in the Machine. The Machine could eat the entire lightning wisp, but that would be far too easy. I had the greatest mad science power since Tesla, and everyone would watch me use it to crush this mystery vandal’s prize creation.

My power responded immediately. Wires and circuit boards and electrical parts of all kinds surrounded me on all sides. I just had to…

No. No. I was not going to do that power. Penelope Akk made purely mechanical inventions, things like the Machine. Bad Penny could make absolutely anything, but everyone—and especially my mother—had to believe Penelope Akk’s theme was clockwork.

Well, that wouldn’t be a problem. Rotating magnetized metal would do nicely. Reaching under my desk, I hauled my blasted computer tower up onto the surface and unwound the Machine. “Eat.”

All I had to do was keep my hand on the Machine as it worked. The Machine sucked the wisp’s lightning bolts down when it came near, eating faster after every strike. Legs withdrew, replaced by longer, thicker spikes. New plates slid out to cover old plates, storing the metal. By the time the Machine finished recycling my poor, murdered computer, it had swollen to the size of a dog, and looked like a white and copper ladybug.

“Gear. This big. Thirty-two spokes. Gear. This big. Sixteen spokes.”

The Machine spat out the parts I wanted. I got to work hooking them together. Gears were just the beginning. I needed an escapement, which meant a lot of fiddly parts. That would keep the magnetized gears made from my hard drive turning in the right rhythm.

Compared to my power’s normal creations, this was easy. It was just… obvious. This bent arm would be pushed to the side by every tick of the gears. The spring would relax at just the right pace. I had tons of extra metal to make a case.

I twisted, locked, and wound. It didn’t take long. I knew it didn’t take long, because I never quite slipped under. I was involved, this time. The same motion that made the magnetic gears spin turned the larger connecting gear, moving them around in a circle. The winding key was just to get things started.

I twisted the key, slapped the fat disk I’d built on the table, and stepped back, cradling the still heavy Machine in my arms.

Live, my sweet creation! Live! Figuratively.

Tick. Tick. I could see the gears turning in my head. I could see a lot of them turning on the table, since the design required open spaces to hold the wisp.

Tick. Tick. The electrical sign hovering above my construct twisted, bending down with each tick.

The wisp flew past, and jerked to a halt. It flew off in another direction, only to be stopped one exact second later. Heh heh heh. This was why my device had to tick. The wisp had just enough decision-making ability to fight a steady pull. It couldn’t deal with a sharp, relentless rhythm.

The wisp bounced around in a circle, but the circle kept shrinking. It passed through the ‘TOP THIS’ sign, sucking the letters into itself. Already bent towards my creation, they pulled the wisp down.