Chapter 2

 

I MOTION FOR THE girl sitting across the table from Amelia to scoot down so we can sit with them at lunch. The girl’s eyes get really wide when she sees me, and she gasps and almost chokes on her food. Her face goes kind of red, though that might be because she’s coughing so hard.

When she’s done coughing up her bite of hamburger, she just kind of sits there, gaping at me.

I clear my throat and motion for her to move again.

Amelia rolls her eyes. “Ignore him, Jana. He’s just my stupid brother.”

“It’s okay,” Jana squeaks. She scoots down the bench, practically crashing into Melissa, who’s sitting next to her. One by one, everyone moves down until there’s room. Well, room enough for one person.

I set down my tray and point to Amelia. “Move.”

She lets out this really annoyed sigh, like I just asked her for the moon, then scoots over to make space for Riley. “You guys shouldn’t even be sitting with us. You’re not part of our cabin.”

I set down Riley’s tray across from mine. “Nobody said we have to sit with our cabins.”

“Yeah,” Riley says, carefully leaning his crutches against the end of the table. “There’s no rule about it.”

“But you’re supposed to want to sit with your cabin,” Amelia says, crunching on the handful of potato chips she just stuffed into her mouth. “It’s part of the bonding experience.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I tell her.

She gets this smug look on her face. “What’s wrong? Is someone having trouble making friends?”

“Shut up. Everyone in our cabin is a douchebag. I don’t make friends with douchebags.”

“Or with anyone. What did you do to them?”

“Nothing.” Yet. “They’re the ones who attacked me.”

Amelia snorts, like she doesn’t believe that.

“I didn’t even provoke them.”

“Yeah, right. You didn’t do anything, but now you’re so afraid of them you have to come and crowd up our table when you’re not even part of our group?”

“It’s okay,” Jana says, still kind of gaping at me. “It’s not that crowded.”

“I’m not afraid of them,” I tell Amelia, hoping I sound convincing. I mean, I’m not afraid of them. Even if they did sort of prove that they can, like, totally disarm me and overpower me and stuff. But I was just caught off guard. And I didn’t want to get sent home. “I’m just avoiding them. Besides, why would we want to sit with a bunch of douchebags?”

“We wouldn’t,” Riley says.

“Well, you can’t join Team Glitter,” Amelia tells us. “We already have six people, and it’s girls only.”

I roll my eyes at her. “We’re not trying to join your stupid group.”

“And they don’t have the matching headbands,” Hil points out. She leans down and digs around in her backpack, then sits back up holding a headband covered in glitter with paper rabbit ears taped to it.

Amelia gets hers out, too, and then so do Melissa and Jana and the other two girls at their table. They all put them on, getting glitter everywhere.

“Team Glitter!” Amelia calls out.

All six of them start clapping rhythmically and shouting, “Team Glitter, Team Glitter, Team Glitter!” over and over. At the end, they all stand up and shimmy, then throw their hands up and scream, “Team Glitter!” one last time before sitting back down again.

I exchange a look with Riley.

“See?” Amelia says, a little out of breath. “You don’t even know the cheer.”

“I think I could figure it out.”

“Well, you’re not joining.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“I mean,” she goes on, like she didn’t hear me, “I could almost see letting Riley be an honorary member, because he’s Zach’s brother and because he’s nicer than you.”

“I’m your actual brother.”

“Half brother. And he’s still nicer than you, and I only said almost. We’d have to put it to a vote. And,” she adds, turning to Riley and pointing to her headband, “you’d have to make your own ears.”

“Er, that’s okay,” Riley says.

“It’s not that hard,” Jana says. “We have plenty of extra glitter.”

“Riley’s not joining your group,” I tell them. “We’re just trying to eat lunch.”

Amelia sniffs, offended by that. “Fine. I only said maybe anyway.”

“What did you guys do for your team unity project?” Melissa asks.

She means what did we make instead of glittery bunny-ear headbands. We were supposed to come up with something to make as a cabin that represented our team spirit and togetherness, or at least that’s how Steve, our camp counselor who looks maybe a few years older than us and who was super nervous the whole time, explained it. Our cabin mates decided to make anti-lightning signs out of paper. They each drew a lightning bolt inside one of those crossed out red circles, colored them so everyone could see what they were from a distance, and then taped them to their chests. They wanted to do crossed out Vs, but our counselor got really uncomfortable and said that was going too far, especially after what happened with the League. He didn’t seem super happy with them switching it to lightning, either, but I guess he’d used up all his backbone for the day, because he didn’t stop them, even though the anti-lightning symbols obviously didn’t promote unity, or at least not for the whole cabin, since me and Riley refused to make them.

The rest of our group didn’t really care what we did, though Counselor Steve said we still had to make something because we had to participate, so I drew a picture of a dinosaur fighting a truck—something to give to Alex once I get back home, even though it’s been about a million years since we played Trucks vs. Dinosaurs—and Riley drew one of a cow at a grocery store being horrified by the price of butter.

It took us the whole hour and a half of allotted time, and we still almost didn’t finish because Eric, one of our cabin mates who also happens to have the same superpower as Amelia—the ability to teleport objects to himself as long as he’s touched them before—kept stealing our drawing utensils out of our hands and laughing about it. Counselor Steve told him not to, but after the third time it happened and it was obvious nobody was listening to him, he gave up.

“We kind of did our own thing,” I tell Melissa.

She scrunches up her nose in confusion. “But…”

“But that’s not team unity,” Amelia says, finishing her sentence for her. “Oh, my God. You guys are so hopeless. Sorry, Riley,” she adds. “I know you’re not really.”

“Um, thanks?”

“Don’t thank her,” I tell him. Then, to Amelia, I say, “And it’s hard to have team unity when the rest of your group’s a bunch of letterist douchebags who hate you.”

“What did you expect?” She gives me a look like I’m the stupidest person in the world. “That pretty much describes everyone at our school. Besides Team Glitter, I mean.”

“Well…” Okay, it’s kind of exactly what I expected, except worse, because I didn’t count on being stuck with people who, like, aren’t afraid of me. “It doesn’t matter. They’re still douchebags.”

My stomach rumbles, and I realize how hungry I am. I reach for my hamburger.

Right as my whole lunch tray disappears out from underneath my food. A serving of baked beans I didn’t even want splatters into my lap, my potato chips scatter across the table, and my hamburger rolls onto the floor.

I glare at Amelia out of habit, even though she’s not holding the tray and obviously didn’t use her power to steal it.

She holds up her hands. “I didn’t do it!”

And then I hear laughter. I turn around, and all four of our cabin mates—Aiden, Noah, Gabe, and Eric—are standing about ten feet away, laughing their heads off, and Eric’s holding my now empty lunch tray. They’re also all still wearing their anti-lightning signs.

Eric must have touched every tray before lunch started, just so he could mess with me.

All four of them clap their hands and go, “Team Glitter, Team Glitter,” in whiny, high-pitched voices.

Amelia scoffs, though she keeps her voice down when she says, “Is that supposed to be us?”

Then Noah uses his power and makes that horrible nails-on-a-chalkboard-only-worse sound in my head.

It catches me by surprise, just like it did last time, because even if I was maybe kind of expecting it, it’s still jarring. It totally takes over my brain, not leaving room for anything except pain and wishing it would stop. I cringe, covering my face with my hands.

It probably only lasts for a few seconds, but it feels like a lot longer. When it’s over, I put my hands down and look up. Our cabin mates are gone, and everyone at the table’s staring at me.

Amelia looks worried. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” My head still hurts, and there’s electricity burning beneath my skin because I totally want to kill those guys, but other than that, everything’s just great.

“What did they do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“But—”

“It was nothing, okay?”

She’s obviously not buying that. She looks over at Riley.

He looks away. “X…”

“I said I was fine, and I am. Okay, Perkins?”

“If you say so.” He lets out a deep breath, also obviously not buying it.

Amelia squints at me and bites her lip. “But what are you going to do?”

“Get back in line and get another hamburger, I guess.”

“No, I mean… don’t electrocute anybody.”

Beside me, Jana sucks in a quick breath and scoots farther down.

“I wasn’t going to,” I tell Amelia.

“You’re not going to freak out?”

I swallow and clench my fists, trying really hard not to freak out. “Nope.”

“But they were really mean. They made fun of Team Glitter, even though we don’t sound like that. And they practically stole your lunch, except they spilled it on you, which is even worse. And they did something weird to you.” She gestures to my head. “It looked like it hurt.”

“So?”

“So, you’re just going to let them get away with that?”

“What do you want me to do, zap them and get kicked out of camp and maybe out of Heroesworth?”

“No, but—”

“It’s what they want me to do.” They want to see the half villain freak out after only using their powers on me for a few seconds. They want me to use my lightning on another student, and then get sent packing because I couldn’t cut it. Bonus points of I get kicked out of school completely and they never have to deal with me again.

“But you could do something,” Amelia says.

“No, I couldn’t.”

“But—”

“Drop it, Amelia. It’s only four more days. I can take it.”

 

 

The campfire ceremony is after dinner, once it gets dark out. There’s an amphitheater surrounding a big fire pit, and me and Riley sit on the lowest tier, near the entrance, because of his leg. Nobody sits next to us, or maybe I should say nobody sits next to me, since Riley’s sitting on the very edge, where there wouldn’t be room for anybody else anyway.

One of the camp counselors—not Counselor Steve—is standing in front of the campfire, giving us a big spiel about friendship and bonding and what we’re going to accomplish together at camp this week. At least we haven’t had to sing any songs yet

“The friendships you make this week…” The counselor pauses, putting a hand over his heart. “They’re the friendships of a lifetime.”

Barf.

I can see Amelia’s group sitting across the amphitheater from us, a couple tiers up. They’re all wearing their bunny-ear headbands and holding hands and trying not to cry.

“Looking back,” the counselor goes on, “I didn’t know who I was before my week at Serenity Trails. Because who you are isn’t just who you are on the inside—it’s the connections you make with people. It’s the friendships you forge together.”

Ugh. I glance over at Riley to see if he’s just as bored and grossed out as I am. “How much you want to bet this is the exact same speech they gave when your parents were here?”

“It probably is,” he says. “It’s supposed to be the same experience every year.”

“So you think they’ve got the campfire-ceremony speech down to an exact science?”

“Well, they’ve probably changed it at least a little bit. He just mentioned Facebook and how everyone’s only superficially connected online and that it’s not the same as the real bonds we’re going to be making this week. They couldn’t have said that when our parents were here.”

“If everyone’s going to treat me like crap, I’ll take superficial over real any day.” After all, freeze rays don’t work over the internet. “Hey, did you find your parents’ make-out tree?”

“Don’t call it that.”

“Fine. Did you find your parents’ sex tree?”

He makes a face. “Don’t call it that, either. And no, I didn’t. I think I figured out where it is on the map, though, and I meant to go over there while you guys went on a tour of the camp this afternoon—”

“You mean when you were supposed to be resting your leg?”

He ignores that. “I was going to go see the tree, but then I went outside, and I would have had to go all the way back to the main part of camp, past the dining hall, and then all the way past one of the far cabins, and I think it’s uphill a little ways, and… I didn’t feel up to it.”

Because his leg was hurting him, he means. And because even if it wasn’t, it would have been after all that. Plus it wouldn’t have been very comfortable going all that way on crutches. And if he already didn’t feel up to it after not even one whole day of camp, it seems pretty unlikely that he’s going to make it there this week. “Show me on the map. I’ll take a picture of it for you.”

“A picture’s not the same thing.”

“It’s better than nothing.”

“I want to see it for myself, in real life.”

“Okay, let me put it this way. A picture’s better than you permanently screwing up your leg because you had to go visit some tree.”

“It’s not just some tree, X. It’s—”

“I know. That’s why I said I’d get a picture for you.”

He takes a deep breath. “I don’t want you to. I want to see it in real life. I’m going to, I mean.”

Yeah, sure he is.

The counselor giving us the whole friendship-is-forever spiel tells everyone to join hands. “The connections we make this week have already started,” he says. “They’re happening right now, and all you have to do is reach out to another person to form that link.”

There’s shuffling sounds as everyone actually joins hands. I mean, Amelia’s group was already holding hands, so I guess they’re ahead of the game. And when I say everyone joins hands, I mean everyone except for me and Riley, because nobody even wants to sit by me, let alone touch me. Which I guess is one of the few perks of being public enemy number one around here, since holding hands with a stranger is something I can definitely live without.

“Now that we’re all linked,” the counselor goes on, “I want all of you to think about what you hope to accomplish this week at camp. They can be personal goals, or goals about bonding with your fellow campers.”

Let’s see, my personal goals are don’t get killed and don’t let Riley get killed. Preferably accomplished with as little humiliation as possible. As for “bonding” with my fellow campers, my goal is basically don’t. Oh, and try not to actually kill any of them, since that would definitely get me kicked out of school.

I wonder if Riley’s thinking the same thing—I mean the part about surviving, not about killing anyone—or if he’s secretly wishing I’d stayed home. Not that I think he doesn’t want me here, but… Well, things would probably be a lot easier for him if I wasn’t, and camp’s already hard enough for him as it is with his leg being broken.

When I look over at him, he’s staring at the ground, a pained expression on his face.

“You okay, Perkins? Because if you need me to escort you back to the cabin so we have to miss the rest of this, I’d totally be okay with that.”

He grins a little. Then he sighs and says, “I was just thinking that camp’s not really what I expected.”

“Sure it is. It’s a bunch of douchey heroes going on hikes and doing art projects together.”

“Yeah, but… It’s not like how my dad described it.”

Because his dad probably was one of those heroes. I mean, not the douchey kind, or at least probably not. I never met him. But I’m guessing he fit in at Heroesworth. “We’re at the stupid campfire ceremony, aren’t we? That’s something.”

“It’s not the same.”

“You want to go make out under the stars afterward?”

He rolls his eyes at me. “I just meant he didn’t describe it as stupid. He said it was one of the best nights of his life.”

“Yeah, ‘cause he met your mom.”

“He said it was more than that. He said there was this feeling in the air of camaraderie, and that…”

“And what?”

“That he actually felt like he was connected to everybody. Not just to his friends or his cabin mates or to my mom, but to everyone. He said it was a turning point in his life, and years later he would still think back on it.”

I raise my eyebrows. “So, in other words, he’s a sucker for sappy speeches?”

“Right? I mean, that speech was totally sappy. But the way my dad described it—not just the campfire ceremony, but everything—it’s just…”

“Come on, Perkins. You didn’t really think we’d come here and actually become BFFs with any of these people, right?”

“Of course not. I just thought it was going to be, I don’t know, more than this somehow.” He glances around the amphitheater, not looking very impressed.

“Your dad’s leg wasn’t broken.”

“I know. But the experiences he had couldn’t just have been because of that.”

“Uh, yeah. Because not only was his leg not broken, but he wasn’t best friends with the half villain everybody hates.”

“X. Come on.”

“Look around. Everyone who’s not friends with me is having the magical night of sappy platitudes and forced bonding that you’re supposed to.”

He tilts his head at me. “That’s not true. Amelia’s your friend, and she’s having a good time.”

“She’s not my friend, she’s my sister. But I think we both know you’d be having the time of your life if I wasn’t here.”

“That’s not true, either.”

“Okay, and if your leg wasn’t broken.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not that. I mean, it doesn’t help that my leg’s broken, but everything about this place just seems so… not me.”

“But maybe it would be more you if I wasn’t here.”

“No, X, it wouldn’t, because…” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well, thanks for that reassurance, Perkins. I’m so convinced.”

“I mean I don’t know if it’s because of what happened at the gala, or because of how everyone here treats you, but it’s probably a combination of both, and I just feel like… Like I’ve already outgrown this place before I’ve even been here.”

“Oh.”

“So it’s not you, okay? Because even if you’d stayed home, I still wouldn’t fit in.”

“What are you talking about? You practically got an invitation to join Team Glitter. That’s not what I would call not fitting in.”

He gives me a look. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” I tell him, being serious this time, “I do.” Of course I do.