Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain by Richard Roberts Page A

then there were afternoon classes. Afterward, Claire, Ray, and I ended up outside the door at the corner of the building at the same time, and then stepped in and descended the elevator together. Ray and I, of course, stared fixedly at the big brown bag Claire carried until the gate opened at the bottom.
    “Yes, it’s food,” Claire admitted as we stepped into my lab. “Mom said that if you’re going to destroy her ice chests, you’ll have to be happy with sandwiches and a fruit basket.”
    “Sandwich” hardly described the corned-beef-on-toast monster half the size of my head that I pulled out of the bag. I did my best to look sorry.
    “Before I build anything else, I need more equipment,” I told Ray and Claire as I unwrapped it. “I’ll need to shape glass and plastics, better chemistry containers and tubing, pressure chambers, a microcircuit presser, lifts and braces… and that’s just basic stuff so I can make sophisticated tools. I may have to dig out my savings and buy some of it. The super noggin doesn’t seem to like building anything simple.”
    “How does that work, Penny? Inside, I mean?” Ray asked as he rooted through the fruit basket. He didn’t like any fruit that I knew of, but I couldn’t identify half of these. One was covered in big thorny spikes, for pity’s sake.
    “I haven’t done it enough to be sure, but so far I focus on some scientific concept and I get an image… it’s not a picture exactly, just an understanding of how to do something with it.”
    “So, if you started thinking about how to make Claire athletic enough to join the cheerleaders, the answer would pop into your head?” Ray inquired, in the absolute worst attempt to sound casual I’d ever heard.
    Claire was as shocked as I was and squeaked, “Ray!”
    My own voice spiked. “That would be cheating, Ray!”
    “Cheating who? How? She’ll attend practice. She’s not doing this to win a competition. Does it matter how she gets in shape, if she really is in shape by tomorrow morning?” He didn’t sound the slightest bit guilty, and he stared at me really hard, like I was the one who had to be convinced to do the right thing!
    “Yes, it does. It’s like taking steroids!”
    That ought to have ended it, but he was ready for that argument. “No, steroids are banned because they’re unhealthy. If vitamins were that effective, no one would care. I know you wouldn’t give her something that would poison her like that.”
    No, I wouldn’t. Anyway, it wouldn’t be steroids. They were so inefficient. Everything came down to the quality of her muscle fibers and the nerve…
    “I can see it. It would be so easy. Why hasn’t anyone done this already?” The wonder in my own voice recovered my focus. I gave my head a shake.
    Claire’s hand settled on my shoulder. “I agree with Ray. It’s not wrong; it just sounds wrong.”
    “What?” I asked, looking up at her. I could barely see her. Chemicals drifted in my head.
    Had I ever seen Claire look shy, before? “Can you really do it? Just get me into shape so they won’t have an excuse to turn me down? Nothing more?”
    “Easy, Claire. Easy! There’s only one big chemical, and it wants to be made. Everything I need is in… is in that fruit basket!” I clenched my fists to stop myself from grabbing The Machine.
    She leaned in, resting her forehead against mine, our glasses clinking together. Very softly, she said, “Then let me worry if it’s right or wrong. Do this for me. Please?”
    I stirred the metal bowl very gently. I shouldn’t have used metal, but the contaminants wouldn’t make a difference.
    Oops. I’d blacked out again.
    “How much time did I lose?” I asked cautiously. I didn’t feel exhausted, so that was a good sign.
    “Not much. Less than an hour. It only took that long because you said the chemicals had to mix slowly,” Claire answered. I looked back in time to see the hungry expression on her face. “Is that it?”
    “Yeah.