The Vigilante's Handbook (Misfits #1)

Nine: I Still Hate Your Guts

"You should have just tapped out." Lucia finished zipping her suit as she exited the bathroom. "Then we wouldn't be in this much trouble."

"You shouldn't have used your gift first. Everyone saw your tag light up before mine ever did." I was attempting to fix my hair into a ponytail, but neither of my arms could reach above my head. "Do you mind?" She rolled her eyes but helped put the scrunchie in my hair. It seemed that she still had a full range of movement in her upper body. Lucky.

"How's your arm?" She inclined her head to my hurt arm.

The conversation felt like a trap, but so did everything else involving Lucia. "Fine. Thanks for not exploiting that weakness."

"I'm not a barbarian. I do have a few decent human qualities. Besides, where is the glory in hitting a gunshot victim." She paused just long enough for it to get awkward. "Thanks for not kicking me when I was down."

"We aren't becoming friends, are we?"

She mimed puking. Most of the time, when people pretended to throw up, they didn't mean it. I could tell Lucia did.

"Oh thank goodness. I don't think I could handle that."

"Don't worry, I still hate your guts. I just thought we could use some mutual support before we get kicked out of the academy."

The people in the lab were calling for us to come back. They were ready to start the test.

I surveyed Lucia. Maybe she wasn't as awful a person as I made her out to be. Then she shoved by me, taking extra care to hit my stitches with her shoulder. Statement retracted. Lucia was the devil incarnate.

"Nice talk," she called over her shoulder. "Let's never do this again."

Dr. Freddie was waiting with his staff for the two of us. Our only audience was Principal Merriweather, but she wasn't very attentive. I doubted she would even applaud my chilling her can of soda like she had last Friday. Her eyes were flickering around the lab like behind the refrigerators and x-ray machines and exam tables were monsters laying in wait. Her hands were clasped tightly behind her back, her spine rigid with her usual perfect posture.

If I knew Merriweather--and I had spent enough time in her office to safely say I knew her well--I would say she was nervous. But the principal of a secret superhero school that may or may not kidnap gifted children from around the world does not get nervous.

The team of white coats hooked me up for the usual treatment--blood pressure, internal body temperature, the whole shebang. I was still a few degrees warmer than normal even half an hour after my fight with Lucia. The she-devil herself was on a separate table, looking very annoyed at the pokings and proddings of the staff as if this didn't happen at her monthly physical. Maybe I had grown more used to it because of my bi-monthly tests.

When the tests were done and a new vial of my blood was safely stowed in a freezer tank--the kind that spewed dry ice smoke when you opened it--I held out my hand for a water bottle. It had become a tradition to test my gift out on something simple at the start of every test. There was probably something very scientific about it, a control test probably, but I liked to think it was because Dr. Freddie was challenging me to better myself.

I was feeling pretty confident in my water bottle freezing ability after the performance I had given in Mr. Forrest's fight club.

No water bottle came.

"You gave an apt display of your gift in the science building," one of the nurses said by way of explanation.

So much for the scientific method. It was like these people didn't know how to run a proper experiment. My ice cage could have been a once in a lifetime kind of deal--a shame I wasted it on Lucia without even catching her in it. If a result couldn't be copied then it should be looked at as an outlier in the data. I had always been an exception to the rule, maybe this freak gift explosion was too.