Emily paused in her pacing. “Oh, um, yes?”

Teddy tugged the blanket above her head back a bit so that she could see the Boss’s face. “What’s wrong?”

She watched the Boss’s hands wiggle through the air like salmon leaping out of a river. “Everything,” Emily finally said.

Teddy nodded. She had a solution for that. Raising the end of her blankets up with one hand, she tapped the bed with the other. “Come sleep.”

Sleeping fixed everything.

“I can’t,” Emily said. “Just . . . so many things have gone wrong.”

Teddy grumbled. If sleeping wouldn’t fix it . . . “Did you try eating something?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Do you need to poop?” Teddy tried next. “Sometimes you need to push hard for it to come out.”

“T-Teddy!” Emily squeaked. “Don’t say that kind of thing.”

That was probably a no. “Well, I don’t know what’s wrong then,” Teddy said.

Emily crossed her arms over her tummy, like a sort of self-hug. Teddy shook her head. If it was hugs she wanted, then she could just slip into the blankets and Teddy would give her plenty. She was an expert at bear hugs.

“I . . . I got powers,” Emily said at last.

“Yeah,” Teddy agreed.

“And now I’m a Villain.”

“Yeah.”

“And now my life is ruined.”

Teddy blinked. “Yeah, I don’t follow.”

Emily sniffled. “If I go to the police, they’ll arrest me; put me, put us behind bars.”

“Well, yeah, we’re Villains,” Teddy said. Hiding from the police was pretty much half the job of being a Villain.

Emily unhugged herself and started with the arm-waving again. “I don’t want to be a Villain.”

Teddy didn’t get it. “But being a Villain is great,” she said. “We can do whatever we want. Eat whatever, and go to sleep whenever. I mean, sure, we need to fight Heroes and capitalists, but that’s all.”

“I don’t want to fight Heroes or . . . capitalists?”

Teddy blinked slowly. “Well, then don’t, I guess. If being a Villain means doing whatever, and there’s a thing you don’t want to do, then don’t do it.”

Emily paused. “I know that,” she said. “I won’t fight the Heroes.”

“Okay,” Teddy said. It was probably for the best. For all that the Boss was clever and such, she was still pretty normal strengthwise. Not like Teddy, who was strong.

“Okay,” the Boss agreed. “Right. And . . . and I’m going to work hard to make us become . . . not Villains.”

“All right,” Teddy said. Maybe the Boss wanted to be a Rogue instead? That was all right too.

“And then, uh, we’ll talk to the administration, and we’ll tell them about you, and we’ll sort things out.”

“Okay.”

“And we can find a school for you, and . . . it’ll be like, like being a teen mom. Which, uh, oh, that will complicate things. But I can do it.”