She swallowed and ignored the minty freshness of it. Another exercise came to mind. The old three-tens trick. How would this impact her in ten minutes? In ten days? In ten months?

In ten minutes, she’d be . . . screwed. In ten days, likewise, and in ten months, her life would probably be ruined.

Emily felt tears stinging the corners of her eyes. None of the answers were good. The exercise had made it worse.

She wanted to rush to her phone and look up a guide. Some sort of “I woke up with powers, now what?” but she knew that half the responses there would be excited cheers from idiots, and the other half strongly worded suggestions from the government to join up right away . . . or else.

Her mom . . . couldn’t fix this. Her dad wouldn’t know where to begin.

She stumbled into her bedroom and got dressed with manic energy, clothes pulled from every box she could find until she was in a long skirt and a nice blouse with a warm cardigan to go over it. The outfit didn’t expose any skin beyond the nape of her neck, and it was all in somber colors that would blend in.

And then she was dressed for a class she might not be able to attend, not if there were literal words hovering above her head.

Sure, there were some open Masks out there, people with powers who didn’t care if people knew who they were out of costume. She didn’t want people to notice her at the best of times.

Emily went over what she knew, which wasn’t all that much. One thing she did know, though, was the magic word, the one that could give away a Mask with only two syllables.

“Status,” she whispered.

A screen appeared before her.

Her eyes glazed over, and she stumbled back until her rear found its way onto her bed. Only then did she actually read the screen before her.

“Oh god,” she said.

Fate accepted!

Rolling for alignment.

The screen warped into a simple bar. To the left, the word Alignment; to the right, a mass of words spinning too fast to read, which would determine just how ruined her life would be.

The spinning words wound down, ticking by at a pace that was slow enough for her to make them out. There were a few that were more common. Hero. Martyr. Savior. Vigilante . . . and then the words clicked to a stop.

Congratulations! Your ideal morality is . . . Villain! A life of crime and destruction awaits you!

Emily brought her hands to her face in time to smudge some of the tears welling out of her eyes. “No, no, no,” she said.