A quick glance around showed that Ella, Calvin, Molly, and Sid were very busy pretending that Regan and I were invisible. Which was exactly what I would have done had the situation been reversed. I noted that Calvin and Sid looked enormously pleased with themselves, a look I’d worn on more than one occasion when I won a sim test. But not today. Today the last thing I felt like doing was smiling. Today I was a raw nerve.

“How much trouble are we in?” I asked Professor Brown as she came over to help the technician remove the probes from my left leg with a painstaking slowness that set my teeth on edge.

“It might not be as bad as you think,” she said as she gently removed the two from my calf muscle, the calf muscle I’d hacked into in the simulation. If I’d done something that dumb during an actual time-travel mission, I’d have Glitched back to the present missing a chunk of my leg. The thought made my stomach turn a bit, and I felt a familiar rush of relief that real time travel was still a long way off. I was going to be the best of the best someday, commander in chief, but today’s simulation showed just how far I still had to go to get there. Especially with Regan’s shenanigans. She was deadweight, and the sooner I could distance myself from her, the better.

As though my thoughts had called her, I looked up to discover Regan standing inches from me, her arms crossed as she waited for Professor Brown to remove the last of my probes.

“What are you doing?” I asked when Professor Brown finally finished up and walked over to help one of the other kids.

“Waiting for you,” she said. “I thought that was obvious.”

“Why? Haven’t you done enough?” I asked.

“I hope so,” she said, hurrying to keep up with me as I stormed out the simulation door. “Although I only wanted to screw up your test, not get myself in trouble.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you tackled me,” I said.

“Solid point,” she said.

“We didn’t, you know, mention the you-know-what by accident in the simulation. Did we?” I asked, because that question could not sit in my brain one more second.

Regan stopped walking so abruptly I almost ran into her. She turned to me, her face white.

“I don’t think so. Did we?”

“I don’t think so either,” I said. “But if we didn’t, then why are we doing this in your mom’s office and not in the recap review room with everyone else?”

Regan shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Besides, I thought you were going to pretend that the thing never happened.”

“I was,” I said. “But you seem determined to screw that plan up for me.”

Regan sniffed. “I am.”