While Emma and Ollie biked to practice at the city pool on Wednesday, Emma’s phone pinged with an incoming text. She checked it as soon as she got off the bike.

Since she’d changed Andres’ name in her phone, the message came from “Speedy.” I can meet up to talk about stuff tomorrow.

“Sweet!” Emma blurted like the idiot she was. She needed to work on keeping secrets if she was going to do this whole superhero thing.

“What’s going on?” Ollie asked, craning her neck to see Emma’s phone.

“Nothing.” Emma tried to slide the phone back into her backpack’s side pocket.

“Something’s going on.” Ollie caught Emma’s wrist and peeked at the phone. “Speedy? As in you’re meeting the Speedster and you didn’t tell me? I was with you the whole time Saturday and you never talked to him. How’d you swing a meet-up? I mean he vanished as soon as he tied up the bad guys.”

Her mouth opening and closing, Emma shook her head. Her bike tipped over and the water bottle spun off into the parking lot. Emma chased after it, letting her bike crash to the ground.

“Emma, tell me.” Ollie stood over her bike, arms folded across her chest. Her mouth pressed into a straight line.

Emma snatched up her water bottle and scrambled out of an upperclassman’s car. “I kind of...” Emma glanced around.

“Kind of what?” Ollie yanked off her helmet. Her short hair was smooshed every which way.

Emma shoved her bike into a spot on the rack. “Figured out who he is.”

“You what? And you didn’t tell me?”

Emma shook her head. What could she say?

“Who is it?” Ollie asked, leaning in close.

Emma stammered. “It’s not my secret to tell.”

“I thought we told each other everything. I can’t believe you won’t tell me this.”

“Won’t tell you what?” Sebastian asked, coasting up on his bike.

“Nothing.” Ollie locked her bike and stomped towards the locker room.

“I should try and patch things up with her.” Emma headed towards the locker room.

Ollie wouldn’t talk to her though.

“I am taking all of your advice.” Emma lifted her shirt to show the green spandex on her stomach and patted the pocket in her backpack where she had the headpiece, the green face paint, and makeup removing wipes.

“Whatever.” Ollie turned her back to Emma as she pulled on her swimsuit.

Emma headed into a stall for some privacy of her own. At least she always changed in a stall, so that wasn’t new since she started wearing the spandex under her clothes. She just had to make sure she was all the way toweled off or the spandex got a little sticky.

“I’m sorry, Ollie.” Emma changed and, still in the stall, messaged Andres where to meet.

“Dude, if you want to keep secrets that’s fine. I don’t need to be your friend then.”

“Ol, come on it’s not like that.” Emma hurried out of the stall and washed her hands, but Ollie had already left the bathroom.

Tears pricking her eyes, Emma headed outside. She hadn’t meant to piss off her best friend. Not over something so stupid. She wanted to tell Ollie, but she didn’t feel right telling anyone Andres’ secret. She wouldn’t want Ollie telling anyone, no matter how trustworthy she thought they were, not with Agent Johnson hunting supers.

Ollie and Bastian were on the far side of the pool, near the grass. How long had she taken to get changed and get all her stuff back together? She needed to get faster at changing with the spandex on.

“Hey, guys.” Emma spread out her towel on the opposite side of Sebastian.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“How’s your column going?” Ollie asked him, not acknowledging Emma at all. “The one about finding supers.”

He shrugged. “Not good, I guess. I’m having double narrowing down potential Dragon Girls—”

“Geek Fire.”

“Whatever she’s called. She’s got to be a student or a teacher or something. She shows up right at our high school, saves your cousin.” Copying coach, Sebastian reached for his toes. “But no luck. Even Emma’s still on my list, and it’s not her.”

Ollie snorted. “I thought she was supposed to be helping you rule people out.”

Emma cringed as she twisted into the next stretch.

Ollie licked her lips and frowned at Emma.

She wouldn't tell Sebastian here right at practice, would she?

“Yeah. Have you even ruled out anyone on my list, Emma?” he asked.

“I—uh, haven’t made any progress.” Emma shook her head. “What if I look into that Ice Queen and Strongman for you? I swear I recognized his voice.”

Sebastian frowned. “If you can’t rule out anyone for Dragon Girl, how can I expect you to have any better luck on narrowing down my other lists?”

“Ask her about the Dredgetown Speedster.” Ollie waggled her eyebrows. “She’s going to interview him for her project.”

“How’d you finagle that?” Sebastian asked.

“I....” Emma repeated herself again. “Whether or not I know who he is—”

“You can’t lie anymore. I saw the message about meeting up with him,” Ollie said.

Emma’s cheeks flared hot. “I’m not lying. But if I knew his identity, I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Sebastian frowned. His tone was chipper, though. “Even though he’s not as good as a Pueblo Super, could you ask him some questions for my column?”

“Enough chatter,” Coach shouted over them. “Time for grasshopper pushups.”

As she rolled onto her stomach and tucked her hands tight against her chest, Emma groaned. Triceps pushups were the worst. Still, she felt grateful for the interruption. Maybe that was how she could steer the article. Have him put the word out he wanted to talk to the Pueblo Super, and then arrange an interview with him. With her in costume. Coach counted them off and her whole body shook as she struggled to keep up with his pace.

In her swim top, her phone pinged three times. That wasn’t a normal text.

“Was that the app?” Sebastian asked.

“Yeah. Uh... I got to go.” Emma grabbed her towel and bag and rushed to the bathroom to peek at the phone and, if needed, change into Geek Fire.

A robbery at Banana Splitz only a couple blocks away had caused the alert. They’d almost biked past it on the way here. Emma yanked the spandex over her swimsuit, pulled out the face-paint stick and slathered it on. She grabbed the wire headpiece Ollie had made for her from its little glasses case and clipped it onto her glasses.

Ollie had followed her to the bathroom, but Emma stepped out of the stall in her full Geek Fire costume.

“What’s going on?” Ollie asked.

“I’ve got to get to Banana Splitz. Cover for me.” Emma kicked off and flew to the skylight in the roof. She pushed the latch and slipped out.

“I’ll put your duffel bag in your locker then!” Ollie shouted after her.

Emma half-swam, half-willed herself towards the ice cream shop. The small brick building had two cop cars parked out front, but the police were still outside. Emma zipped down towards the back door and yanked it open.

Standing right under the cowboy-hat-wearing boar’s head, a man wearing a ski mask held Mama Cooper’s apron through the cash register window. He turned towards Emma where she floated towards the top of the doorway.

“Let go of her,” Emma said in her sternest voice. She remembered to speak from her diaphragm like Ms. Range always told her in speech practice. Her voice boomed out of her, so she almost sounded as powerful as Ice Queen. Emma grinned.

“Geek Fire?” the gunman asked. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

The grin fell off her face. Emma wasn’t good with words. Well, not when she was talking, not in real time, so she didn’t have a snappy comeback like the comic book heroes did. Instead, she concentrated on making the smallest fireball she could and she gleek-sneezed at the boar’s head over the register.

The chemicals didn’t combine until they hit the boar’s head. It burst into flame. The fire and the chemicals dripped down onto the gunman. He shrieked and dropped the gun. On fire, he scrambled backwards, out the door and towards the waiting cops, smacking his hands against the spots of fire on his sweatshirt, trying to put it out. The flames spread.

The boar’s head crashed to the ground. Momma Cooper screamed.

Emma grabbed the fire extinguisher from next to the front door and aimed it at the boar, whose cowboy hat and sunglasses had bounced off onto the concrete floor. A burst of white foam came out of the fire extinguisher, splattering Momma Cooper and Emma both.

“Thank you, Dragon Girl,” Momma Cooper said.

“You’re welcome,” Emma said in her deepest voice, putting hands on her hips in her best super hero pose. It was surprisingly hard to do while levitating and her glasses half covered in fire extinguisher foam.

She didn’t bother correcting Momma Cooper. Instead, she tried to make sure Momma could see the words Geek Fire in dark paint that contrasted with the bright green spandex. Then, she frog kicked towards the open back door, since she didn’t want the police or the Super Commission trying to catch her.

As she flew away, she watched horrified as the flames spread through the gunman’s hoodie. Finally, someone tackled the gunman to the ground and forced him to roll, extinguishing the flames.

Satisfied everything was over, Emma flew back towards the pool to land on the bathroom roof. The whole thing had taken maybe twenty minutes, and she’d missed the rest of the dry land stretches. She settled onto the roof, pulled out her phone and saw that Ollie had texted her about her case of food poisoning and how she’d told everyone Emma was going to go home after she finished “in the bathroom.”

Emma groaned. Great. Just great. Now everyone thought she’d missed swim practice because she’d been blowing up the bathroom. Still, she felt pretty proud of herself for controlling her fire and stopping the robbery. And she needed to make it to speech practice that night and get her questions ready for Andres the next day.

Maybe Ollie would be over the secrets by the time speech practice rolled around. She could hope.