Chapter 1

“Don't be late, don't be late, don't be late,” Kamala Khan chanted under her breath.

She walked as fast as she could without actually running. Kamala was on her way to school, and she already had three tardies on her record for the month.

“Stupid criminals, always making me late for school,” Kamala muttered. She had her hands full with her schoolwork and her family. Balancing her regular life with her life as the Super Hero Ms. Marvel was always hard. Sometimes it was more than Kamala could handle. But not today. Today was totally under control.

“So far so good,” Kamala said, pausing at a streetlight and checking the time on her phone. “Seven fifty-one. I'm definitely, for sure going to get to school on time. I'm not stopping for anything short of an actual Super Villain.”

“RRRRRRRIIINNNNNGGG!!!” The quiet morning air was shattered by a loud alarm bell.

“Help!” someone yelled. “My store is being robbed!”

There was a pause, then the person added: “By a Super Villain!”

With a weary sigh, Kamala ducked into an alley. She hid behind a dumpster and pulled off her regular clothes, revealing her Ms. Marvel costume.

“Let's do this,” Ms. Marvel said. That Super Villain was going to regret maybe-probably making her late to school.

“RRRRRRRIIIIIINNNNN—CRUNCH!” Ms. Marvel smashed the alarm bell with her embiggened fist. “I'll replace that,” she told the shop owner sheepishly. “It was just making it really hard for me to concentrate.”

Then Ms. Marvel stretched one arm long until she could grab the criminal by the scruff of the neck.

The person she pulled out of the store was wearing a hoodie and a... beak?

“Squawk!” she said. “Squawk, squawk!”

“I wouldn't exactly call her a Super Villain,” Ms. Marvel said to the shop owner. “Super Villains don't usually wear Halloween masks.”

“Hey!” the bird-girl said, offended. Her eyes lit up and she zapped laser beams at Ms. Marvel, but Ms. Marvel quickly slapped a hand over the girl's eyes.

“Ow!” the girl yelped as she accidentally shot lasers at the insides of her own eyelids.

“Put a tight blindfold on her, and you should be fine,” Ms. Marvel told the police, who were arriving on the scene. She handed the bird-girl over to them and hurried back to the alleyway to get her regular clothes back on.

“Don't be late, don't be late, don't be late,” Kamala muttered as she jogged toward her school. “Ammi and Abu would be so mad if they knew where I was!”

Kamala hated disappointing her parents. The thought of having to explain another tardy on her report card was enough to make Kamala go from a jog to a sprint.

She ran into the classroom as the bell was ringing and slid into her seat just in time!

Later that day, she saw her friend Bruno at lunch.

“You look kind of frazzled. Everything okay?” Bruno said.

“Yeah, I just had a weird morning,” Kamala said. She lowered her voice. Bruno knew about Ms. Marvel, but nobody else at school did. “I foiled a robbery.”

“Cool!” Bruno said. “A bank? A hotel? A jewelry store?”

“No,” Kamala said. “A pet store. And the girl who was robbing it squawked at me.”

“Squawked?” Bruno said.

“And that's not the weirdest part,” Kamala said. “She was wearing a bird mask.”

“You're right,” Bruno said. “That is weird. Oh—here comes Nakia!”

Nakia did not know about Ms. Marvel, so Kamala and Bruno changed the subject.

“Have you started studying for that big Biology test on Thursday?” Kamala asked Nakia.

“Yeah,” Nakia said, “all week. But I need to study more. I can't believe half our grade is based on this one test!”

“I haven't even started studying for it,” Kamala admitted. “I'm kind of freaking out.”

Nakia stared at her. “You haven't even started?” she said, shocked. “But it's half our grade! What would your parents—?”

“I know,” Kamala said, glaring at her friend. Nakia cocked her head. “You've been kind of cranky lately,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

Bruno nodded. “I've noticed that, too,” he said. “I know you've been really... busy.” He gave Kamala a knowing look.

“I'm fine,” Kamala said. The whole conversation was stressing her out, and she wanted it to be over. So she smiled brightly. “See? Fine. Hey, have you guys been playing Pork-Bun Go ?”

“Oh my gosh, I finally captured a wild spinach dumpling!” Bruno said, pulling up the game's app on his phone.

Nakia got out her phone. “I don't have any spinach dumplings. But I have eleven shrimp shumais. Want to trade?”

“No way,” Bruno said. “But you can have one of my pea shoots.”

Kamala watched her friends with a smile firmly fixed on her face. But inside, it was all starting to get to her.

Sometimes Kamala thought she just wasn't cut out for Super Hero-ing.