Emily had had no choice but to bring the so-called Barbie with her to drop Ethan off at school. Partly because she couldn't leave the woman alone in her kitchen, partly because there was a tiny little part of her that couldn't help but wonder whether this might actually be a Barbie come to life. She'd heard rumours, afterall, of the Skipper Incident when she was fifteen and her mother was still CEO of Mattel.

"Hey, Ethan?" Emily said, glancing in the rearview mirror and catching the boy's gaze.

"Yeah, Aunty Em?" he asked, still young enough that he was completely oblivious to the outlandish situation playing out around him.

"Do you know what a white lie is?" When he shook his head, she explained, "It's when you keep a secret, but for a good reason."

Ethan, with wisdom beyond his years, nodded thoughtfully. "Like when me and Emma was wrestlin' and she broke Mom's favourite picture, but I told Mom I did it so Emma wouldn't get in trouble?"

Emily smiled softly, in awe of the boy's innate gentle, loving nature. "Right. Just like the way you protected Emma, we should protect people by keeping our new friend a secret. Okay?" A beat. "I'll let you lick the beaters next time I make buttercream..." she added as a bribe.

"Okay!" Ethan readily agreed. He was seven, afterall, so his Achilles' Heel was obviously buttercream frosting.

"Thanks, buddy," Emily murmured. "I love you, you know that, right?"

He flashed a toothy grin at her. "I know! You tell me all the time!"

"What are you doing here?" Emily hissed to the other woman as soon as she drove away from the curb outside Ethan's school. "Barbies can't just come to the real world without, you know, a cause..."

"I don't know," JJ insisted, "One day I was minding my own business in Barbieland and the next thing I know, I started getting all weird and sad and then I talked to Weird Barbie and..." She trailed off with a shrug. "She said I'd know how to find the girl who's playing with me, but frankly, I'm not so sure."

Emily heaved an exhausted sigh. It was only eleven AM and her day was already way too complicated... She was trying to decide whether it was worth calling her mother (and enduring the verbal evisceration that inevitably followed) when her phone rang, Alex's face lighting up the screen.

"Oh, hey, Alex. I'm kind of in the middle of...something," she said, which wasn't exactly a lie.

"Did Ethan get to school okay?" Alex interrupted to ask. "Did he calm down for you?"

"Ethan's fine," she was quick to reassure. "Listen, something really weird has happened... Can I meet you in your office in ten minutes?"

A beat. "Can you be more specific?"

Emily glanced at JJ, hummed a not of debate, then said, "I really can't. You just need to see for yourself."

"What could possibly be so important that..." Alex started to demand as she stalked towards the car the second Emily pulled to the curb in front of the clinic. Anything further she intended to say was cut off as she instead said, "Please don't tell me this is another one of your Barbie conspiracies..."

Emily rolled her eyes, kind of annoyed that Alex had just guessed like that... With a huff, she said, "Well, yes, technically, but..."

"Emily, Barbies don't just come to life. How many times..." Alex ranted.

"They do, though!" JJ interrupted, sticking her head out the car window. "I mean... I did!" She smiled brightly, extending a hand for Alex to shake. "Hi, I'm Barbie! But you can call me JJ."

For a moment, Alex stared from JJ to her extended hand and back to JJ. Then, she turned to Emily and asked, "Okay, how much did you pay her to play along?"

"Spend five minutes talking to her and you'll believe me," Emily insisted.

Alex huffed, clearly annoyed. "You have as long as it takes for you to drive me to Starbucks and back," she said, climbing into the backseat of Emily's car.

"Okay, so there's a portal that opened between our worlds," Barbie/JJ explained, "And someone is playing with me while being really sad and thinking about someone named Emma and it's making me malfunction, so I came here to find them and repair the portal so I can go back to looking perfect all the time."

Several long moments of laden silence followed. Then, a meek, "Oh..." Alex couldn't possibly have articulated why it was she was suddenly convinced...but she was.

Emily locked eyes with Alex in the rearview mirror and the two of them shared a silent conversation in which Emily could clearly see her agree that this was, in fact, a real live Barbie.

"So...what happens now?" Alex asked. "Do we call Mattel?"

"No!" Emily said, leaving no room for argument. "Absolutely not. We have to keep her existence a secret as much as possible." She paused, thought a moment. There was a chance, however small, that Elizabeth might unexpectedly show up at her apartment. "She has to stay with you while we figure things out."

A beat. Then, an unimpressed, "What?"

"Just until we can figure out what's brought her here," Emily said.

Alex sighed wearily. "I don't know, Em..."

"Alex, she was brought here for a reason...and I have to believe Emma is a huge part of that. I know you miss her every moment of every day and I also know that you've tried very hard to box up all that pain so you don't have to face it day in and day out. But maybe the reason she's here is to help you – to help us – to deal with some of those unresolved emotions."

Nodding slowly, Alex reluctantly agreed, "You're right." A beat. "Don't get used to hearing that, by the way," she added playfully.

With a laugh, Emily said, "Don't worry, I won't let it go to my head."

"You two are so cute together," JJ said, studying Emily as they drove away after having dropped Alex back at work.

Emily glanced away from the road to fix JJ with a pointed stare. "Alex and I aren't together," she said, but she said it in that tone that made it quite clear there was more to that story.

JJ snorted with what might've been disbelief.

"What?"

She shrugged. "I might be plastic, but that doesn't mean I don't know anything about the inner workings of the heart."

Emily heaved a sigh. "Look... Alex and I... It's complicated."

"Sure."

With a scoff, Emily said, "You don't know anything about it. It's easy to reduce love to platitudes when everything has always come easy to you. But this is real life, Barbie, and guess what? It's complicated."