I looked around the moving boxes until I found one that said AUSTIN. It had my scissors and some paper and my jumbo box of crayons with all the different colors. Every one of them has a cool name. Some are funny. Some are just true.

I picked out some browns to draw a tree trunk: beaver and mahogany and copper. Then I drew a bunch of leaves with inchworm and shamrock and granny smith apple. I cut it out around the edges, to make it into the shape of the thing it was, and put it in its place.

My backpack was in the same box. It was squashed flat until I filled it up with my notebook from my last school and Ms. G.’s book with my new bookmark in it. I looked at my stuff, all ready to go for tomorrow. Now when everybody saw me, they’d know how smart I was.

I heard keys in the door. My mom came in and put a bag of dinner on the counter next to me.

“How did it go?” she asked. She seemed okay.

“Good,” I said.

I always tell my mom things went good. I don’t want her to worry. When she worries, she notices stuff, like that the fridge never really gets clean, or that the people at her new job are worse than the people at her old job, or that the school keeps asking her for packets of forms that need to be filled out as soon as possible. And when too many of those come all at the same time, she starts saying how things would probably be better someplace else.

“Really good,” I said. I nodded a lot to show I meant it. I grabbed Ms. G’s book out of my backpack and held it up like some kind of proof.

6. Laser Lemon, Vivid Tangerine, Radical Red

The next morning, I got dressed and fixed myself a bowl of cereal, real quiet. I grabbed my backpack and tiptoed out the door. The morning didn’t smell like laundry yet. It smelled more like coffee and traffic.

I must have gotten to school pretty early because the crossing guard wasn’t even at the corner, and there was no laser lemon kid waiting on the sidewalk. But it didn’t matter. None of the other kids were there, either.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk for a sec and raised my hand.

“Hold up,” I said real quiet.

Then: “Take it easy.” I let myself pass through.

At this school, the early kids waited in the cafeteria. I sat at the fourth-grade table and took Ms. G.’s book out of my backpack. I opened it and held it in front of my face. Nobody bothers you if they think you’re reading.