“For example,” she said, “Fifth-Grade Safety Squad Parent Acknowledgment Form.”

I didn’t understand what Bertie was talking about again, but she wasn’t done with her explaining.

“Those are the fifth graders who help with lunch and recess and getting the little kids on the bus and off the bus. They get these cool sashes and vests and whistles, but you can only use the whistles outside.”

I thought about the greater-than girl in the cafeteria and the vested kid on the sidewalk. I kind of wanted to ask Bertie more about it, but she was already on to the next thing.

“Next thing,” she said. “Open to a clean page in your notebook, and copy down the morning message from the whiteboard. Oh, but I guess I forgot the part about sitting down. You should probably do that.”

I sat down. I opened to a clean page in my notebook. I didn’t mind copying. Copying was easy.

Ms. G. had used a bright-red marker, like radical red, and beneath the board I saw a basket with a ton more markers in it. I wondered how many colors she had.

The red words on the whiteboard looked like stripes on a flag. The first flag-letter was a t. I copied the t.

“Hold the phone, Mr. Trombone,” Bertie said. “You see that number four?”

In the corner of the flag where the stars should have been, there was a circle with a big four in it.

“That means there are four mistakes in the morning message,” Bertie said, “and it’s your job to fix them—like there might be a missing apostrophe or a misspelled spelling word or a letter that’s supposed to be a capital.”

Maybe this kind of copying wasn’t as easy as I thought.

“So that first letter…” Bertie pointed to the t I had copied on my clean page. She waited like I was supposed to say something. I tried to remember the last thing she’d said.

“Is supposed to be a capital?” I guessed.

“You got it,” Bertie said.

I started erasing my little t, but I did it too fast and too sharp, and even with a new and full eraser, the paper got messed up just trying to get rid of that one tiny letter. I turned to the next page and started over again.

“I like to keep a tally in the corner,” Bertie was saying. “You already found one, so you can put a little check mark or something.”

I put a little check mark.

“One time”—Bertie was still talking—“the morning message was about me going to the store. We were learning about subtracting money. I think Ms. G. wanted us to remember the dollar signs and decimal points and stuff….”