“Ms. G.!” Bertie suddenly shouted. “Austin needs a Safety packet!”

Then she bent down and started writing something in the middle of her eyeballs. “And that, my new friend, is our number three. Next year, we’re both going to be Safeties.”

8. Turquoise, Pacific Blue

I was still copying Safeties when a teacher showed up at the door. She had on a long skirt and a chunky necklace with stones the color of turquoise. She reminded me of a peacock. There were some kids standing behind her, like her little baby peacocks.

“Hello, friends!” she called.

I watched the new kid gather up his stuff and follow her out the door.

“Who’s that?” I asked Bertie.

“Ms. B.,” she said. “Learning Center.”

I knew all about the “Learning Center” or “Resource Center” or plain old “Resource Room.” Whatever the school decides to call it, you have to do a lot of tests and forms and meetings before they can stick you there.

My mom takes a long time getting the forms and signing the forms and returning the forms. Then she takes a long time setting up the meetings and canceling the meetings and rescheduling the meetings. Except for this one place where the Resource Room teacher came in one day and said real loud, “Austin’s with me now.”

The yellow jackets in my stomach did a little flip just thinking about it.

Ms. G. rang her silver bell. “Homework for this evening is to brainstorm three ways you and your partner are different. You’ll put the examples for one person on the left side, and the corresponding examples for the other person on the right side. But now, please put your eyeballs into your desks. It’s time for some new vocabulary words.”

The kids took out their notebooks. I did, too.

“Aggressive!” Ms. G. almost shouted. She made a mean face and put up her fists like she was going to fight somebody. I almost had to smile because even as tall as she was, Ms. G. pretending to be mean was pretty ridiculous.

The kids all copied her. The two Davids leaned across the aisle and got into a fake fistfight. Bertie silently pounded her desk. Her cheeks were all puffed out, and her elbows were very pointy.

Ms. G. wrote the word on a card and stuck it on the wall, where there were already about a million of them. I copied it down into my notebook, nice and neat and tiny.

“Courteous,” she said next in a super-polite voice. She sounded a little bit like the nice phone lady. She bowed to Bertie, who was still busy elbowing her invisible enemies. Bertie stood up and did a weirdly complicated bow. Her hands made circles in the air from her head to her knees, like ribbons uncurling.

The fighting Davids shook hands and patted each other on the back.