“Good,” I said. But I wasn’t sure how to say it differently to let her know that today I really meant it. “Really good,” I said. I added some nods.

My mom went back to fighting with the sink.

I swung my backpack to the front and pulled out the big yellow envelope. Then I carefully took out the Safety Squad Parent Acknowledgment Form and set it down on the counter. I opened some drawers until I found a pen. I put the pen on top of the form, ready for my mom when she was done with the sink.

I picked up my phone and went to my room.

“Hi,” I said.

“Sorry,” the nice phone lady said. “I’m having trouble with the connection. Please try again in a moment.”

I waited.

“Hi,” I tried again.

“Hi there.” The phone lady was back.

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” I asked.

“I am not perspicacious about the peregrinations of poultry.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I liked how the words sounded like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing around my head. They would be good words for Ms. G. to put on the vocabulary list.

I took my eyeball paper out of my backpack and spread it on my bed. Then I put my notebook under it so my pencil point wouldn’t poke through.

“How do you write I am a new kid?” I asked.

“Okay, I found this.” She wrote it on the screen for me.

I copied the words in the eyeball marked austin, real neat and tiny.

“How do you write You are not a new kid?” I asked next. Then I copied that down in the bertie eyeball.

I wondered how Ms. G. checked homework in the morning. Some teachers just do the glance-and-nod, and you wonder why you went to all the trouble. But I bet Ms. G. would have a fancy marker, like fuchsia or flamingo pink. She seemed like the kind of teacher who would write OK at the top of your page with a big smiley face in the O.

“How do you write I am a big kid?”

But it sounded like I was saying I just wasn’t a little kid. I tried to think of some language that was more specific.

“What are some other words for big?” I asked her.

The phone lady had about a million of them—mammoth and mighty and monstrous, even. I picked substantial. It sounded like it meant a little bit important, too.

Most of the small words were definitely not right for Bertie—minor and lesser and insignificant. I kept searching until I found petite. I liked the sound of it.