I found a spot at the fourth-grade table and took my eyeball paper from my backpack. I smoothed it out.

I wondered if Ms. G. was the kind of teacher who asked kids to “share” their homework. Maybe I could raise my hand and Ms. G. would say “Good work, Austin,” and smile and put my words on the board again.

I took out my pencil. I still needed to think of a third way for me and Bertie to be different. I didn’t want Ms. G. to think I was the kind of kid who didn’t finish the homework.

I looked around, but Bertie still wasn’t there. And that’s because she rode the bus. But I was here, and that’s because I walked. What fourth grader doesn’t know how to write bus and walk? Those I could do by myself.

I carefully wrote bus in the bertie eye and walk in the austin eye. I know walk has a weird l in it, and sometimes I get mixed up about whether it comes before the k or after the k. But if you draw the two up-and-down lines real close together and put the crossy parts over both of them, nobody can tell. I turned around to look for Bertie again.

Instead, I ended up staring straight into some kid’s belt buckle. When I looked up, Dee was staring down at me.

Dee’s not that substantial. I knew if I stood up, I’d be looking down at him. But he was standing right behind me and way too close, so there wasn’t any space for me to get my legs out from under the table.

He leaned down over my shoulder and stared, like he was super-interested in my eyeball paper. I could feel his breath on the side of my face and his arm pushing against my arm. It smelled like he’d had something with peanut butter for breakfast.

“I know who you’re the same as,” he finally said.

What was that supposed to mean? Maybe he was just trying to be welcoming to new people. But it didn’t feel like it.

Then he moved even closer and looked at my paper for what felt like a million minutes. He ran his hot finger along the words in the middle, line by line. He traced Safeties until the letters got all fuzzy and smudged.

“Austin is as big as Texas,” he said. Then he was gone.

I watched a Safety jog after him because the bell hadn’t rung yet.

I breathed out.

“Good morrow, my fine fellow.” Bertie bowed one of her weirdly complicated bows and sat down next to me. “So, what did you put for the homework?”

I slid my paper over so she could read it. But my mind was still stuck on what Dee had said. He knew who I was the same as.