I held my card over my head to show I was done. Bertie was still writing.

“We have the Superstars’ answer,” Ms. G. said. She took the card, looked at it, and smiled. “Point goes to the Superstars!”

Bertie looked up and shrugged her tiny bird shoulders. Then she held up her fists like she was going to box me.

“Hey, don’t be so aggressive,” I said.

Ms. G. jotted down a point for me.

“Sorry, team,” Bertie said to the Lightning side of the room.

But the kids weren’t mad. If anything, it got everybody more excited. When Ms. G. asked for volunteers for the next question, lots of hands went up.

We kept playing until the game ended in a tie. Sometimes a tie is a bummer, like why did you even bother playing? But sometimes a tie feels like how it should be. Like nobody should have to lose.

13. Denim, Midnight, Tumbleweed

Dee never showed up after lunch. I knew he was probably still with Ms. B., but I made up a story that he suddenly had to move. His mom found a new job or a new apartment or a new place where everything was going to be better. I imagined him showing up at his school and the teacher giving the person bringing him in a real earful. “Don’t you see how many I’ve got in here, and now you want me to add this one?”

Bertie and I got our books and our pillows and sat in the back of the room. That’s when it finally started raining. There are rainy days when they don’t let you go outside for recess, and there are rainy days with soaking-wet shoes and the cuffs of your jeans turning a darker color on the walk home, like from denim to midnight.

Ms. G. had set her plant on the ledge outside the window, and it looked like it was taking a shower in all that rain. I took my bookmark out from the start of chapter six, but I didn’t even pretend to turn pages. I watched the fat drops smack against the window. They hit and slid and made the outside look all squiggly, like a fun-house mirror at the fair.

My time of greatest joy was still that day at the fair last summer. But getting a point for the Safety Superstars was maybe second.

After a while, Ms. G. dinged her bell and said it was time for writers’ workshop, but she should have called it talkers’ workshop because we didn’t do any writing. We talked a lot about our three sames and three differents. And I was right about Ms. G. asking kids to share their homework. When I shared mine, she thanked me and smiled and wrote some of my specific language on the board.