“All clear,” Bertie said, like she was the only one who’d heard the announcement.

It sounded like the whole class breathed out real loud. Then Ms. G. said, “If you ask me, this calls for a little free choice.”

Before I could worry if free-choice time was pretty much the same as indoor recess, and before I could try to think of something Bertie and I could do that Dee would not want to do, there was a knock at the locked door. Ms. G. took out the cardboard and looked through the window. Ms. B. made a funny fish face behind the glass.

“Hello, friends!” she called when Ms. G. finally got the door open. “Nothing like an unannounced drill to start the morning, right?”

Dee shook his head out again. Then he left with Ms. B.

“At least it wasn’t a fire drill,” Bertie said as she led me to the back of the room. “Like that fire drill in second grade when the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen. Chef Gail told them she had splattered something on the stove, but if the alarm goes off, you have to evacuate the building, even in the middle of January. Remember how hard it was snowing and how the firefighters gave us those shiny blankets, like runners get when they finish a marathon?”

I nodded. Not because I remembered what Bertie was talking about. I wasn’t there. But she told the story so well, with so much specific language and illustrating details, it’s like I could have been.

Bertie grabbed the Uno cards. I got the pillows. Then we played a pretty epic game of Uno.

I kept waiting for Ms. G. to say it was time to clean up and get back to work, but we just kept going until it was time for gym.

18. Sepia, Manatee, Timberwolf, Outer Space

After lunch, Bertie and I got our books and sat on the big pillows in the back of the room. I opened to chapter ten. The title only had three words.

The first word was The. That was easy. The last word was Day. That was easy, too. It’s always showing up in the morning message, like Today is Friday. But the middle word was longer and more complicated. The first letter was a P. I thought of a lot of P words it probably wasn’t, like peacock and puppy and piano.

The next letter was an e, but I decided to forget about that one for now. E can really mess you up. When you try sounding it out, most teachers start saying things like “Well, yes, e does usually make the eh sound, but in this word it’s silent.” Or “I could see why you would think ei makes the long-i sound, but in this word, it makes the long-a sound.” They teach you all these rules, but nobody bothers to follow them.