My skin felt so tight, I thought I must be see-through. And now everybody would see all the ways I was completely, totally, one hundred percent different from Bertie. And they would say “Isn’t it ironic those two ever thought they could be friends?”

I didn’t know what made me think I could be a Safety kid. Sometimes when we move, I forget. I get stupid. I think somehow things are magically going to be different.

Dee had said he knew who I was really the same as. And I knew it, too.

I picked up my pencil and started shading all over the test. It looked like storm clouds rolling in, big and dark and ugly. A couple of drops fell onto the page. They pooled and spread. They made ripples in different shades—manatee, timberwolf, outer space. I tried to dry the paper with the side of my hand, but that just made the smudged parts smudgier. If sad was a color, that would be it.

Bertie was the first one done with the test. She looked at me on her way to the cubbies and gave me a thumbs-up. I pretended not to see her.

I watched the other kids take their tests up. One by one by one. I stayed at my desk until the very last minute. That way, I wouldn’t have to go to recess. I wouldn’t have to find Bertie and listen to her ask “What did you put for number one? What did you put for number two?” I wouldn’t have to look at her looking at me.

When the bell rang, I folded my test in half and then in half again. Ms. G. was busy fussing with her plant at the window. I grabbed my book out of my desk and left everything else behind.

I walked out the front door of the school and waited until the vest kid waved me through the sidewalk traffic.

“Take it easy,” he said.

Whatever.

When I turned in to Hidden Rivers, the gate to the pool was open. The water was covered with stuff that had blown in during the storm the other day—pine needles and dead leaves and wood chips from the walkway. It looked more like fall than summer. It looked like summer hadn’t even bothered to show up.

I unlocked the door to our apartment, but my mom wasn’t there. I got my phone and went to my room.

I found chapter ten, The Perfect Day, which this day definitely wasn’t. But maybe it could be for Ms. G.’s lonely friends. I put my phone on the pillow and half listened to the nice lady reader’s voice. The farmer-brother-runner kid was going to a museum with his teacher.