Dee read clear and loud. Believe it or not, just like Bertie, he would make a good audiobook reader when he grew up. But the weirdest part was that Dee had chosen to write about me!

“First, I will address our many similarities. Austin likes Chef Gail’s spaghetti, and I like Chef Gail’s spaghetti, too. We both like Chef Gail’s spaghetti because Chef Gail cooks it just right and the sauce is really delicious. Secondly, Austin and I both dislike lockdown drills. I know this because no reasonable person likes a lockdown drill. Even if the drills are supposed to keep us safe, I think they are terrible. Finally, Austin and I are both friends with Bertie, whose real name is Beatrice. Bertie is very nice and very smart and very short. I don’t know why she is so short. She never told me.”

Dee held out one of his hands. “On the other hand, there are several ways that Austin and I are rather different.” Then he held out his other hand, as if to show us which was the other one.

“Austin is very tall. You could say Austin is as big as Texas. But I am normal-sized. In fact, I am in the fifty-third percentile for height for my age. Also, Austin just moved here, but I have lived here my whole life. Finally, Austin walks to school, whereas I ride the bus, and that is why we don’t see each other in the cafeteria most mornings.”

I didn’t hear Dee’s concluding paragraph because Mr. Lara called Ms. B.’s name and pointed at the clock.

“Guess what!” Ms. B. said. “We’re late.”

We cleaned up the LC, and Ms. B. brought the kids back to their classrooms. Dee and I were the last ones, and by the time we got to Ms. G.’s room, it was already empty.

“Go ahead and pack up,” Ms. B. said. “I’ll drop you.”

“Please don’t drop me,” Dee said. I think it was another joke.

“You going outside or to Ms. Mendoza?” Ms. B. asked him.

“Mendoza,” Dee said. “Newsletter.”

“Silly me,” Ms. B. said.

That’s when I realized that as much as Bertie knew, she didn’t know everything. Dee was helping Ms. Mendoza, and that’s why he wasn’t at recess most days.

“I’m assuming you’re going outside?” Ms. B. asked me.

“Yes, please,” I said.

I packed up super-quick. I wanted to find Bertie right away and tell her about the LC. I wanted to tell her about the beanbags and the laptops and the trampoline, and how I’d gotten it wrong. It wasn’t what I thought it would be like at all.

And I wanted to tell her we’d kind of gotten Dee wrong, too. How it wasn’t easy for him to tell a joke, and he was some kind of special newsletter helper.