“Is it the twenty-ninth?” she shouted, all excited. “Because if it is, it depends on what time you were born because David A. is also August twenty-ninth, but he wasn’t born until twelve minutes before midnight, so chances are you’d still be ahead of him.”

I looked down at my spaghetti. I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten into this whole conversation. Maybe if I told Bertie the answer, she would stop talking to me.

But when I looked up, Bertie’s pacific blue smile had suddenly turned, like, outrageous orange. She’d taken the peel from her clementine and stuck it over her teeth. I almost smiled at that.

“Five-minute warning, Ms. G.’s class,” someone called from the head of the table.

It wasn’t a teacher. It was a kid wearing this weird yellow thing that crossed from her shoulder to a yellow belt around her waist. It looked like she had a big, bright greater-than sign across herself. In all the schools I’d been to, I’d never seen a kid wearing a big, bright greater-than sign across themselves.

“That’s Kayla,” Bertie said, pulling the orange peel out of her mouth. “She’s our lunch Safety.”

I didn’t know what Bertie was talking about, but I didn’t want to get into a whole other conversation about it. I took a few more bites of spaghetti and a last swig of milk. Some school food is pretty yuck, but this was a good lunch. I wondered if they ever let you get seconds.

“You’re still the line leader,” Bertie said, and she stuck with me the whole way, telling me where to put my tray and my garbage and where to line up. “It’s round-trip employment, unless you get sick or you have to go to the bathroom or something. One time, Carlos suddenly got sick, so the second-in-line had to step in. You don’t feel like you’re going to throw up, do you?”

“Uh, no,” I said.

As soon as we were in a line—me, Bertie, Bodhi, Carlos, Charlene, David, David, Destiny, George, and so on—the teacher showed up.

“How was lunch?” she asked. I didn’t know if she was asking me specifically, but nobody else was saying anything.

“Um, good,” I said.

“If you cook spaghetti too long, it tastes like paste,” Bertie said to me. “In first grade, Ms. Chengarian saw me tasting the paste, and she sent me to the nurse. I wasn’t sick, but I don’t think she wanted me around, in case I did get sick. I think it was…preemptive.” Bertie said the last word real loud. “Did you hear that, Ms. G.? That’s a point for me.”