“You want to hear something funny?” she said. “I used to tell everybody I had a brother. I talked about stuff that happened with my cousins, but I said it happened with my brother. I called him Benny. Benny and Bertie. It didn’t really feel like a lie. I think it was more about not liking the truth that much.”

For once, I knew exactly what Bertie was talking about. It was one more thing we had in common.

I rerolled my poster and put it into the tube. I tucked it into my backpack to keep it safe.

The morning message was violet, like the tiny buds that had started to pop up on Ms. G.’s plant. It looked a little less tilted, and I hoped she’d leave it where it was for a while.

Dee came in and dumped his stuff in his cubby. He was still loud, but today I heard it different. And when he sat down in his seat all the way in the front of the room, he turned around and gave me a couple of pointers.

I looked at the board. There were zero mistakes, and Ms. G. had drawn a big smiley face in the middle of the zero. I copied the first letter, which was supposed to be a capital and already was.

“Austin?” Ms. G. said.

It’s not that I didn’t hear her. It’s that my mind was filled up with other things. Bertie knew about my fake aunt. She knew about the LC. She knew me, like, all the way through, and she wasn’t going anywhere.

You want to know why I think the chicken really crossed the road? Probably because its friend was on the other side.

“Austin?” I heard again.

It wasn’t Ms. G. this time. It was my mom.

My mom was at the door. She had a laser lemon sticker on her shirt that said visitor.

And that’s when I felt something land hard in my gut, as if all the yellow jackets had given up. We weren’t even going to wait until the end of the year. We weren’t even going to try.

Maybe because of the clogged sink. Maybe because of the traffic. Maybe because of all my snot-nose baby crying. Maybe because of something else I did or didn’t do.

Ms. G. went to the door to shake hands and say hello. Then I watched my mom reach into the back pocket of her jeans and take out something folded and crumpled and vivid tangerine. She smoothed it out against her leg. And even from the smack-dab middle of the room, I could see the thick line at the bottom with her name sitting on top of it.

“Sorry,” she said to Ms. G. “It kind of went through some stuff.”

“No worries,” Ms. G. said. “It’s here now.”

My mom waved to me. “Be good,” she said.