Bertie stood on her tiptoes to say something into my ear. I bent down a little to help her out. “If you use a vocabulary word in regular conversation,” she said, “you get a point. When you hit twenty points, you get a prize.”

I wondered if it was a real prize, like a fancy multicolored pen or a key chain to clip onto your backpack. Or a stupid prize, like getting your name on a bulletin board or something.

3. Tumbleweed

I followed Ms. G. until we ended up right back in the classroom. Everybody went to their desks and took out a book.

I didn’t know if this was “Drop Everything and Read” or “Stop, Drop, and Read” or “Stop and Read Together,” but whatever they called it here, it was time for reading. A lot of schools do it right after lunch, like it helps you digest.

But one different thing about this class was that the kids could sit wherever they wanted. Weird places, too. George crawled under his desk like he was in a fort. It looked cool, but I wasn’t sure if I would fit. Or if I did fit going in, I wasn’t sure if I’d get out again. I sat down the normal way, in my chair.

Bertie went to the back of the room and disappeared inside the closet. Then she came out hugging two pillows that were almost as big as her. She set them down on the floor close together. They were light brown, like tumbleweed, and when she sat down on one, she reminded me of a little bird perched in the middle of its gigantic nest.

When I looked at Ms. G., she was reading, too. She wasn’t grading papers or checking her phone or watching the kids to make sure they were reading. She was just reading and rearranging the pencils in her hair.

She looked up at me. But she didn’t yell my name or even speak to me. She pointed to the bookshelf under the window and nodded a little.

The bookshelf was real long, like almost one whole side of the classroom. I walked next to it, running my hand along the edges of the books to feel the buppa-buppa-buppa-buppa.

When I got to the end, I turned around and came back. My hand stopped at a spot that was more pushed in than the others. I pulled out the book that was making the space. It was small, but it was still a real book with lots and lots of pages.

I looked at the title. The first word was Bridge. We used to live at a place called Bridge View Estates, and I passed that sign, like, every day. The second word was to. What fourth grader doesn’t know that word? But the last word was big and pretty complicated.