...okay. Well, her options are 'cheat' or 'sit this one out too'; how does a cartoon one go over?

"- ah, that'd work if the idea was actually to have fortune-tellers, but I'm hoping somebody hits on a particular solution, here," says the teacher.

Okay. She'll just watch then.

Eventually he calls a halt, and has everyone describe their fortune-teller-making procedures. Two groups just all made them as fast as they could. One group had a person handy who made them especially fast, and focused on having paper cut down into squares and pre-creased for her so she could do that as efficiently as possible. One group read ahead in the textbook trying to figure out what the teacher was getting at till the teacher told them to stop that, then just made them as fast as they were able. And one group has invented the assembly line!

The assembly line is what the teacher was talking about, though the team with the single efficient origami-er was also getting at a useful division of labor. He starts talking about Henry Ford.

Okay, that's pretty clever. And only a little frustrating that she couldn't really participate.

He pauses at dramatic moments in his narrativization of Henry Ford to ask what people guess happens next, takes three or four guesses per pause, then produces the actual answers.

This class doesn't have homework either, not even something to finish from class.

Yeah, that's not bad.

This one is okay but she's a little worried about how both of the classes had things she couldn't do, she reports.

Julie asks the guidance counselor how frequent that's likely to be.

"The fortune tellers were a one-off," says the counselor. "The worksheet there's going to be more of, though I imagine that's true in every school - you couldn't just have another student write in what you want to write?"

She doesn't do words, is the problem there. Concepts are fine but vocabulary isn't.

"- you understand words when we talk, you aren't reading minds, right?" says the counselor.

Right, but she doesn't remember them the right way to repeat back, except right away.

"In the particular case that came up today I think it would have worked to have the teacher quietly read you the answer key while you pointed where the words were meant to be, would that have worked?"

Yeah, that would work. Or write them down for her, she can't write very well at all even copying but she can read just fine.

"That should do the trick for most worksheets, and you could stay after school if you need to present an essay telepathically."

Yeah, that sounds like it would work.

"Learning to write would be very useful in later life, though," the counselor says. "It might be worth a lot of practice time to make sure you have more words available when the occasion presents- "

"Thank you," says Julie, "I think she wanted a look at the horses before we go?"

"Oh, yes, Ms. Copeland should still be there to show you the barn."

Yeah.

(This was already a 'maybe' and now it's a 'maybe not', she tells Julie.)

"Mm-hm. Important to remember that everybody who does it thinks they're being very clever, though, they don't know how many times other people've had the same idea," Julie says on the way to the barn. "And they'll be scattered all around, you haven't met all the teachers at any of the schools."

The barn contains horses and horseback riding equipment and Ms. Copeland, who will offer Dusk carrots to feed horses.

Mm.

She watches the horses for a minute, and picks one who seems interested but shy to feed.

The horse nibbles the carrot out of her hand, ears flicking forward.

"That's Starbolt," says Ms. Copeland. "Whenever we get a new horse the students get to vote on their name."

That's cute.

How does Starbolt feel about very careful nose-pats?

Starbolt accepts the nose pats.

Starbolt lips her fingers to see if any of them are carrots.

Starbolt can have another carrot, then.