ROSIE SAT AT the kitchen table with Simon. She could see the confusion on our faces. We had no idea what her plan was.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rosie said. “I’ve got it. Simon and I will take care of step two—getting Principal Shelton out of her office. And, Molly, you’re sure you can take care of step one—getting into trouble?”

“I’m sure,” I said as I put three pieces of bread into the toaster. “I’m going to use toilet paper. You’ll see.”

“Are you okay with getting into trouble?” Simon asked.

“No, I’m definitely not okay with getting into trouble,” I explained and shook my head. “But what choice do I have? I need to know how many Skittles are in that jar. That’s way more important.”

“Okay. Then that only leaves step three—counting those Skittles,” Rosie said. She scrunched her mouth to one side a little bit. She was sort of talking to herself as much as to us. And she was twirling her hair again. “How can we do that?”

“That part should be easy,” Simon said. “With Principal Shelton gone, Molly just dumps out the jar and starts counting, right?”

“No,” Rosie said and shook her head. “Step two gets Shelton out of her office. But I don’t know how long she’ll be gone. Plus, there could be people hanging around outside the office. Mrs. B. or somebody else.”

“Right,” Simon agreed. “Molly needs to find a way to count the Skittles really fast.”

“I don’t think I can,” I said, picturing that jar on Principal Shelton’s desk. I got a jar of Mom’s homemade raspberry jam from the refrigerator. “There must be hundreds in that jar.”

Rosie snapped her fingers. She can snap extra loud.

“We could get a separate container—something smaller,” Rosie said, explaining her idea. She’s good at math—like, really good. “We could get a Styrofoam cup or something. We go buy some Skittles and see how many fit into the cup.”

“How would that work?” I asked. I gave Simon and Rosie each a piece of toast and set the raspberry jam on the table.

“Well, let’s say 127 fit into the cup,” Rosie said. Using her empty hands, she pretended to pour Skittles from the jar into the Styrofoam cup. “Then when you’re alone in Shelton’s office you can just see how many times it takes to fill the cup. Like, maybe you can fill the cup three times and then there’s 14 left over. That would be 127 times 3, which is 381. Plus 14 would be 395. That would be way faster than counting 395 Skittles individually.”

“How do you do math so fast?” asked Simon, spreading jam on his toast.

“I don’t know,” Rosie answered modestly. “I’m weird, I guess.”

Simon said, “It’s not weird, it’s awesome!”

Something about Rosie’s idea didn’t work for me. And I guess she could tell.

Rosie asked, “What is it?”

“It just doesn’t sound very precise,” I said. I wiped some raspberry jam from the corner of my mouth. Mom’s raspberry jam is really good, but it’s sticky. “I mean, it won’t be the same number of Skittles in the cup every time. Sometimes it will be 127. But other times it might be 129 or 118. There’s no way to be exact.”

Simon said, “But you would know there are pretty close to 395 Skittles in the jar.”

“You don’t want to be ‘pretty close,’ right?” Rosie asked.

“Right,” I confirmed. “I have to know the exact number. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Rosie and Simon are such good friends. They didn’t question why I had to be exact. They knew it was important to me. It was just as important as eating my food in even numbers or only jumping in the leaf pile after every single leaf was raked up.

They understood.

“Okay, Molly has to get an exact count. But she also has to be fast,” Simon summarized. “How in the world can she do that?”

“We do need to be exact,” Rosie said and paused. She held her half-eaten toast midair in her right hand. She twirled some hair with her left hand. “But we don’t have to be fast.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I know how to do it,” Rosie said.

Simon asked, “How?”

Rosie explained how she figured out step three—how to count the Skittles.

And I thought it might just work.

We only needed to do two more things before launching our mission the next day at school.

For the first thing, I went to the sink and turned on the hot water. Rosie brought me the jar of raspberry jam.

Simon ran to the store to do the second thing.