cant make partition >=/

ive downloaded and installed kali 2.0 i386 to a 16gb flash drive. i boot it up on a machine, and select usb live persistence. it boots, and we have default stuff on there. if i save a txt, gunzip rockyou.txt.gz, or enter a wifi passcode, it will all be undone and back to factory settings on the next boot.

ive followed the make new partition steps and they dont seem to work/apply to me. it says the directions assume that the disk contains sdb1 and 2, but mine only has 1. also it says that the sdb1 partition is 15 gb, which really doesnt leave any room for another partition anyways. but heres what i tried, and where i got stuck:

i did my fdisk -l and got the info above.

i considered starting from step 2 because how much space sdb1 has, i figured why not use all the free space in that one? so i tried:
mkfs.ext3 -L persistence /dev/sdb1

and i got: /dev contains a vfat file system labelled UUI. proceed anyway?

so i searched about that, and found that vfat is understood, but not the best file system for linux. so i proceed.

then it says that it is mounted; will not make a filesystem here

so then, rejected, i go back to step one, to try to make a sdb2 since i dont already have one. i figure the same commands should work.

end=7gb
read start _ < <(du -bcm kali linux-2.0-i386.iso | tail -1); echo $start

then before i can continue with the rest of the command, i am informed that there is no such directory. so now im here. im very new to linux in general, but enjoy playing around with aircrack, beef, and want to see what the others do. itd just be better if i could keep some persistent files from machine to machine.

any help guys?