A New Name
“Today is the day that I change my name.” The previously unchanged-named boy proudly declared, suddenly standing up from the street curb. “From today on, I will have a new sort of relationship with all things, people and places alike.”
“And what sort of relationship will that be?” Plain old originally-named Anabelle asked from down below, still on the curb busy burning an anthill with her magnifying glass.
“A new one. A fresh one. A brand-spanking-new one.” He looked down at Anabelle’s endeavor disapprovingly and snatched the glass out of her hand. “And will you stop with that? Can’t you see you’re hurting them?”
Anabelle grunted. “I already like the old you better.”
“Well that makes one of us, then.”
“And you know you can’t just say you’re going to be new—you’ve got to know how everything’s going to be new. Otherwise you'll just end up just the exact same.” She continued to watch a line of ants trudge over their burnt brethren.
The boy whose name was currently under review took a lap around Anabelle in a small circle on the curb.“You know Anabelle—the old me woulda slapped you right on the back of the head for saying something like that, but not the new me. You’re right.” He stopped in his original spot on Anabelle’s immediate right. “I’ve got to know how I’m going to act once I have my new name.”
“Mhmm.”
“I’ve got to think about what new people are like, after all, if I’m going to become one.”
"That's not what I meant. And can I have my magnifying glass back?” Anabelle’s voice was almost slippery with irony in the spring-tinted air.
“Not now. We’re brainstorming here. Come on,” he grabbed Anabelle by a strap of her yellow blouse and pulled.
“Hey, hey! Watch it!” She grabbed his wrist with both hands as to lessen the tension on her shirt. “You’re going to wreck this thing!” But she was already standing and he had already started down the wide, snow-blotched avenue, weaving on and off of the curb. She followed. It was an unusually hot February day that almost felt like early September, and the ocean breeze journeyed up to meet them from the whitish-blue and far-off end of the avenue. All newness started with the ocean.
“So how does a new person act when you meet them for the first time?” The boy spoke, his old name fizzling away in the high sunlight.
“They’re polite?”
“Perfect. New people are always polite. As will I be.”
“So can I have my magnifying glass back now, Mr. Politeness?”
He shushed her. "We’re not done here. Plus, I haven’t changed my name. I’m not new yet. Help me think some more.”
“Sometimes they’re a little confused, you know, like a little star-struck?” Anabelle didn’t know why she continued to appease him, other than that she had nothing else going on in her life. Perhaps, she then thought, this was reason enough.
“The boy clapped his hands together. “Exactly! They’re awe-struck. Especially if they’re really new. The newer they are, the more amazed.” They walked by a street gutter and Anabelle kicked a rock into it to hear how deep it went. There was a clink and then a splash approximately two whole seconds later, which meant by her estimation that it was about sixty feet deep. She continued walking.
“So you’re saying you want to be confused all the time?”
“Amazed. But yes. I’m tired of being bored. When was the last time you met a bored new person?”
“I guess you’re right. There was a sudden gust of wind and Anabelle rubbed her bare shoulders for warmth. Maybe it was too soon to play around with February. She had an idea though, and snuck up behind the almost nameless, still-bored-but-tired-of-it boy. All at once she ripped off the jean-jacket tied around his waist in a single swoop.
“What the—” he turned around and she had run backwards a few yards to go put it on.” She looked like a forget-me-not with the blue petals and the yellow center. She was grinning and her eyes narrowed, greedily and satisfied. “Whatever,” the boy said, and continued walking. Anabelle pulled the magnifying glass out of her new pocket and smiled even wider.
“Either way!” He yelled, Anabelle catching up with him, “it’s good to be amazed.”
“Confused.”
“Amazed. Yes.”
“Wouldn’t you rather know things, though?” Anabelle found in her other new pocket a Hershey’s kiss and popped it into her mouth. It tasted very old.
“No. I don’t like knowing things. I’d rather not.”
They were walking down the avenue in silence when they arrived at the front of the Russian store, its name spelled out in alien red letters in the window: Гастроном.
“I want some candy.” Anabelle declared, rolling around the Hershey’s kiss wrapper in her pocket and searching for any money they boy could’ve kept in there.
“Then I want a herring. If you go in get me a herring.”
"And why aren't you coming in?
"I hate it in there."
“Fine. What do you need a herring for?”
“Why do you care?”
“What if the guy asks me?”
“He’s not gonna ask you.”
“And if he does?” Anabelle’s bright brown eyes drank in the sunlight.
“Then just tell him your mom sent you to get one.”
“O.K. fine.” She conceded, and as she walked in, having found just enough money in the boy’s pocket for candy and a herring, he called out after her.
“A whole one! With the head and the tail and everything!”
When she came back out with a black plastic shopping bag hanging from her fist the boy was lying flat on the sidewalk with his eyes closed. Anabelle leaned over him. “Wake up. I got it.”
They boy opened his eyes and pulled up to a sitting position. “Did he say anything to you?”
Anabelle pulled of the black bag a package of sour-skittles and tore it open, tapping one out into her open palm—a pink one—and marveling at its sour-sugar-coated shell.
“Yup. He said to me,” Anabelle furrowed her brow and pulled back her chin in order to pull off her best Russian. “Vhy yu vant hedding?”
“And?”
“I told him what you told me to tell him.”
“And?”
“And he gave me the herring.” She tossed the sparkling pink jewel into her mouth.
“Let me see, let me see.”
Anabelle lackadaisically, almost languidly, extended her arm with the black plastic bag hanging from her fist and the boy stood up and took it. He peered inside and smiled. “Perfect. Alright let’s go.” Him in front of her, they continued towards the ocean.
“You know,” Anabelle said, “when I was in there I realized that I was the new person to the Russian guy.”
“And how’d it feel?” The boy asked without turning to face her.
“Pretty good. I mainly just wanted candy from him though, and then as I was checking out I thought that maybe new people always just want things.”
“I suppose that’s true,” now the boy turned around to face Anabelle but continued walking backwards on his heels, “new people always want something from you. Either that or you want something from them.”
“So then what—you’re going to want more stuff once you change your name?”
“Nope.” He was still walking backwards, pleased with his inconsistency.
“But you just agreed with me that new people always want stuff.” Anabelle threw another skittle into her mouth, this one an electric blue.
“Sure. But my new is going to be different from everybody else’s new. I can be new however I want. I’m gonna be newer than new.” Catching onto something moving very quickly in his mind he repeated, “newer than new. Newer than newer than new. Newer than newer than new,” with each syllable of his mantra taking a step backwards and nodding his head front to back; Anabelle thought he resembled a cuckoo-clock. “Newer than newer than new.”
She interrupted him. “So why’d you ask what new people were like in the first place if you were just going to make up your own kind of new?”
“Well we had to start somewhere.” The almost newer than new boy turned back around, once again reveling in his ingenuity.
The avenue was smelling brinier and brinier and winter seagulls were starting to coo excitedly overhead. A subway car rumbled too, flying across an aboveground track on giant metal legs like monuments.
“What time do you have to be home tonight?” Anabelle asked, “I have to be home by eleven.”
But the boy ignored her, and swinging the shopping bag in his wide gait said, “So then what’ve we got? With my new name I’ll be polite, I’ll be amazed, and I won't want anything from anyone. That sounds like a pretty good start to me.”
“We didn’t agree on that last one.”
“Well then I’m adding it now. I won't want anything from anyone.”
“Whatever,” Anabelle sighed, feigning a disinterest that was very real just a short while ago.
The two of them reached the boardwalk and they both instinctively took their shoes off. The wood was frigid underneath their calloused feet and the waves crashed into the frozen sand with some unhurried frequency.
“There’s only one thing left.”
“Which is?”
“My new name.” The almost brand-new boy swung the plastic bag full of ice chips and a single, whole herring around in a vertical circle with his arm fully extended. It flew overhead and at its apex Anabelle almost flinched, halfway expecting the herring to rip out of the bag and fly up for the seagulls to catch and tear-apart midair. Everything stayed together though and the boy swung the bag in a few more of these circles until Anabelle grabbed his arm tightly and forced it back down to his side.
“Ow! What’d you do that for?”
“Stop that.”
“O.K.” he muttered, the two of them continuing down the boardwalk.
“Can I have a new name too?” Anabelle asked after a while. Her name seemed as old and as boring as an equation in a math textbook.
“No. Only I get a new name.” He opened the fish bag again but then quickly and hastily closed it when Anabelle tried to look too.
“Fine.” Anabelle rubbed her magnifying glass in her pocket. “But I get to choose it then.”
“What? Why do you get to choose it?”
“Because if I’m not going to get a new name then I get to choose yours. It’s only fair. Plus,” she added, suddenly self-conscious that her first appeal sounded too needy, “you can’t choose your own name—because that would be the old you naming the new you, and then the new you wouldn’t really be new at all.” Her voice sounded a little strained from the cold but she thought her reasoning held up.
“Hmm.” The boy stopped and made a quick pivot towards the ocean. “You’re right. You’ll have to name me. I’m glad you pointed that out.”
Anabelle suppressed her smile. Without a reason she hopped over the short wooden fence along the edge of the boardwalk and landed in the cold sand. She regained her composure after noting that the fall hurt her ankles more than she’d anticipated, and then made a burst of speed towards the ocean. The boy screamed something behind her that she didn’t hear with the wind rushing in her face, and then she was at the tide’s edge.
He appeared next to her. “What’d you do that for?” She didn’t reply. They were both out of breath and the ocean appeared dark and massive in front of them. Anabelle’s hair whipped around her head in all directions and she had to button her jean-jacket closed for warmth.
The soon-to-be-named boy seemed not to notice the cold, even though he was only wearing a T-shirt and khaki shorts. Instead he opened the black plastic bag and removed the herring; after dumping out the ice chips into the sand he stuffed the bag into his shorts pocket.
“You’re going to eat that thing right now?”
“Who said anything about eating it? I’m going to bury it.”
“Bury it?”
“Of course. Did you think there wasn’t going to be a ceremony for the welcoming in of my new name?”
“I guess I didn’t,” Anabelle admitted. “And why is burying this fish part of your new naming ceremony?”
“Because I say so. And because this is how the Native Americans did it.” He got on his knees and began to dig with his two hands. The herring fell to his side. “So are you gonna help me or what?”
Anabelle knelt down too and started to shovel the wet sand with her open palms, the tide occasionally filling in the hole and melting its walls. “You know we’re not going to get anywhere if we dig this close to the tide. It’s just going to keep melting.”
“Not if we dig deep enough.” The boy grunted with the full of his attention aimed towards the ground—he dug as if he were trying to rip out the heart of the earth. “It needs to be buried deep for it to work too. And think of the name you’re going to give me. I don’t want a bad name.”
“Well I can’t do both at the same time,” Anabelle said. A pulse of tide water flooded the hole and the walls caved in.
“Fine, fine. You go think, I’ll dig. I can do it faster on my own anyway.” He took off his shirt and tossed it towards the boardwalk.
“Wait. I just thought of something.” Anabelle’s eyes widened. “Once I give you your new name are you even going to remember who I am?”
The boy did not stop digging to answer. “Unclear. We’ll have to find out.”
Anabelle exhaled, stood up, and brushed the wet sand off from her blouse—now was not the time to be scared. Instead she walked off to think of a name, ready to risk being forgotten; in that way perhaps they could both be new. But what name would be fitting for him? Something polite, amazed, solitary.
From a distance she watched him scurry deeper and deeper into the sand, not caring that the tidewater would come in every other minute and splash him all over. He was soaked but the hole gradually became deep enough so that it didn’t collapse under the weight of each incoming wave. He stood up, the hole rising up to his waist, and suddenly Anabelle had an idea for his new name.
“Done!” The boy yelled, “now let’s get this thing over with—I’m freezing!” He stepped out of the hole as she walked back towards it, and he picked up the smoked herring with both of his sandy, bloodless hands. He held it above the hole and waited.
The wind had picked up and the sea was growing hungrier, reaching further and further towards them, so Anabelle quickly racked her brain for ceremony-talk and began: “By the power invested in me, I hereby pronounce your new name…” She paused, staring at the fish and the little pond that had filled beneath it.
“Which is…” The boy’s outstretched arms were trembling and covered in goose bumps.
“Your new name is… is… Morgan the Forever Brand New!”
“Morgan the Forever Brand New!” Morgan the Forever Brand New yelped and dropped the smoked fish into the hole. He fell to the ground and began to pull armfuls of sand back into the hole. Anabelle followed and they filled it until it was nothing but a dark patch in the sand; by the time they got back to the boardwalk it was too dark out to even see where they’d dug the hole in the first place. Likely it was already submerged.
Shivering, they pulled their socks and shoes back on in silence. When they stood up Anabelle asked, “How does it feel? Do you still remember me?”
But Morgan the Forever Brand New didn’t answer her right away. He just stood there and stared off into the deep, roaring blackness. “Wow…” he whispered instead, and Anabelle looked too.