At the age of eight, Alyssa Melissa Wright responded to so many names that it gave her a headache to think of them all. She was Alyssa and Melly, had been Ally, and also answered to Lissa, My-Lissy, Junebug, and Miss Wright.

There were probably others, too, but she could never recall them all at once. One rainy afternoon, when she was stuck in the apartment, she had thought about trying to write them all down. That idea was quickly abandoned in favour of going down to Clare's and putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The biggest jigsaw in the world seemed much easier than a list like that.

Mainly, she was called Melly. They called her Alyssa at school, but to her father and Clare she was a Melly.

"It's a special name for you," her father, whome she called Mossie, explained in a solemn voice. He had sat her down one day, when a visit to her mother's house had gone poorly, and explained to her his intentions to call her by her middle name. "You are Alyssa, but I'd be happier calling you by the name I gave you. May I?"

When she was five, she had seen little significance in what her father knew her as. She nodded, swinging her legs back and forth off the edge of the bed. "Yes, Mossie."

Without even realizing it, she became Melly at that moment. The girl who answered to everything decided unconsciously to think of herself as Melly Wright from then on.

In truth, calling her anything else would be unthinkable. Alyssa and Mossie sounded absolutely wrong, while Melly and Mossie was clearly right.

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