My name is Daniel, and I also sometimes go by Dan. But never Danny, or Dan-Dan, or Dan the Man, or Danny Boy, or any other version of that. Just Daniel or Dan.
Mama is a nickname sort of person. She calls my brother Dakota, or Kota, or Cody, or Code, or Dakky, or Kota Bear, and I say Mama, why didn’t you just name him Kota Bear if that’s what you wanna call him, and she says don’t be silly Danny Boy, his name is Dakota. And then my brother Mitchell is Mitch, or Mitchy, or Itchy, or Itchy and Scratchy, and I say Mama, why didn’t you just name him Itchy and Scratchy if that’s what you wanna call him, and she says don’t be silly Dan-Dan, his name is Mitchell.
If I had a baby sister like Mama wanted, she’d be named Marley, and Mama would call her Mars, or Mar-Mar, or Le-Le, or Marshmallow, and I’d say Mama, why didn’t you just name her Marshmallow if that’s what you wanna call her, and she’d say don’t be silly Dan the Man, her name is Marley. But Mama don’t have a daughter named Marley. She wanted a daughter named Marley real bad when Dakota was born and she got Dakota instead, and she wanted a daughter named Marley real bad when Mitchell was born and she got Mitchell instead, and she wanted a daughter named Marley real bad when I was born and she got me instead. After the doctor told her I had autism she stopped trying for a real long time to have Marley. She called me a difficult child and she didn’t try again until I was seven years old for another baby, and by then she was old old old. But she tried again anyways and she sure got pregnant and told Dakota, Mitchell, and me that we’d all be big brothers. Then one day she cried and cried and said the baby was dead. A whole year and a half later she tried again and when this one died too she cried and cried and said God was telling her that she wasn’t meant to have a little girl because she already had three perfect little boys. I didn’t say it out loud but I thought, “If God is mean enough to kill two baby girls in your tummy even though he knows that’s what you want, I don’t think I like God very much.”
I didn’t say that though because Mama would turn all red faced and get mad and say I shouldn’t say that.
At least the boys at school don’t nickname me anything I don’t like much other than Danny. Not like Timothy Howell with the big nose and flat yellow hair. They call him all the usual ones, like Tim or Timmy or Tim-Tim, but then one day Brock Wheeler from the fourth grade with his dumb, ugly face came up to Timothy and called him a mean name on the red playground. The red playground was the one closest to the flat, brown school, only probably a couple yards away from the dingy looking relocatable buildings behind the school. The red playground was big with a bridge that bounced when a kid ran across it, and a small, yellow slide diving off the side, and if you follow the bridge all the way and climbed the yellow ladder to the top platform of the playground there was a yellow and red plastic circus tent that opened to a twisty yellow slide. The day Brock Wheeler from the fourth grade came up to Timothy on the red playground, I grabbed the entrance to the yellow and red plastic circus tent and swung from that straight to the twisty yellow slide and landed hard right on my rump and it hurt a little but it was more fun than it hurt. I slid on my rump all the way down the twisty slide until I tumbled off onto the black turf and it shredded into my elbow that I landed on and I was just about to say ow when I watched Brock Wheeler walk right up to Timothy Howell. I craned my neck way back so I could see his big fourth grader body and I held up my hand above my eyes to block the bright sun and a couple pieces of turf that were stuck on my fat palms fell off and landed on my shirt. I didn’t brush it off though so I could watch Brock Wheeler walk right up to Timothy Howell.
I heard Brock Wheeler call Timothy Howell “Tiny Tim,” and just like I would have done Timothy asked big Brock Wheeler why he was calling him Tiny Tim. Good thing no girls were around and especially not Mama because Brock Wheeler said Tiny Tim was nicknamed that from now on because his private parts were real little. I sat up so I was on my rump instead of my elbows and cocked my head to the right.
“Brock, did Timothy tell you he had small privates or did you peek when he wasn’t looking?” I asked out of curiosity. I never knew if Brock had peeked or if Timothy had told him, though, because Brock came over and punched me right in the nose and I cried and cried and went to the bathroom and shoved tissues up my nose to stop the flow of blood. Later on Brock got in a whole load of trouble from the principal and Brock came up and told me he was sorry and said he wouldn’t have punched me in the nose if he had known that I was autistic, but he still never told me if he had peeked or if Timothy had told him.
That was two weeks before a pretty girl moved to our school and started in my class. She seemed to be “high functioning,” which is what Mama called me, because she was one of the best behaved kids in the whole class, and she didn’t take any pills at lunchtime, and even the boys in the regular third grade classes looked at her like they thought she was pretty, and I’ve never seen any of the boys or girls from the regular classes look at the boys and girls in my class and think they were pretty. The pretty girl had yellow ringlets that bounced up and down when she walked and I wanted to pull the ringlets and watch them boing back into place, and she wore a red headband that tried to control the ringlets but didn’t do a very good job, and she was just a little bit chubby but not very much, and she wore round glasses that didn’t even fall to the end of her nose the way they do on other people.
When the pretty girl walked into our classroom, I saw her check out the posters on the walls. Mrs. Finch was just about the nicest teacher ever but she was one bad decorator because the posters were all those cheesy ones that no one really liked, except one right next to the door of the class that had George Washington’s face on it with the word “Read,” in all red lettering, which didn’t even make any sense because George Washington was probably too busy doing stuff to read. The desks in the class were all arranged in funny shapes because every couple weeks Mrs. Finch would rearrange all the desks in a brand new way and give us all new seating and say that change was a good thing and it would open our minds and keep us fresh and excited. The pretty girl didn’t sit down right away though when she came to class, instead she went up to the front and stood right below Mrs. Finch’s swirly writing on the whiteboard so it looked like numbers were growing right out of her head and Mrs. Finch told her to introduce herself.
“Rosary,” was all the pretty girl said.
I thought to myself that’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard. It’s not even a name. Rose is a name, and Rosie is a name, Rosita, Rosalina, Rosemary, but Rosary isn’t even a real name. Mrs. Finch told Rosary to go sit at the table two over from mine and I thought that was just fine since I don’t want to think a girl is pretty who has a dumb name like Rosary. I still thought she was pretty though even when she was sitting two tables away from me.
The first day I ever talked to Rosary I was drawing a picture of a dragon for Mama because it was almost Christmas time and we were all decorating cards. The pair of scissors at her table was being used and the pair of scissors at the table next to hers was being used so she walked all the way over to my table and asked if the pair of scissors at our table was being used. I reached over to Katelyn Decker’s desk and took the scissors and when I turned to hand Rosary the scissors she was looking right down at my card for Mama.
“You don’t draw very good,” was all she said. I looked down at my picture of a dragon and saw that the fire looked like throw up, the legs were squiggly, and his head was too small for his body.
“Well, you’re ugly,” I said back to Rosary as I gave her the pair of scissors. Her glasses almost fell right off her face when she jolted her head forward into the palms of both her hands and started crying and crying. The teacher came over and asked what happened and she said I called her ugly and I said yeah well she said I don’t draw good and the teacher made us both apologize to each other. I apologized to Rosary but after class I saw her dirty pink backpack in a whole crowd of big and small kids and I ran up next to her and told her that when I apologized I didn’t mean it. She started crying all over again but I ran away to Mama’s white minivan before Rosary could say anything else to me. And that was the first day I ever talked to Rosary.
That night at the dinner table I asked Mama if she had ever heard the name Rosary and she said she thought that was a really pretty name and that if she had a little girl named Rosary she would call her Rosie and I rolled my eyes and said, “Mama, why not just call her Rosie if that’s what you wanna call her?”
“Why don’t you like nicknames anyways, Danny Boy?” Dakota asked me. He was sitting right across the table from me next to Mitchell so I could kick him right underneath the table without Mama or Daddy noticing so that’s what I did. I knew he called me Danny Boy on purpose and I don’t know why he keeps doing that.
“Nicknames are stupid,” I answered.
“But why?” Dakota asked again, shifting his veggies around his plate so it would look like he ate some even though he really didn’t.
“Well, because I’m Daniel and Daniel is who I am. I’m not Danny or Danny Boy or-” I was gonna list all the names that I don’t like but Dakota cut me off before I could and I guess it’s probably because he already knew all the names that I don’t like.
“So how come I can call you Dan but not Danny Boy?” he asked. I started to get real annoyed because I know he was just asking me all these questions to bug me and I wanted to punch him right in the gut but then Mama would make me apologize and plus Dakota would probably just make me sniff his armpit later as pay back so instead I just answered him.
“Dan is kind of like my name because it’s in my name and everything,” I said.
“So Iel is in your name, too,” Mitchell said and I knew that I must have been adopted because both my brothers are big old jerks who can’t leave me alone. I turned to look at Mama and Daddy for help but they were leaning over and giving each other gross, ugly googoo eyes and making kissy faces and talking about all sorts of adult stuff.
“That’s stupid, that’s not a name worse than Rosary’s not a name!” I said. I could feel my face getting all heated up because I hate when Mitchell and Dakota team up against me to annoy me and Mama and Daddy always say they only do it because I react but I think how can I not react if they’re being big jerks.
“But you said you’re okay with nicknames as long as they’re in your real name,” Dakota said. “Hey Iel, can you hand me the salt and pepper?”
“That’s not my name,” I said. My voice was a shriek now, the kind Mama says gives her headaches, and so her and Daddy looked over and yelled at all three of us to stop. But I wasn’t doing anything so I shrieked at her that I wasn’t doing anything and they were being big jerks and she said Danny Boy, stop shrieking or you’re gonna give me a headache.
“His name is Iel,” Dakota corrected and so I jumped up and threw a punch at him from across the table and Mama got real mad at that even though I didn’t even hit him and so she told me I needed to go to my room.
My name is Daniel, and sometimes I go by Dan, but never, ever Iel.
The next time I talked to Rosary wasn’t for a whole other week and three days. I counted it because even though she had a stupid name and she said I’m not good at drawing, I still thought she was real pretty. But a whole week and three days after that first time we talked, Mrs. Finch changed the desk arrangement so that there was a big L in the corner of the room out of desks and then two clusters of desks inside the L. Mrs. Finch gave us all new seating and told us all that change was a good thing and it would open our minds and keep us fresh and excited. But the best part about it all was that I was in one of the clusters of desks and sitting right in front of me was Rosary. The way Mrs. Finch arranged the desk made it so I was staring right at the back of Rosary’s head and I could see her pretty ringlets bounce around as she worked on assignments and she couldn’t even see me watch her ringlets because she was facing the same way I was so she had to turn all the way around to talk to me.
I think Rosary held a grudge for the time I called her ugly because it was a whole half a day with the new seating arrangement before she finally did turn around and talk to me and what she said when she did was, “Why did you call me ugly?”
“Because you said I wasn’t good at drawing,” I told her.
“You really aren’t very good at drawing,” Rosary said, folding her arms across her chest. We were supposed to be quietly working on an assignment so I glanced past Rosary and made sure Mrs. Finch wasn’t looking at us with a squinty face like she does when she doesn’t want you talking and you are anyways.
“Well, you really are ugly,” I lied.
“Daniel, you are so mean!” Rosary huffed. “That’s the difference between boys and girls, boys are mean and girls are nice! And boys are dumb and girls aren’t.”
I knew this wasn’t true though because Mama had told me what the real difference is between boys and girls so I told Rosary that she was wrong and that boys and girls have different private parts and she scrunched up her nose real cute.
“That’s a different kind of different than what I was talking about!” Rosary shrieked. I looked up again to make sure Mrs. Finch wasn’t looking. She wasn’t.
“You’re still wrong,” I told her.
“No I’m not!”
“Uh huh, wrong and dumb,”
“You’re so mean!”
I stood up and showed her that I had different private parts than she did and Mrs. Finch got all flustered and red and grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of the room and Rosary was crying and crying and when Mrs. Finch asked what I was doing I told her I was showing Rosary the difference between boys and girls because she didn’t know and she thought it was that boys were dumb and mean. Mrs. Finch called Mama and Mama was all embarrassed and she yelled at me when I got home and told me that private parts were called private because they were always supposed to be private. She didn’t even care that Rosary didn’t know the difference between boys and girls, she just kept telling me over and over that private parts are always private. That night at dinner Dakota and Mitchell kept laughing and saying that Iel took his pants off for a girl in the third grade, and I just kept telling them I don’t even know who Iel is.
The next day Rosary didn’t turn around to talk to me all day long so I watched her pretty ringlets bounce every time she moved. From staring at the back of her head all day, I discovered she had a big, dark mole on her left shoulder that was sometimes covered up by her hair or by the sleeve of her shirt but sometimes was showing. For about three quarters of the day, the tag on her shirt stuck out and poked through her hair and made one of her ringlets sit funny. That one that was sitting funny didn’t look quite as pretty as the rest of them, all curling around perfectly like the yellow slide on the playground, boinging and bouncing on her shoulder with every movement she made.
When it came time to clean up from the arts and crafts activity we were working on, I quietly snuck a pair of scissors in my desk so I didn’t have to put it away. Then, when it was almost time to pack up our backpacks for home, I reached out and carefully, carefully snipped one of Rosary’s ringlets from her hair. Just one. She had plenty of others, anyways, and they were too pretty and bouncy for me to not keep just one. I didn’t think she’d miss it too much. But apparently Rosary heard that snip sound because she spun around right after I snipped off a piece and when she saw one of her pretty ringlets in my hand her face got all screwed up and her hand went sailing up to the back of her head and she cried and cried and got red.
“I hate you, Daniel!” She said and then she went back to hiccupping and crying and Mrs. Finch came over to see what was going on so I tried to hide the ringlet in my desk but that didn’t work because Rosary told on me anyways. Mrs. Finch kept me after class and told me she had never been so disappointed with me and why would I want to ruin Rosary’s pretty hair. I tried to tell Mrs. Finch that I didn’t want to ruin her pretty hair, I just wanted some of it because it was so pretty, but Mrs. Finch didn’t listen to me and she called Mama and for the second day in a row Mama got real upset with me and asked me why I kept picking on poor, sweet Rosary. Even Mama wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell her that I was just keeping some of Rosary’s hair because of how pretty it was. Mama said Danny Boy, you better march right up to sweet little Rosie tomorrow and tell her sorry for cutting her hair. I said okay, but the next day Rosary wouldn’t even let me get anywhere near her and Mrs. Finch moved the desks again and she had never moved the desks that soon after making new seating and I thought maybe it was because of me.
I counted the days that passed and it was exactly four days before I talked to Rosary again. This day, Rosary was underneath the yellow slide on the red playground, where the twist in the slide makes a cave underneath it and Rosary was sitting underneath there coloring in a coloring book. I only went to the red playground because I planned to swing from the circus tent to the yellow slide like I did the day Brock Wheeler called Timothy Howell a mean nickname, but when I saw Rosary I decided to talk to her instead. It didn’t seem right that a pretty girl like Rosary would be sitting underneath the yellow slide coloring by herself at recess, and even though she didn’t seem to like me very much I thought I’d try talking to her one more time.
I sat down next to her. She didn’t even stop drawing for a forty five seconds, I counted, but when she did stop drawing and glance up at me, she screwed up her face in a real cute, angry way and looked back down.
“I’m not talking to you,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. She used her fingers to brush those pretty, yellow ringlets until she found the short spot that I had cut off. Her face seemed to sadden and I felt my heart scrunch up in my chest like it was trying to hide so it didn’t have to see her sad face. I tricked myself into believing she was sad for a different reason, that it wasn’t because of the ringlet that I cut off that was sitting in my pencil box on my desk at home.
“Why did you cut off a piece of my hair?” She asked. My already scrunched up heart scrunched up even more.
Above our heads, there was a screaming sound of some kids who were probably playing tag. The bouncy bridge was jangling with noise as feet prodded across. Timothy Howell was probably playing freeze tag on the field over by the soccer posts like he usually did at recess. Katelyn Decker was probably dangling upside down off the monkey bars on the blue playground over on the other side of the schoolyard. Brock Wheeler was probably with some other fourth graders playing kickball or maybe four square. But here was Rosary, the prettiest girl in the whole school, and she was sitting next to me under the yellow slide of the red playground coloring in a coloring book and asking me why I cut off some of her hair. So I decided to tell her the truth.
“I think your ringlets are really pretty, so I wanted to keep one. I didn’t think you would miss it,” I told her. She finally lifted her eyes from her half-colored picture and stared at me right in the eyes. I didn’t like her looking right at me like that so I looked down at the dirt under my thumbnail really quickly. I bit at it to try and get it out.
“You said I’m ugly, though,” Rosary said. I gnawed at my other thumbnail so it would be clean like the first one. After a long time with her probably glaring at me and me gnawing at all of my fingernails until all ten were clean, I let my eyes meet hers. Then I leaned forward and pressed my lips into hers.
I started biting my thumbnail again after that even though it was clean and Rosary took the lid off of one of her markers and started coloring again. After a while, I stopped chewing on my thumbnail.
“You can call me Danny Boy. If ya wanna. I go by that sometimes, too.”
Mama is a nickname sort of person. She calls my brother Dakota, or Kota, or Cody, or Code, or Dakky, or Kota Bear, and I say Mama, why didn’t you just name him Kota Bear if that’s what you wanna call him, and she says don’t be silly Danny Boy, his name is Dakota. And then my brother Mitchell is Mitch, or Mitchy, or Itchy, or Itchy and Scratchy, and I say Mama, why didn’t you just name him Itchy and Scratchy if that’s what you wanna call him, and she says don’t be silly Dan-Dan, his name is Mitchell.
If I had a baby sister like Mama wanted, she’d be named Marley, and Mama would call her Mars, or Mar-Mar, or Le-Le, or Marshmallow, and I’d say Mama, why didn’t you just name her Marshmallow if that’s what you wanna call her, and she’d say don’t be silly Dan the Man, her name is Marley. But Mama don’t have a daughter named Marley. She wanted a daughter named Marley real bad when Dakota was born and she got Dakota instead, and she wanted a daughter named Marley real bad when Mitchell was born and she got Mitchell instead, and she wanted a daughter named Marley real bad when I was born and she got me instead. After the doctor told her I had autism she stopped trying for a real long time to have Marley. She called me a difficult child and she didn’t try again until I was seven years old for another baby, and by then she was old old old. But she tried again anyways and she sure got pregnant and told Dakota, Mitchell, and me that we’d all be big brothers. Then one day she cried and cried and said the baby was dead. A whole year and a half later she tried again and when this one died too she cried and cried and said God was telling her that she wasn’t meant to have a little girl because she already had three perfect little boys. I didn’t say it out loud but I thought, “If God is mean enough to kill two baby girls in your tummy even though he knows that’s what you want, I don’t think I like God very much.”
I didn’t say that though because Mama would turn all red faced and get mad and say I shouldn’t say that.
At least the boys at school don’t nickname me anything I don’t like much other than Danny. Not like Timothy Howell with the big nose and flat yellow hair. They call him all the usual ones, like Tim or Timmy or Tim-Tim, but then one day Brock Wheeler from the fourth grade with his dumb, ugly face came up to Timothy and called him a mean name on the red playground. The red playground was the one closest to the flat, brown school, only probably a couple yards away from the dingy looking relocatable buildings behind the school. The red playground was big with a bridge that bounced when a kid ran across it, and a small, yellow slide diving off the side, and if you follow the bridge all the way and climbed the yellow ladder to the top platform of the playground there was a yellow and red plastic circus tent that opened to a twisty yellow slide. The day Brock Wheeler from the fourth grade came up to Timothy on the red playground, I grabbed the entrance to the yellow and red plastic circus tent and swung from that straight to the twisty yellow slide and landed hard right on my rump and it hurt a little but it was more fun than it hurt. I slid on my rump all the way down the twisty slide until I tumbled off onto the black turf and it shredded into my elbow that I landed on and I was just about to say ow when I watched Brock Wheeler walk right up to Timothy Howell. I craned my neck way back so I could see his big fourth grader body and I held up my hand above my eyes to block the bright sun and a couple pieces of turf that were stuck on my fat palms fell off and landed on my shirt. I didn’t brush it off though so I could watch Brock Wheeler walk right up to Timothy Howell.
I heard Brock Wheeler call Timothy Howell “Tiny Tim,” and just like I would have done Timothy asked big Brock Wheeler why he was calling him Tiny Tim. Good thing no girls were around and especially not Mama because Brock Wheeler said Tiny Tim was nicknamed that from now on because his private parts were real little. I sat up so I was on my rump instead of my elbows and cocked my head to the right.
“Brock, did Timothy tell you he had small privates or did you peek when he wasn’t looking?” I asked out of curiosity. I never knew if Brock had peeked or if Timothy had told him, though, because Brock came over and punched me right in the nose and I cried and cried and went to the bathroom and shoved tissues up my nose to stop the flow of blood. Later on Brock got in a whole load of trouble from the principal and Brock came up and told me he was sorry and said he wouldn’t have punched me in the nose if he had known that I was autistic, but he still never told me if he had peeked or if Timothy had told him.
That was two weeks before a pretty girl moved to our school and started in my class. She seemed to be “high functioning,” which is what Mama called me, because she was one of the best behaved kids in the whole class, and she didn’t take any pills at lunchtime, and even the boys in the regular third grade classes looked at her like they thought she was pretty, and I’ve never seen any of the boys or girls from the regular classes look at the boys and girls in my class and think they were pretty. The pretty girl had yellow ringlets that bounced up and down when she walked and I wanted to pull the ringlets and watch them boing back into place, and she wore a red headband that tried to control the ringlets but didn’t do a very good job, and she was just a little bit chubby but not very much, and she wore round glasses that didn’t even fall to the end of her nose the way they do on other people.
When the pretty girl walked into our classroom, I saw her check out the posters on the walls. Mrs. Finch was just about the nicest teacher ever but she was one bad decorator because the posters were all those cheesy ones that no one really liked, except one right next to the door of the class that had George Washington’s face on it with the word “Read,” in all red lettering, which didn’t even make any sense because George Washington was probably too busy doing stuff to read. The desks in the class were all arranged in funny shapes because every couple weeks Mrs. Finch would rearrange all the desks in a brand new way and give us all new seating and say that change was a good thing and it would open our minds and keep us fresh and excited. The pretty girl didn’t sit down right away though when she came to class, instead she went up to the front and stood right below Mrs. Finch’s swirly writing on the whiteboard so it looked like numbers were growing right out of her head and Mrs. Finch told her to introduce herself.
“Rosary,” was all the pretty girl said.
I thought to myself that’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard. It’s not even a name. Rose is a name, and Rosie is a name, Rosita, Rosalina, Rosemary, but Rosary isn’t even a real name. Mrs. Finch told Rosary to go sit at the table two over from mine and I thought that was just fine since I don’t want to think a girl is pretty who has a dumb name like Rosary. I still thought she was pretty though even when she was sitting two tables away from me.
The first day I ever talked to Rosary I was drawing a picture of a dragon for Mama because it was almost Christmas time and we were all decorating cards. The pair of scissors at her table was being used and the pair of scissors at the table next to hers was being used so she walked all the way over to my table and asked if the pair of scissors at our table was being used. I reached over to Katelyn Decker’s desk and took the scissors and when I turned to hand Rosary the scissors she was looking right down at my card for Mama.
“You don’t draw very good,” was all she said. I looked down at my picture of a dragon and saw that the fire looked like throw up, the legs were squiggly, and his head was too small for his body.
“Well, you’re ugly,” I said back to Rosary as I gave her the pair of scissors. Her glasses almost fell right off her face when she jolted her head forward into the palms of both her hands and started crying and crying. The teacher came over and asked what happened and she said I called her ugly and I said yeah well she said I don’t draw good and the teacher made us both apologize to each other. I apologized to Rosary but after class I saw her dirty pink backpack in a whole crowd of big and small kids and I ran up next to her and told her that when I apologized I didn’t mean it. She started crying all over again but I ran away to Mama’s white minivan before Rosary could say anything else to me. And that was the first day I ever talked to Rosary.
That night at the dinner table I asked Mama if she had ever heard the name Rosary and she said she thought that was a really pretty name and that if she had a little girl named Rosary she would call her Rosie and I rolled my eyes and said, “Mama, why not just call her Rosie if that’s what you wanna call her?”
“Why don’t you like nicknames anyways, Danny Boy?” Dakota asked me. He was sitting right across the table from me next to Mitchell so I could kick him right underneath the table without Mama or Daddy noticing so that’s what I did. I knew he called me Danny Boy on purpose and I don’t know why he keeps doing that.
“Nicknames are stupid,” I answered.
“But why?” Dakota asked again, shifting his veggies around his plate so it would look like he ate some even though he really didn’t.
“Well, because I’m Daniel and Daniel is who I am. I’m not Danny or Danny Boy or-” I was gonna list all the names that I don’t like but Dakota cut me off before I could and I guess it’s probably because he already knew all the names that I don’t like.
“So how come I can call you Dan but not Danny Boy?” he asked. I started to get real annoyed because I know he was just asking me all these questions to bug me and I wanted to punch him right in the gut but then Mama would make me apologize and plus Dakota would probably just make me sniff his armpit later as pay back so instead I just answered him.
“Dan is kind of like my name because it’s in my name and everything,” I said.
“So Iel is in your name, too,” Mitchell said and I knew that I must have been adopted because both my brothers are big old jerks who can’t leave me alone. I turned to look at Mama and Daddy for help but they were leaning over and giving each other gross, ugly googoo eyes and making kissy faces and talking about all sorts of adult stuff.
“That’s stupid, that’s not a name worse than Rosary’s not a name!” I said. I could feel my face getting all heated up because I hate when Mitchell and Dakota team up against me to annoy me and Mama and Daddy always say they only do it because I react but I think how can I not react if they’re being big jerks.
“But you said you’re okay with nicknames as long as they’re in your real name,” Dakota said. “Hey Iel, can you hand me the salt and pepper?”
“That’s not my name,” I said. My voice was a shriek now, the kind Mama says gives her headaches, and so her and Daddy looked over and yelled at all three of us to stop. But I wasn’t doing anything so I shrieked at her that I wasn’t doing anything and they were being big jerks and she said Danny Boy, stop shrieking or you’re gonna give me a headache.
“His name is Iel,” Dakota corrected and so I jumped up and threw a punch at him from across the table and Mama got real mad at that even though I didn’t even hit him and so she told me I needed to go to my room.
My name is Daniel, and sometimes I go by Dan, but never, ever Iel.
The next time I talked to Rosary wasn’t for a whole other week and three days. I counted it because even though she had a stupid name and she said I’m not good at drawing, I still thought she was real pretty. But a whole week and three days after that first time we talked, Mrs. Finch changed the desk arrangement so that there was a big L in the corner of the room out of desks and then two clusters of desks inside the L. Mrs. Finch gave us all new seating and told us all that change was a good thing and it would open our minds and keep us fresh and excited. But the best part about it all was that I was in one of the clusters of desks and sitting right in front of me was Rosary. The way Mrs. Finch arranged the desk made it so I was staring right at the back of Rosary’s head and I could see her pretty ringlets bounce around as she worked on assignments and she couldn’t even see me watch her ringlets because she was facing the same way I was so she had to turn all the way around to talk to me.
I think Rosary held a grudge for the time I called her ugly because it was a whole half a day with the new seating arrangement before she finally did turn around and talk to me and what she said when she did was, “Why did you call me ugly?”
“Because you said I wasn’t good at drawing,” I told her.
“You really aren’t very good at drawing,” Rosary said, folding her arms across her chest. We were supposed to be quietly working on an assignment so I glanced past Rosary and made sure Mrs. Finch wasn’t looking at us with a squinty face like she does when she doesn’t want you talking and you are anyways.
“Well, you really are ugly,” I lied.
“Daniel, you are so mean!” Rosary huffed. “That’s the difference between boys and girls, boys are mean and girls are nice! And boys are dumb and girls aren’t.”
I knew this wasn’t true though because Mama had told me what the real difference is between boys and girls so I told Rosary that she was wrong and that boys and girls have different private parts and she scrunched up her nose real cute.
“That’s a different kind of different than what I was talking about!” Rosary shrieked. I looked up again to make sure Mrs. Finch wasn’t looking. She wasn’t.
“You’re still wrong,” I told her.
“No I’m not!”
“Uh huh, wrong and dumb,”
“You’re so mean!”
I stood up and showed her that I had different private parts than she did and Mrs. Finch got all flustered and red and grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of the room and Rosary was crying and crying and when Mrs. Finch asked what I was doing I told her I was showing Rosary the difference between boys and girls because she didn’t know and she thought it was that boys were dumb and mean. Mrs. Finch called Mama and Mama was all embarrassed and she yelled at me when I got home and told me that private parts were called private because they were always supposed to be private. She didn’t even care that Rosary didn’t know the difference between boys and girls, she just kept telling me over and over that private parts are always private. That night at dinner Dakota and Mitchell kept laughing and saying that Iel took his pants off for a girl in the third grade, and I just kept telling them I don’t even know who Iel is.
The next day Rosary didn’t turn around to talk to me all day long so I watched her pretty ringlets bounce every time she moved. From staring at the back of her head all day, I discovered she had a big, dark mole on her left shoulder that was sometimes covered up by her hair or by the sleeve of her shirt but sometimes was showing. For about three quarters of the day, the tag on her shirt stuck out and poked through her hair and made one of her ringlets sit funny. That one that was sitting funny didn’t look quite as pretty as the rest of them, all curling around perfectly like the yellow slide on the playground, boinging and bouncing on her shoulder with every movement she made.
When it came time to clean up from the arts and crafts activity we were working on, I quietly snuck a pair of scissors in my desk so I didn’t have to put it away. Then, when it was almost time to pack up our backpacks for home, I reached out and carefully, carefully snipped one of Rosary’s ringlets from her hair. Just one. She had plenty of others, anyways, and they were too pretty and bouncy for me to not keep just one. I didn’t think she’d miss it too much. But apparently Rosary heard that snip sound because she spun around right after I snipped off a piece and when she saw one of her pretty ringlets in my hand her face got all screwed up and her hand went sailing up to the back of her head and she cried and cried and got red.
“I hate you, Daniel!” She said and then she went back to hiccupping and crying and Mrs. Finch came over to see what was going on so I tried to hide the ringlet in my desk but that didn’t work because Rosary told on me anyways. Mrs. Finch kept me after class and told me she had never been so disappointed with me and why would I want to ruin Rosary’s pretty hair. I tried to tell Mrs. Finch that I didn’t want to ruin her pretty hair, I just wanted some of it because it was so pretty, but Mrs. Finch didn’t listen to me and she called Mama and for the second day in a row Mama got real upset with me and asked me why I kept picking on poor, sweet Rosary. Even Mama wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell her that I was just keeping some of Rosary’s hair because of how pretty it was. Mama said Danny Boy, you better march right up to sweet little Rosie tomorrow and tell her sorry for cutting her hair. I said okay, but the next day Rosary wouldn’t even let me get anywhere near her and Mrs. Finch moved the desks again and she had never moved the desks that soon after making new seating and I thought maybe it was because of me.
I counted the days that passed and it was exactly four days before I talked to Rosary again. This day, Rosary was underneath the yellow slide on the red playground, where the twist in the slide makes a cave underneath it and Rosary was sitting underneath there coloring in a coloring book. I only went to the red playground because I planned to swing from the circus tent to the yellow slide like I did the day Brock Wheeler called Timothy Howell a mean nickname, but when I saw Rosary I decided to talk to her instead. It didn’t seem right that a pretty girl like Rosary would be sitting underneath the yellow slide coloring by herself at recess, and even though she didn’t seem to like me very much I thought I’d try talking to her one more time.
I sat down next to her. She didn’t even stop drawing for a forty five seconds, I counted, but when she did stop drawing and glance up at me, she screwed up her face in a real cute, angry way and looked back down.
“I’m not talking to you,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. She used her fingers to brush those pretty, yellow ringlets until she found the short spot that I had cut off. Her face seemed to sadden and I felt my heart scrunch up in my chest like it was trying to hide so it didn’t have to see her sad face. I tricked myself into believing she was sad for a different reason, that it wasn’t because of the ringlet that I cut off that was sitting in my pencil box on my desk at home.
“Why did you cut off a piece of my hair?” She asked. My already scrunched up heart scrunched up even more.
Above our heads, there was a screaming sound of some kids who were probably playing tag. The bouncy bridge was jangling with noise as feet prodded across. Timothy Howell was probably playing freeze tag on the field over by the soccer posts like he usually did at recess. Katelyn Decker was probably dangling upside down off the monkey bars on the blue playground over on the other side of the schoolyard. Brock Wheeler was probably with some other fourth graders playing kickball or maybe four square. But here was Rosary, the prettiest girl in the whole school, and she was sitting next to me under the yellow slide of the red playground coloring in a coloring book and asking me why I cut off some of her hair. So I decided to tell her the truth.
“I think your ringlets are really pretty, so I wanted to keep one. I didn’t think you would miss it,” I told her. She finally lifted her eyes from her half-colored picture and stared at me right in the eyes. I didn’t like her looking right at me like that so I looked down at the dirt under my thumbnail really quickly. I bit at it to try and get it out.
“You said I’m ugly, though,” Rosary said. I gnawed at my other thumbnail so it would be clean like the first one. After a long time with her probably glaring at me and me gnawing at all of my fingernails until all ten were clean, I let my eyes meet hers. Then I leaned forward and pressed my lips into hers.
I started biting my thumbnail again after that even though it was clean and Rosary took the lid off of one of her markers and started coloring again. After a while, I stopped chewing on my thumbnail.
“You can call me Danny Boy. If ya wanna. I go by that sometimes, too.”
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