Names

“It’s better just to go, whatever name they shout” he said. Him, every-bodies-closest-him, every-bodies-confident-him, every-bodies-comforter-him. “It’s worse if you don’t, ‘cos if you go, and they didn’t mean you, you’re just daft. If you don’t go and they mean you, then you’re dis-o-bed-i-ent, an’ that’s worse than being daft.” He grinned at that. Later he told me “Names don’t really mean much anyways, you know what your friend looks like.” He wasn’t right about that one. He didn’t know what his friends looked like. He let them put the blame on him. And then we all lost our closest.