Page 79 of Shatter

Katie, in her square, blocky letters.

I stand in the little walk-in with it in my hands and stare at the name.

My thumb rubs back and forth across the ink until the E smears.

It's a good name.

It's kept me alive.

For eight months at the Night Owl and eight weeks at Zizi's, it's been a door I could hide behind.

But standing here in the cold with my breath clouding, I want to rip it off the front of the envelope.

I want somebody to say my real name. Annika. Anni.

Not Colin, in the dark, like a threat.

Somebody who means it.

Later, after dark, Hakon's on top of the covers when I come out of the bathroom, lying on his back with one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling fan.

I turn off the lamp and climb in under the blanket beside him.

The room goes dark and soft.

Rain ticks against the window, steady, the all-night kind.

His arm comes around me, over the covers, loose and warm.

I lie there and listen to him breathe.

Every breath I take comes out shaky.

I roll over to face him in the dark.

"Hakon." It comes out barely above a whisper.

"Mm." His voice is slow, halfway to sleep.

"My name's not Katie." I say it into the dark between us.

His breathing stops, and he doesn't move.

He lies there, perfectly still.

The arm across my waist has gone rigid.

"It's Annika." I push the word out through a throat gone tight and thick. "Annika Carrow. Everybody calls me Anni."

The fan ticks around, and rain taps the glass.

He doesn't say anything for so long my eyes start to burn, and I think maybe I made a mistake.

"Annika." He says it softly.

Not AN-ih-kuh, the flat way the nuns said it at St. Joseph's, or the way my father said it when he was angry.

AH-nee-kah.