When Ms. Miller called Kandi Kain’s name the first day of class, I thought for sure it was a joke. Maybe some kind of play on her real name that had caught on. But I learned later that Kandi Kain carries around a copy of her birth certificate just so she can set the record straight for any nonbelievers.

When I saw the certificate, all worn out from being flashed around since probably kindergarten, I became a different kind of nonbeliever.

What sort of mama gives her girl a name like that?

“My mother said it makes me unforgettable,” Kandi said, the words flowin’ out like warm maple syrup. “And it was better than naming me Nova, right? Or Hurra.”

“Hurra’s not a name,” I said.

She hoisted an eyebrow at me. “And Link is?”

I frowned. “It’s Lincoln,” I told her, and it came out kinda proud-sounding.

Like the way Ma always says it.

Kandi was not impressed. Or convinced. “So you say,” she oozed. Then she gave me a scary-sweet smile. “Can you prove it?”

“Prove what?”

“That your name’s Lincoln. How do we know you’re not just making that up?”

“Why would I go makin’ up a name?”

“You thought I did, didn’t you?”

“But your name is Kandi Kain!”

“And yours is Lincoln Jones.” She gave me a cool look. “The more I think about it, the more I think you made it up. No mother names her child Lincoln. Besides, it doesn’t fit with Jones.” She turned her nose up a little. “Jones is ordinary. Lincoln is pretentious.”

I didn’t know what pretentious meant, but I sure didn’t like the way it sounded. Like I was pretendin’ to be something I wasn’t. And her nose bein’ up like it was didn’t help, either. So I let her have it. “Ma says my names balance each other. And that Lincoln is an honorable name. One I should be proud of.”

“Hmm,” she said, considering me. “I guess that’s true.”

Darn straight! I thought, and for a second I felt good.

But then she went and said, “But ‘Ma’? You really call your mom that? Where are you from, anyway?”

Ma always tells me that the best way to get rid of a pest is to ignore it. “If you swat at the bee, Lincoln, it’ll surely sting you.” And having been stung by a bee a time or two, I know she’s right. But sittin’ around waiting for the thing to fly off on its own is terrifying. There it is, walking on you, all fuzzy and twitchin’, with its stinger fixin’ to fire, while you sit holding your breath, sweating bullets.

Still, any time I’ve managed to not swat, I haven’t been stung. I remind myself of that fact when tuna’s flingin’ at me on the bus. I don’t swat at the pests on the bus, and I don’t swat at them in the classroom.

It’s hard, but that’s what I do.

Now, Kandi Kain may not fling tuna, but she’s still dangerous ’cause she’s got that queen bee thing going on. She likes swarms of kids around her. Boys and girls. She holds the four-square balls hostage at recess, then directs kids around, and for some reason they do what she says. She’s pretty, sure, but that’s no reason for folks to act like drones.

So I kept my distance and did my own thing, but every time she’d look at me, there’d be a frown bendin’ down her face. Then, one day in early October, she marched right up to me and said, “What’s with you and that notebook? You writing the Declaration of Independence, or what?”

Her hands were on her hips, showin’ off fingers that were painted like candy corn—yellow at the base, orange in the middle, and white at the tip. I could tell her joke about the Declaration of Independence had been brewing in her brain for some time. I could tell she thought it was smart and clever, too. Like sportin’ candy-painted nails when your name is Kandi.

Too bad for her, I just thought it was dumb. “Abraham Lincoln had nothing to do with the Declaration of Independence,” I told her. “He came almost a hundred years later.”

That hushed her up for one whole blink of the eye.

“So what are you writing, then?”

I’d already closed the notebook when I’d seen her coming over.

I’m not stupid.

“Nothing,” I told her, ’cause that’s what I tell everybody when they ask. It’s not rude. It’s universal for none of your business.

But I guess when the universe revolves around you, things work a different way. “Of course you’re writing something,” she said. “Don’t need to get all huffy about it.”

“I wasn’t gettin’ huffy!” I said, and it came out so huffy my cheeks started to burn.

She gave me one of those scary-sweet smiles, then twitched up an eyebrow and said, “So you drawing pictures of me, or what?”

“No!” I cried, and slapped open my notebook. “It’s just stories, see?”

She nosed right in, and her eyes seemed to be gulping up the words. “Annie?” she asked, pointing a candy-corn nail at the name. “Are you writing about Annie Totes?”

I gave her a blank look. Who was Annie Totes?

“In our class?” she asked.

I felt like a double fool. “No!” I slapped the notebook closed again. “It’s nobody.” And then, ’cause I could tell she didn’t believe me, I let on a little. “The Annie in my story’s a character, all right? She’s an old lady.”

“Like somebody’s grandmother?”

“Yeah, like that,” I said, even though it wasn’t like that at all.

“So what’s she doing?”

I stared at her a second, and for that second it felt like she wasn’t just being nosy. It felt like she really wanted to know. And in that second, I was dying to tell her all about Annie and the hero of the story, Lamar, and his pet wolf, Howler, and how Annie was being haunted by chain-rattlin’ ghosts.

And then that second passed and I came to my senses.

“Nothin’,” I said, and put the notebook away.