That weekend, the hallway still smelled faintly of fresh paint. Inside the door, the old metal house number plate was now carefully nailed above the shoe cabinet, exactly where they’d see it every time they bent down to put on their shoes.
Outside, the door was still bare—just the standard plastic number stuck on by the landlord.
“Shouldn’t we… have our own name?” William asked, half-buried in homework.
“Whose name?” Albert looked up. “Mine? The home’s?”
“The home’s,” William said. “We can’t keep calling it ‘that place where the four of us live’ forever.”
Maya immediately popped up. “Yeah. We need a House Name.”
“Okay.” Melissa slid a bowl into the sink. “You two go first.”
Soon the shoe rack at the entrance had been turned into a temporary ballot box. The four of them clustered in
