The States

that which we call a rose

Caleb's been waiting for this day since he had gotten his territory star, and now it's here. He's going to be a state. He's going to be Missouri, the twenty-fourth state. 

"Have you decided on a surname yet?" Del asks, tapping the papers- his papers, his acceptance of statehood- against the table to straighten them out. 

Del looks up at him when he's silent for too long after she's slid the papers into his folder. 

Caleb stares at her. "What?"

She raises her eyebrows. "For the ceremony? Usually, territories default to Jones, but we all picked our surnames when we got our statehood."

"I have to have a last name?"

Del laughs. "Yeah, Caleb, you need a last name to put it on your stars. Better decide on it soon, you've only got a week and a half."

*

Caleb's never thought about his last name or the fact that states picked their own. It wasn't like he heard them often since he'd always heard the older states called by their first names or nicknames only. He isn't even sure that he knows everyone's last names. 

"Cass, what's your full name?"

"Cassidy Juliet Marquette," she answers immediately, only to stop washing dishes to give him a weird look. "Why?"

"Del told me I have to pick a last name. How did you pick yours?"

"I named myself after the explorer. Jacques Marquette."

"Yeah, but how do you decide?" Caleb pushes.

She shrugs. "I knew I wanted it to be French, so it would match Riley. There were two explorers who explored my territory, Marquette and Jolliet. It couldn't be Jolliet since my middle name is Juliet and that sounds awful, so Marquette it was. Oh, that's my advice for you! Make sure whatever you pick sounds good with the rest of your name." 

*

Timothy isn't any help, since he just took the Carolinas' last name. He explains that it's because his territory was cut from theirs and he doesn't know why they picked Lovelace to begin with. 

Technically, Caleb was born when Evangeline's territory was split, but he's not close enough with her to want her last name or even be comfortable asking to share it to begin with. 

Still, it can't hurt to ask how she decided on her name. "Hey, Evangeline?"

"Yes?" 

"Where'd your last name come from?"

Evangeline sets her embroidery down so she can focus her attention on him. Caleb tries not to fidget. Evangeline always makes him feel a little wary when she looks at him like that, a little like she's waiting for him to mess up somehow. 

"My name is Lafitte, which means boundary stone. In a way, I was the boundary of the United States for a time. I am the first of the Louisiana Purchase. Even if the others weren't English, they were all under English control long before they became states. They'd assimilated. I had not. So my name is Lafitte because I represented a change in direction in a sense."

"Oh," Caleb says, after a moment. He can't think of anything else to say.

Evangeline returns to her embroidery, and Caleb leaves. 

*

The originals make him nervous since they're so much older and bigger than him. Caleb was born in 1812. Foster's almost two centuries older and he's one of the younger originals. Still, they must have some good advice since they had to pick their names before everyone else.