His Name Is Ember

I

Cassie was four when I was made. She'd just moved into her new house with her mother and sisters, but wasn't at all interested in things like unpacking. She left Hannah, Allie, and her mom to do that while she went exploring, looking for something to play with.

All she could find was a match in the otherwise empty kitchen drawers and some old pipe cleaner wire with all of the fuzz pulled off. She wrapped the wire around the match near the rounded top and dubbed her new best friend Rama.

He didn't have any clothes to match him that came in sets like her other dolls, or even a face, but Cassie didn't mind. She knew her mother would do the same thing she always did if she asked for something in a store: open her mouth, touch her pocketbook, and close it again. Then she'd shake her head and say, "No, Cassie, we can't get a lot until after the move." 

That was okay. Now she had a new friend to explore the new house and new school and new town with. At first, her mom screamed when she saw what Cassie was playing with, but then Hannah, her nine-year-old sister, pointed out that Cassie thought it was a doll. "She doesn't run her other doll's heads on wooden panels, let alone matchboxes."

"His name is Rama," Cassie said, not exactly sure what was going on.

"No," Allison, who was twelve, put in. "You should call him Ember. That's a cool name."

Allison used the word cool a lot, and seemed to be an expert on the word, always telling her sisters what was or wasn't cool. Cassie knew cool was a good thing, so she said, "Okay. His name is Ember," and that was that.

-x-x-x-x-

Of course, Ember was just a doll to Cassie. Just like any other doll, she wanted cast him aside as soon as she got the newest toy on the market. She even forgot about him until she went through her old junk.

Now thirteen years old, Cassie took it downstairs. "Hannah," she asked, "What is this thing?"

"What?" Hannah didn't look up from her phone.

"It's a match with some bent wire around it. Someone drew a smiley face on the head," Cassie noticed.

Hannah's eyes flicked up. "It's Ember," she said.

"What? Did this thing have a name?"

"Yeah. You made it and I named the dumb thing. It was supposed to be a doll, I think."

Cassie looked at it with disgust. "When was this?"

"When we first moved in, I think." Hannah stood up and glared at Cassie for a moment before going back to her phone. "I'll be up in my room. Don't annoy me, I'm texting Cara."

"Ooooh, your girlfriend," Cassie teased.

"Shut up!" Hannah's face grew red. "Cara and I are not dating! We're just friends."

Cassie giggled, then threw Ember away without a second thought.