“Call it what you will,” she says.

“But haven’t you read the news? You know the boy in Ohio is one of us; you have to! He could be our only chance!”

“Our only chance at what?” she asks.

“A life.”

“And what do you call this?”

“Spending our days living the lies of an alien race is no life,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Give it up, Marina,” she says, and walks away. I have no choice but to follow.

Marina. The name sounds so normal now, so me. I don’t think twice when Adelina hisses the name at me or when one of the other girls in the orphanage yells it on the way out the school doors, waving my forgotten math book. But it hasn’t always been my name. Back when we were aimlessly looking for a warm meal or a bed, back before Spain and Santa Teresa, before Adelina was Adelina, I had been Geneviève. Adelina was Odette. Those were our French names.

“We should change our names with every new country,” Adelina had whispered when she was Signy and we were in Norway, where our ship landed after months at sea. She’d chosen Signy because it had been written on the woman’s shirt behind the counter.

“What should my name be?” I’d asked.

“Whatever you want it to be,” she’d said. We’d been at a café in the middle of a bleak village, enjoying the heat from the mug of hot chocolate we’d shared. Signy had stood and retrieved the weekend’s newspaper from a nearby table. On the front page was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Blond hair, high cheekbones, deep blue eyes. Her name was Birgitta. My name had become Birgitta.

Even when we were on a train and the countries zipped past the window like trees, we’d always change our names, if just for a few hours. Yes, it was to stay hidden from the Mogadorians or anyone else who might be following us, but it was also the one thing that raised our spirits among so much disappointment. I’d thought it was so much fun, I wish we’d traveled over Europe several times. In Poland I was Minka and she chose Zali. She was Fatima in Denmark; I was Yasmin. I had two names in Austria: Sophie and Astrid. She fell in love with Emmalina.

“Why Emmalina?” I’d asked.

She laughed. “I don’t know exactly. I guess I love that it’s almost two names in one. Either one is beautiful, but you smash them together and you get something extraordinary.”