Chapter 12 #3
“—you can never take responsibility.” He shook his head in mock-sympathy, or mock-despair, or something. Mo couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he knew he was being mocked.
Mo wrinkled his nose. “You sound like my parents.” Ugh. And he’d been so enjoying the afterglow.
Adam wheezed like Mo’d hit him in the stomach. “Oof. Ouch.” But it sounded like an apology.
“No, it’s fine, I mean, you’re not wrong. Even if the pot is calling the kettle from inside the house.”
“How much longer until you get rid of them, again?”
“Eight months.” It seemed like forever, which was just rude. Shouldn’t the fact that he had less than a year before the deadline mean the wait felt shorter? “Then I can tell my parents to take a long walk off a short cliff and ghost them for good.”
“Hmm.” Adam was silent for a moment then blurted out suddenly, like the words couldn’t be contained, “You should change your name.”
“I should.” Mo pulled a pillow to his chest as he thought about it. “I mean, Moritz Du Pont is…”
“A rich douchebag name?” He sounded odd. Maybe he was thinking about a douchebag who’d hurt him?
“Your name is Adam Murphy. Like the protagonist of a 1950s novel for twelve-year-old white boys.” After a pause, he amended, “In which Moritz Du Pont is the villain who poisons the town water supply so everyone has to buy his bottled stuff.”
Adam crinkled his nose and mirrored Mo’s posture. “What are you going to change it to?”
“Oh God, well, there’s a tough one. Lots of pressure. It’s like going back in time and deciding what you want to be when you grow up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if Moritz Du Pont is the bad guy poisoning the town, then… I don’t know, what’s Morris Better doing?”
“Drag queen, obviously.”
Mo grinned, pleased Adam had caught on. “See! You do have an imagination.”
“You can’t lead a horse to water and then be surprised when it drinks.” Adam chastised softly. He tucked a hand under his head, eyes unusually serious even for him. “So you’re keeping the first part? Kind of?”
“I think at least something that starts with M-O, or that sound. Otherwise I’ll never notice when someone uses my name.”
“Hmm… Montgomery?”
“Burns, like the villain in The Simpsons,” Mo pointed out.
“Monte.”
“Stripper.”
“Mordechai.”
“Hit man.”
“I think you’re too short to be a hit man,” Adam mused.
“Call me Mordechai and we’ll find out.”
“Mowgli. Mort. Mortimer. Motown. Moseph—”
“That’s not a real name!”
“There’s a kid on my team whose name is Barkly, B-A-R-K-L-Y, like the sound a dog makes, and you want to argue with Moseph?”
“I mean, I also hated the other four.” He shook his head, smiling. “Moseph Du Pont. I don’t know what he does for a living, but he’s definitely adopted.”
“The whole point’s to fix the last name too, right? Two birds, one stone. So something like… Moseph Jortner.”
They locked eyes for a moment before bursting into simultaneous laughter. “Moseph Jortner. Cuts the grass in dad shorts. What about Mortimer Smith?”
“Hmm. Librarian.” Adam’s eyelids were starting to droop. Obviously, nap time wouldn’t wait much longer. “Moby Johnson.”
“I think that might be the librarian,” Mo corrected. “Or maybe an English teacher.”
“Lit professor,” Adam said around a yawn. “You get to make more dick jokes when your students are over eighteen.”
“Mo Hill. Always blowing things out of proportion.”
“Maurice Holland.” Adam snuggled deeper into his pillow. “Sounds like the gay old man next-door. S’nice, though.”
“Maurice is a bit too fussy. Guess I’m stuck with Mo.” He watched Adam’s eyes close. “Maybe we’re going about this wrong. Job first, name second. What’s a good mechanic last name? Something plain, no-bullshit. Jones. Taylor.”
“Like a tailor for cars?” Adam’s words came out quieter, a little slurred. Mo needed a few extra seconds to translate. “Y’know what sounds like a guy who owns a garage? Mo Murphy.”
Before Mo could decide how to react, Adam fell asleep.
For a long moment, Mo stared at him. Something in his chest felt wrong, like he’d overtightened his pectorals. His shoulders wanted to curl toward each other.
Adam didn’t mean anything by it, obviously, or he wouldn’t have said it while he was falling asleep.
If anything, he was probably calling back to the comment his dad had made about Adam proposing.
And he had a point—Mo Murphy did sound like a grease monkey in overalls, the kind who’d wheel out from under your car wiping his hands with a rag.
That was probably why he suddenly ached to be Mo Murphy. The job, of course, and the finality of leaving the last of his parents’ memory behind him.
But… Murphy sounded especially nice. Mo knew the Murphys—loud, friendly people who loved each other, who didn’t stand on ceremony, who packed into one house during the holidays on purpose to see more of each other.
There were worse identities to take on. If changing his name could make Mo one of them, he’d do it tomorrow.
But he didn’t get to claim the Murphys like that. He and Adam didn’t have a relationship. By now, Adam must have told his parents they’d broken up. If Mo ever saw them again, they wouldn’t feel the need to include him.