The Library turned out to be the perfect place to stay. The girl slept in a janitorial closet during the nights, and read in the library all day. The librarians assumed she just enjoyed reading, and walked to and from the library every day. She, in her silent way, did her best to encourage this belief. They mostly left her alone; the librarian she had first met continued to be a problem, however, constantly inquiring after her name.

Eventually, in one of the more savage rounds of inquiry, the girl lost patience and burst forth with the first name that popped into her head: May, the name of the month.

"Ah ha! See there, you do have a name! And a very unique one, at that."

"It appears I do," repiled the girl, with some measure of inward suprise, for she had not ment to say May, or to say anything, for that matter. But now, very unexpectly, she was May, and that was what all the librarians called her from then on. It was interesting to have a name, but not unpleasent. It made her feel like Somebody. But she wasn't sure May should be her name, for she had the idea that names were very important, and not things to be made up on the spur of the moment, because it seemed to her that eventually they came to represent your entire self.

The girl resolved to find a new name for herself- 'May' seemed far to short a name to contain all of anybody, even someone so very young as herself. So, in the following months that she spent at the library, she made it her purpose to find a name for herself. She searched through all manner of books, from thick history tomes that she barely understood that were full of old, musty, fancy-sounding names, to racy murder mysteries that had modern, spunky names. But none of them seemed quite right. Helen, too beautiful and fancy. Jacky, too spirited and headstrong. Vicky, Allegra, Sarah, Viola, Guinevere... none seemed right. And until she found the perfect name, she decided to change her name to match the name of every new month, so that she would not become May against her will.

Time passed, and the girl went from May to June to July. She began to venture farther and farther from the library, and slowly became accostomed to the city's furor of emotion. One of her favorite passtimes was to sit on the steps of some building so that she was on the same level as people's faces, and read the emotions of those passing by. She was suprised by the variety of emotions. The girl found that the more she watched, the better she bacame at telling the subtle differences between emotions very alike to one another, and she even became skilled at conjecturing the causes of different emotions. And in this way she came to August.