"Coriander."
"Wait, wait, I know that one...no, I don't."
"It's a spice. Here, I'll show you. Taste."
"Ew. It tastes like soap."
Constance refuses to believe that "Corrie" is her real name.
"Corinne."
"That's really pretty. What's it mean?"
"'Maiden', from the Greek. The poet Ovid used it as the name for his love."
"I've read some of his stuff. He was kind of freaky, wasn't he? But I haven't been one of those for a few months."
"I should know your full name," she says, "if we're to be..." And she always blushes at that, and Corrie would like to finish the sentence, but she doesn't know what they are. Friends? Lovers? Incestuous foster sisters? Any relationship with Constance isn't going to be normal, isn't going to have an easy label.
"Corvetta."
"That's a car."
"It's a raven. Corvus corax. Some cultures consider them to be the souls of the damned."
"Oh, great. But no. Nevermore."
Constance is collecting names. She reads them off to Corrie when they're sneaking crackers and cheese and chocolate mousse in the kitchen at midnight; when they're curled up in Constance's feather bed, naked and warm and cozy in the candlelit dusk; when they're sitting on one of the balconies that face the overgrown garden, looking at the stars.
"Coraline."
"Like the movie?"
"No, like coral. Like it, but not quite."
"I'm the real thing, if I'm anything."
Corrie likes that Constance thinks she's mysterious, thinks she has secrets. Sometimes she feels too obvious, too flat and bright and loud to ever be interesting--a nothing of a teenager, surrounded by people who've done everything and could live forever. The names make her feel like she could be anybody.
"Coronette."
"That's a crown, right?"
"A small crown, without arches, meant for use by lesser royalty. Some of them were quite pretty."
"No. But I kind of wish, now."
It's a fairytale game, like Rumpelstiltskin. Corrie wonders what Constance gets if she picks the right one. Will Corrie turn into a princess? A toad? Will she find out who she is, who she could be? Will she remember anything? Will she forget everything? Will she belong to Constance forever and ever?
"Cornelle."
"Okay, you've lost me. Isn't that a brand of casserole dish or something?"
"A horn--well, like a horn."
"So...horny? Oh, come on, you don't know what that means, either?"
She'd like to belong to Constance, because it doesn't seem like Constance has anything else of her own--not her sister, not her childhood, not her own time. Everything she is belongs to someone else. So she gives Constance her name to give back to her, something that nobody else will know.
"Cordula."
"I give up."
"Heart. It just means heart."
"I can be that."