The classroom smelled like chalk dust and old paper.
Yaz sat at his desk, third from the window, and watched Ms. Reyes write names on the board. Her handwriting was sharp and angular, each letter pressed hard into the surface so that the chalk squeaked. Skreee. Skreee. A sound like a small animal complaining. The other children shifted in their seats. Someone coughed. Someone else was tapping a pencil against wood in a rhythm that had no pattern, which made it hard to ignore.
MARIE CURIE
The name appeared in white against green. Then another beneath it.
NELSON MANDELA
And another.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
And another.
AMELIA EARHART
The chalk kept moving. Names stacked on names, a tower of letters that meant nothing and everything at once. Yaz had heard some of these names before. In other lessons, other years. They floated through the orphanage's education program like ghosts, appearing and disappearing, never quite explained.
"Today," Ms. Reyes said, setting down the chalk and brushing white dust from her fingers, "we're going to talk about people who changed the world."
She turned to face the class. Her eyes moved across the rows of desks, across the gray shirts and the bored faces and the children who were already thinking about lunch. Her gaze passed over Yaz without stopping. This was normal. Teachers' eyes did that. They saw the class as a shape, a mass, a collection of heads and hands and potential problems. They did not see individual children unless those children demanded to be seen.
"These people," she continued, gesturing at the board, "are remembered. Hundreds of years after they lived, we still know their names. We still talk about what they did."
Yaz looked at the names. CURIE. MANDELA. DA VINCI. EARHART. White letters on a green board in a room that smelled like chalk and old paper. Letters that had been written thousands of times before, in thousands of classrooms, by thousands of teachers who probably did not know why they were writing them except that the curriculum said to.
"Can anyone tell me why?"
The question hung in the air. Hands did not go up immediately. They rarely did. The children of Institut Esperança had learned that questions from adults were often traps, tests, opportunities to fail publicly. Better to wait. Better to let someone else answer first.
A girl in the front row raised her hand. Yaz did not know her name. She was new, maybe. Or old and invisible, like him. It was hard to tell.
"Because they were famous?"
Ms. Reyes nodded, but the nod was the kind that meant yes, but also no. "They became famous, yes. But why? What made them famous in the first place?"
Silence. The pencil-tapper had stopped tapping. Even the coughing had quieted.
Yaz felt something stir in his chest. A question. His own question, different from the teacher's, pressing against his ribs like something that wanted out.
He raised his hand.
Ms. Reyes's eyes found him. Surprise flickered across her face, there and gone. Yassine Kwon did not raise his hand. Yassine Kwon sat quiet and watched and let the lessons wash over him like water over a stone. She had probably forgotten he could speak.
"Yes, Yassine?"
"Why do we know their names?"
The question sounded different out loud than it had in his head. Smaller. Simpler. But also bigger somehow, like a door opening onto a room he had not known was there.
Ms. Reyes tilted her head. "That's what I'm asking. Why do we remember them?"
"No." Yaz shook his head, trying to find the words for what he meant. "I mean... why do we know their names? There were other people alive then. Millions of people. Billions, maybe. Why do we remember these ones and not the others?"
The classroom was very quiet now.
Ms. Reyes's mouth did something. A small movement. Not quite a smile, not quite a frown. The expression of someone encountering a question they had not prepared to answer.
"Because they did important things," she said finally. "They made discoveries. They led movements. They created art that lasted. They changed the world in ways that mattered."
"But what about everyone else?"
"What do you mean?"
Yaz looked at the board. At the names. At the white chalk dust that had settled on the metal tray beneath.
"There were billions of other people. They lived and died and nobody remembers them. Nobody writes their names on boards. Nobody talks about what they did." He paused. His heart was beating faster than it should. "Where did they go?"
Ms. Reyes was silent for a long moment. The pencil-tapper started tapping again, soft and arhythmic. Tk. Tk. Tk tk tk.
"They... lived their lives," she said. "They had families. Children. Jobs. They were important to the people who knew them."
"But we don't know them."
"No."
"So they disappeared."
It was not a question. It was a fact. A cold, hard, immovable fact, like the forty-seven tiles above his bed, like the eighty-three steps to the cafeteria, like the chain-link pattern pressed into his palms.
Most people disappeared. Most lives ended without leaving a trace. Billions of humans had walked the earth before Yaz was born, had breathed and eaten and slept and loved and feared and hoped, and now they were gone. Not just dead. Gone. Erased. As if they had never existed at all.
Ms. Reyes opened her mouth to say something. Then closed it. Then opened it again.
"Let's... move on," she said. "Who can tell me what Marie Curie discovered?"
Hands went up. Voices spoke. The lesson continued.
But Yaz was no longer listening. He was staring at the board, at the names, at the tower of white letters that represented the tiny fraction of humanity that had escaped erasure.
And he was thinking about all the people who had not.
Lunch was the same as always.
Porridge had been replaced by soup, a thin brown liquid with vegetables that might have been carrots floating in it like survivors of a shipwreck. Yaz carried his tray to his usual spot and sat down and looked at the soup and did not lift his spoon.
The cafeteria noise washed over him. Children talking, trays clattering, the particular hum of a room full of people who had nothing to say but were saying it anyway. Somewhere a caretaker was telling someone to stop running. Somewhere else a younger child was crying, the hiccupping kind of crying that meant they had been crying for a while and their body was tired of it.
Yaz looked at them. Really looked. At the faces and the hands and the gray shirts that matched his gray shirt. Eighty-four children, give or take. He had counted them once. Now he looked at them differently.
Will any of them be remembered?
The question arrived without permission. It settled in his stomach beside the hunger he was ignoring.
The boy at the next table, picking his nose when he thought no one was watching. Would anyone write his name on a board in a hundred years? Would anyone know he had existed?
The two girls sharing a joke, their heads bent together, their laughter rising and falling like waves. Would their names mean anything to anyone who had not met them?
Tomás, three tables away, eating alone with his stone-hard eyes. Would the world remember him? Would anyone?
The answer was no. The answer was probably no for all of them. They would grow up (if they were lucky) and live lives (if they were lucky) and die (this was certain) and then nothing. Names forgotten. Faces forgotten. Every meal they had eaten and every word they had spoken and every feeling they had felt, gone. Absorbed back into the silence that waited at the end of everything.
Yaz's chest felt strange. Tight and hollow at the same time, like something had been removed and not replaced.
I could disappear too, he thought. I could live a whole life and die and no one would remember. My name could mean nothing. My existence could leave no mark.
He thought about the old man on the bench. The one Mrs. Okonkwo had called "no one." The one who sat and fed pigeons and looked at nothing because there was nothing left to look at.
That man had been seven once. Had sat in a room somewhere, probably, eating food he did not taste, thinking thoughts that no one heard. He had lived sixty or seventy years after that, and all of it had led to a bench. To bread crumbs. To children staring at him through a fence and wondering what had gone wrong.
Was that what a life became? Was that what happened when the world did not remember you?
The soup was getting cold. Yaz could see the film forming on its surface, thin and gray, like the film on porridge, like all the films on all the food in this building that no one wanted to eat but ate anyway because eating was what you did when you were alive.
He pushed the tray away.
Outdoor hour came at two o'clock.
Yaz walked to the fence, as always. His feet found the familiar path, his hands found the familiar wire, his fingers threaded through the familiar diamonds. The metal was warm today. April warmth, spring warmth, the kind that promised something and did not say what.
He did not watch the families.
This was new. Usually he watched them hungrily, cataloguing every gesture, every touch, every evidence of belonging. Today he looked past them. Through them. At something else.
The buildings beyond the street. The windows that held lives he could not see. The people walking past who were, each one of them, someone. Who had names and histories and people who cared whether they came home at night.
How many of them will be remembered?
The question would not leave. It had taken root somewhere in his chest, somewhere near his heart, and it was growing. He could feel it. Roots spreading. Branches reaching.
Most of them would not be remembered. That was the truth of it. Most of them would live and die and disappear into the great blank silence that swallowed everyone eventually. They would be important to their families, to their friends, to the small circles of people who knew their faces and their voices and their habits. And then those people would die too. And then nothing.
A woman walked past with a child on her shoulders. The child was laughing, gripping fistfuls of hair, saying something Yaz could not hear. The woman was smiling. They were alive and present and real.
And someday they would not be.
Yaz's hands tightened on the fence. The diamonds bit into his palms. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to feel. Hard enough to remind him that he was here, now, existing in this moment, one of the billions of moments in his life that would add up to nothing or something.
Which will it be?
The voice was his own this time. Not the Maestro's warm whisper from the deep place. Just his own small voice, asking a question he did not know how to answer.
Nothing or something?
Forgotten or remembered?
No one or someone?
The child on the woman's shoulders was gone now. Around the corner. Into whatever life waited for them.
Yaz stayed at the fence until the bell rang.
Saturday was gray again.
The warmth had retreated, replaced by clouds that sat low over the city like a ceiling nobody wanted. Yaz spent the morning in the common room, sitting in his usual corner while the television played its usual nothing. But he was not watching the screen. He was not watching anything.
He was thinking.
The question had not left. It had stayed with him through dinner, through the quiet hours before bed, through the night when he lay awake and counted ceiling tiles (forty-seven) and tried to make the numbers mean something. Forty-seven tiles. How many people had looked at those tiles before him? How many children had counted them, lying in this exact bed, staring at this exact ceiling? And where were they now?
Gone. All of them. Gone and forgotten.
Suki appeared at noon.
She sat beside him without asking, the way she had learned to do. Her tray held the same soup as yesterday, the same vegetables floating like survivors. She did not look at him. She looked at the wall. At the spot where the paint was peeling.
They sat in silence for a long time.
"The family came back," Suki said finally.
Yaz looked at her. Her face was still. Unreadable. The face of someone who had learned to keep her feelings inside where they could not be hurt.
"What did they say?"
"They want to see me again. Talk more. The woman... she brought me something. A book."
"A book?"
Suki nodded. Her hands were in her lap, fingers twisting together the way they did when she was thinking about something she did not want to think about.
"She said it was her favorite when she was my age. She thought I might like it."
Yaz did not know what to say. A book was a gift. A gift was a sign. A sign of what?
"Do you want them to pick you?"
The question came out before he could stop it. Too direct. Too honest. Suki flinched, just slightly, a small movement of her shoulders.
"I don't know," she said.
And then, after a long pause: "Yes."
Another pause. Longer.
"No."
Her voice cracked on the word. Not badly, not dramatically, just a small fracture that closed almost immediately. But Yaz heard it. He heard everything.
"I don't know how to be picked," Suki said. "I don't know how to have a mother. A father. A room that's mine. I don't know how to be... someone's."
Yaz understood. He understood it in his bones, in the deep place where understanding lived. Being someone's required skills they had never learned. Required trusting in ways they had been trained not to trust. Required opening doors that had been closed so long the hinges had rusted.
"But you want it," he said.
"Yes." Her voice was very quiet now. "I want it more than anything."
They sat in silence again. The television played. Children moved through the room. The world continued around them, indifferent to two small children trying to figure out how to want things without being destroyed by the wanting.
"I've been thinking about something," Yaz said.
Suki looked at him. Waiting.
"About being remembered. About... mattering."
Her eyebrows moved. A question without words.
"Most people don't get remembered," Yaz said. "Most people live and die and then they're gone. Like they were never here. Like they didn't matter."
Suki's face did something complicated. A series of small movements that might have been recognition, might have been fear, might have been both.
"Is that what you've been thinking about? Since Thursday?"
Yaz nodded.
"Is that why you asked that question? In the lesson?"
Another nod.
Suki was quiet for a moment. Her eyes moved to the window, to the gray sky beyond.
"I don't know if I want to be remembered," she said finally. "I think I just want to be... seen. Right now. By someone who's here. Is that different?"
Yaz thought about it. Thought about the man on the bench, who was seen by no one. Thought about the families through the fence, who saw each other constantly. Thought about his own eyes meeting Suki's, and what that meant, and whether it was enough.
"Maybe," he said. "I don't know."
Mrs. Okonkwo walked through the room. Her bracelet clicked softly. Clk clk clk. Her eyes swept across the children, counting them probably, making sure no one had vanished or broken anything. Her gaze passed over Yaz and Suki in their corner.
Then it stopped.
She looked at Yaz differently than she usually looked. Longer. More carefully. Like she was seeing something she had not seen before, or something she had seen before and had been waiting to see again.
"Yassine," she said. Just his name. Nothing else.
He looked at her. Her eyes were tired, as always. But there was something in them. A question, maybe. Or an answer.
"Are you alright?"
The question should have been simple. Children were asked "are you alright" all the time. It meant nothing. It was reflex. A thing adults said when they noticed a child existing.
But the way she asked it was different. The way she waited for the answer was different.
"I'm thinking," Yaz said.
"About what?"
He could have said nothing. Could have shrugged, the way Suki shrugged, and ended the conversation before it started. That was the safe thing. The expected thing. The thing children did when adults asked questions they did not really want answered.
But something made him tell the truth.
"About whether anyone will remember me," he said. "When I'm gone."
Mrs. Okonkwo's face changed. A small movement, barely visible. Her hand moved to her bracelet, touching the wooden beads the way she did when she was thinking about something difficult.
"That's a very big thing for a seven-year-old to think about," she said.
"I know."
She looked at him for a long moment. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. She wanted to say something, Yaz could tell. Something more than are you alright, something more than the empty words adults used to fill empty spaces.
But she did not say it. She just nodded. Once. Slowly.
"If you need to talk," she said, "I'm here."
Then she walked away. Her bracelet clicked. The gray light fell through the windows.
Yaz watched her go and wondered what she had wanted to say but hadn't.
The night was long.
Yaz lay in his bed, forty-seven tiles above him, nineteen other children breathing in the dark. The radiator clicked. Tink. Tink. Tink. The night light glowed orange near the door. Everything was the same as every other night.
But he was not the same.
The question had grown. It had roots now, deep roots, reaching down into places he did not usually visit. It had branches too, spreading through his thoughts, touching everything.
What will they remember about me?
He had not asked it like that before. Not in those words. The question in class had been different. Broader. About humanity. About the billions who disappeared. About why some people mattered and some did not.
But now it was specific. Now it was about him.
What will they remember about Yassine Kwon?
The answer was obvious. They would remember nothing. Because there was nothing to remember. He was seven years old. He had done nothing important. He had created nothing, discovered nothing, changed nothing. He existed in a building with eighty-four other children, all of them waiting for lives that might never come, all of them eating porridge and counting tiles and growing older one day at a time.
If he died tomorrow, what would remain?
A file. "Kwon, Yassine. Found, not surrendered. No documentation." A bed that would be given to another child. A space at the cafeteria table that would be filled by someone else. A gap in the count that would be closed before anyone noticed.
Nothing.
His chest hurt. The deep hurt, the kind that lived between his ribs. The kind he had felt on his birthday, when no one remembered. The kind he had felt at the fence, watching families that were not his.
But you don't want to be nothing.
The Maestro. Warm and quiet in the deep place, speaking for the first time since the question had taken root.
You decided that already. When you looked at the old man. When you said you wouldn't become him.
Yaz did not respond. Not in words. But he listened.
The question isn't whether you'll be remembered. The question is what they'll remember.
You get to choose, Yassine. You get to make something. You get to fill the emptiness with something that was not there before.
The people on the board... they didn't become famous by accident. They made things. Did things. Became things.
What will you make?
What will you do?
What will you become?
The questions landed in his chest like stones. Heavy. Immovable. Real.
What will they remember about you?
He did not have an answer. How could he? He was seven years old. He did not know how to make things or do things or become things. He only knew how to count and watch and wait.
But the question stayed with him. It would not leave. It pressed against his ribs, settled in his stomach, wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed.
What will they remember?
He stared at the ceiling he could not see.
What will they remember about you?
Monday arrived like something that had finally made up its mind.
The sun was out. Real sun, warm sun, the kind that pushed through windows and lay across floors in rectangles of gold. Yaz woke before the bell, as always, and lay still, watching the light move slowly across the dormitory.
The question was still there. It had not left. But it had changed, somehow. Settled. Become something solid instead of something sharp.
He got up. Dressed. Walked to the cafeteria without counting his steps.
The porridge had skinned over, as always. He broke the skin. Ate. Tasted nothing, but ate anyway. His body needed fuel for whatever came next.
What comes next?
He did not know. But he knew it was coming. Could feel it pressing against the inside of his skull, against the walls of his chest, against all the places where questions lived before they became answers.
Morning lessons passed in their usual blur. Numbers on screens. Words in books. Ms. Reyes at the front of the room, talking about things that mattered to curricula and not to children. The names were gone from the board, erased, replaced by equations that added up to other equations that added up to nothing.
But Yaz was not watching the board. He was watching the window. The rectangle of blue sky. The clouds that moved across it like thoughts moving through a mind.
What will they remember about you?
The question had become something else now. Not a weight. Not a wound. Something more like a door. A door that was closed but not locked. A door that was waiting for him to push it open.
I have to make something.
The thought arrived without warning. Simple. Certain. Like the forty-seven tiles, like the eighty-three steps, like the facts that did not change because they did not need to.
I have to make something.
Not discover something, like Marie Curie. Not lead something, like Nelson Mandela. Not become famous or change the world or do anything that required being someone other than who he was.
Just make something. One thing. A thing that had not existed before. A thing that came from him, from inside him, from the place where the questions lived.
The lesson continued. The equations added up. The other children fidgeted and whispered and did all the things children did when they were bored and waiting for something better.
Yaz sat very still.
I have to make something.
He did not know what. Did not know how. Did not know if he even could, if there was anything inside him worth making into something outside him.
But the decision had been made. He could feel it, solid and real, sitting in his chest beside his heart. A seed that was not yet a seed but would become one. A door that was beginning to open.
I will make something.
I will make something they can remember.
I will fill the emptiness with something that was not there before.
The bell rang. CLANG. The lesson ended. Children stood and moved and became a wave of gray shirts flowing toward the cafeteria.
Yaz stood too. But slowly. Carefully. Like someone who had just realized they were carrying something important and did not want to drop it.
The question had been planted. It was still growing. Roots deeper than anything else in his life. Branches reaching toward light he could not yet see.
What will they remember about you?
He walked out of the classroom, into the hallway, into the gray and ordinary world where children ate food they did not taste and counted things that did not matter.
But he was not gray anymore. He was not ordinary.
He was someone who had decided to make something.
The question had been planted, and it would grow roots deeper than anything else in his life: What will they remember about you?