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“Ellie Miller.”
Ellie thinks how weird it was to have someone in her class to have her same name and at the same time Joel's last name. She didn't even know that there were other Millers in the Jackson compound.
"Ellie Miller?" Mrs. Stevens, her teacher, repeats.
“I think the teacher’s calling you,” the girl beside her says as she nudges her on the shoulder.
"Oh," she blinks, suddenly embarrassed as some of the other kids' attention was on her. Ellie Miller was her. "Here!"
The flush on her face doesn't disappear long until all the kids' names were called out and they've started their first lesson which was science.
It's the first day of school, despite all her protests that she didn't need to go, Joel still insisted, so here she was. They've been back in Jackson for more than 2 months now and today was the first time they'll ever be apart for more than a few hours. Even patrolling duty was successfully avoided by Joel at this point, so she actually wonders why she can't avoid school altogether too.
He brought her early this morning, and they didn't part right up until the school's front door. She was the only teenager that was dropped off but she didn't give a rat's ass about it.
After class, she decided to correct the mistake over her name and waited for all the other kids to leave before she approached the teacher's table in front of the class. "Hi, umm, Mrs. Stevens?"
"Oh, hello, Ellie, dear, how can I help you?" she asks with a sweet smile.
"It’s just that you might have had my name wrong on your list?"
"Oh my," she suddenly looked a bit flustered. "I’m sorry, dear. I know I just copied what was written on your registration form. Let me go pull it up and double check, okay?"
She goes over a stack of paper and found hers and looked it over. "No, I do believe I didn't make a mistake. Here."
She hands it to her and she looks over Joel's responses on the form.
Name: Ellie Miller
Age: 15
Address: #38 Lot
Birthplace: Boston, MA
Medical Condition/s: None
Allergies: Avocado
Parent/Guardian: Joel Miller
She smiles, amused. She wasn’t allergic to avocadoes but Joel knew she hated them, he must have put that just to make sure they never serve or give her anything with avocado on it. Joel really did put in her name as Ellie Miller, and she realizes that maybe Joel didn’t know what her last name was all this while so he just put it in as that.
Mrs. Stevens asks her if she wanted to correct it but she just shook her head and told her it was okay. He was waiting for her right outside, just as he promised he would do earlier this morning.
"Survived without a scratch?" he asks as a joke.
“Yeah,” she nods smugly. “Can’t say about the others though."
"Troublemaker," he affectionately says as he puts his arm around her and pulls her against him in a hug. She should be embarrassed being hugged like this so close to school but she doesn't care, she's missed him too much to care.
"You do okay without me, old man?" she asks.
"What do you mean without?” he pulls back to look at her, a serious expression on his face. "I was watching through the window of your classroom the whole time, you didn’t see me?"
”Stalker!” she laughs and he lets out a small laugh with her.
"Didn't really do all that well, but hopefully it'll get better," he finally says the truth she knew all along as he squeezes her tightly.
"Me, too," she confesses, and she squeezes right back.
"You have any homework?" he asks as they start walking away from the school.
"You gonna help me?”
"Not really," he shakes his head as if it was the last thing he'd ever do. She knows he'll help her either way.
As they walk, she tells her about the one important thing that she learned today from class which was how they're getting electricity from the dam.
It wasn't until 2 weeks later that she attempts to see if he had a problem remembering people's last names as to why he put her down as Ellie Miller.
"Joel, did you know Sam and Henry’s last name?" she asks.
"No, don’t think so," he hums, his eyes focused on the tv set in front of them which was playing an action movie at the moment.
"What about Marlene?"
"No, definitely not," this time, he shakes his head.
"Bill and Frank?"
"Ellie, what’s this about?" he suddenly asks and looks at her, she knew then that he didn't know Bill and Frank's either.
"Just writing a memoir," she excuses.
"And where is this memoir being written at?" he asks with a raised eyebrow.
"My head."
"Brat," he knocks on her head affectionately before returning his attention towards the movie.
She persists a little later. "What about Tess?"
"That I know, at least. Servopoulos, Tess Servopoulos," he supplies.
"She deserves a last name in my book," she murmurs, burrowing herself deeper into his side.
"I agree, kid," he says ever so quietly.
She concludes that only the important people in his life were the ones he remembers the last names of, and she's now scared to ask if he actually remembers hers, so she just drops it entirely.
She just lets it be, being known as Ellie Miller, she's even gotten used to it in time. But a few months in, they get assigned a project that brings it up in her head again.
A family tree.
She sketches hers that night, it was really simple, her mother's name on top and hers on the bottom. But she can’t very well put in Anna Williams and then have her suddenly as Ellie Miller below it, can she?
So in the end, she skips the project and doesn’t pass it. She had no idea the project costs like half the grade (but with the way the other kids' projects were, she should have guessed, there was one who even submitted an actual plant with his family members hanging on the branches like fruit), and at the end of the semester, she gets a big fat D on her report card, a stark contrast from all her other A's.
"Ellie?" Joel asks that night when she hands him the report card. She knows he's zeroed in on the D.
"I didn’t submit one project, Joel, one project," she tells him.
"Do you want me to talk with your teacher about it?"
"No way!" her eyes bug out about how embarrassing that would be.
"I’ll come by tomorrow after school," he says in a way that it was final.
"Joellllll," she still tries to protest though she knew she's already lost the argument.
He does so the next day and he comes out telling her that Mrs. Stevens has given her permission to submit it on Monday first thing.
"I stayed up last night planning your project, I'm thinking we can do the thing on a tree trunk slice," he tells her the next morning before breakfast as soon as she sits down on the dining table. He probably saw all the other kids' projects that Mrs. Stevens had on display to come up with an idea like this. "Get it? Tree trunk for a family tree?"
"I gotcha, I gotcha," she nods amused.
"Here, I made a sketch, have a look over this so I can estimate how big the diameter of the log I need to find is," he puts a piece of paper in front of her on the table as he goes to get their breakfast ready.
She looks over it and notices how much bigger it was than her sketch months ago. Right in the bottom was her name Ellie Miller, right next to her, Sarah Miller, both of them branches under Joel Miller. She blinks as she suddenly feels something tug at her heart. On her box's right side, up by the level of Joel was her mom's name Anna Williams in Joel's scratchy handwriting.
"You knew?" it slips from her before she can even think of it.
"Knew what?" he asks, coming closer to stand right next to her.
"My mother's last name," she taps the boxed name of her mother on the piece of paper.
"Of course, I did," he says as if he was offended that she'd think so otherwise. She hums in response, and he places a heavy hand on top of her head. "What's going on in that little head of yours?"
"Hey, my head's not little!" she scowls up at him.
"C'mon, out with it," he says as he lightly shakes her head back and forth.
"It's just that, I thought you didn't know my last name," she says as quietly as she could, hoping maybe he won't hear if she says it softly enough.
"Of course, I do."
"I thought you didn't, that's why you just put in Ellie Miller in the school registration form..."
He huffs in response, his hand on her head suddenly lighter.
"I'm sorry, I-," he pauses in between and swallows, his throat evidently bobs up and down from it. He suddenly looks embarrassed all of a sudden. "I should have asked your permission. I can have your teacher change it to Williams for the next semester."
"No!" she cuts him off. "Don't!"
"You sure?" he asks with hopeful eyes.
"I like being Ellie Miller," she says, almost shyly.
He smiles, just a little, as far as a Joel Miller smiles publicly, and lets out a little satisfied nod. "Kid, if there was a city hall for me to go to to make you officially mine, I'll be standing right outside it long before it opens first thing tomorrow."
"Sap," she rolls her eyes, just to hide the tears that are threatening to fall.
"I know it's embarrassing to have Tommy be in your family tree and all, but I've lived with it all this time, you'll manage," he says as he pulls her in for a hug.
"Maybe we can have him change his name," she jokes against him.
"I think what we can do for now is just mess with him and use his real name in this project."
"Which is?"
"Thomas Jay Miller," he reveals.
"No way!" she giggles and he laughs along with her.
On Monday, she brings in her family tree project and hands it to Mrs. Stevens before the class starts. It get's an A+, of course, because a Joel Miller masterpiece doesn't get any less.
When her grade gets changed, she finally gets all A’s and Mrs. Stevens awards her with a certificate. Joel puts it up proudly on the refrigerator with the broken Texas magnet they have, saying it’s how parents showcase their kids' achievements back then.
Ellie Miller
Outstanding Student, 1st semester