‘I know the words for everything there is,’ Zak boasted. Theo was walking home from school with him, as he did every day he didn’t have trumpet practice. Zak’s eyes were small marbles in his ruddy, pudgy face. They dared Theo to challenge him.

Theo’s mum said he should ignore Zak’s bragging, and that would make him stop doing it. But somehow Theo couldn’t manage it.

‘You know all the words for all the things?’ he said.

‘Yup.’

‘What’re those, then?’ He nodded toward the flock feeding noisily on teasel seeds at the derelict industrial site.

‘Them? Those are red-face birds,’ Zac proclaimed triumphantly.

‘Wrong!’ Theo said, though the sinking feeling in his gut told him he’d been bested, somehow. ‘They’re goldfinches.’

‘They’re still red-face birds,’ said Zak, ‘And I named ’em first, so I win.’

If that was the game, Theo realised, he was never going to win. He stayed quiet for the rest of the walk, willing himself to notice those things that had no words, that Zak could never name.