Beige by Cecil Castellucci

emerges between Lake and me. A pause hangs in the air, a pause in me and a pause in her that meets in between us.
    Lake puts the guitar down on the bed. She looks at her hands, stretches them out, and then balls them into two fists. She talks to her hands.
    “My mom died one month after coming home from rehab,” Lake says.
    I just stare at her. It’s something we have in common. Our mothers were junkies. It dawns on me. They were junkies
together.
    “It happens a lot like that, one last ride before you kick for real,” Lake says.
    I remember to speak.
    “No one ever told me that,” I say. I don’t say
I’m sorry
. Or
That’s terrible
. Somehow I feel like if I did say that, I would incur Lake’s wrath. And I don’t want to feel angry right now. I want to breathe in my mom’s scent from the blanket.
    “Yeah. The thing is that you can’t handle the same amount you were using before rehab,” she says. “My mom had two of those blankets that your mom knit for her.”
    “Really?”
    “I have one, too. A small one. I was a baby when your mom left.”
    Lake stands up and gently puts the guitar back on the stand.
    “I gotta go,” she says.
    “OK,” I say. And as an afterthought, I add, “I’ll talk to you later.”
    I know right then that I can’t be that mad at my mom anymore for staying in Peru. She may be far away, but at least she didn’t leave me for good.
    I go into the living room, and The Rat is lying on the couch with earphones on. He’s plugged into the stereo. His foot is bouncing up and down to a rhythm I can’t hear. I stand there until he notices me. He pulls one earphone off his head, and now I can hear the music all tiny and tinny blaring out of it.
    “What’s up?” The Rat asks.
    I shrug.
    He sits up. He pulls off the other earphone and then flips off the stereo so that there is silence.
    “You hungry?”
    I shrug.
    As I sit, I pull on the knit blanket that covers the back of the couch.
    “Did Mom make this?” I ask.
    “Yeah,” The Rat says. “When she was in rehab. I think she needed a hobby to keep her hands busy.”
    I nod.
    “Did you have a hobby?” I ask. “I mean, after you left rehab?”
    The Rat laughs and points up at all the model airplanes on the ceiling.
    “How long have you been clean?”
    “I’ve been clean five years now,” he says. “Five years and counting.”
    “Was it hard? Kicking?”
    “Yeah,” The Rat says.
    “Did you know Lake’s mom died after being in rehab?”
    “Sure. Her dying was the beginning of me getting clean. It was hard for me not to shoot up after I checked out of rehab, too,” he says. “But I didn’t. I didn’t.”
    “Do you think it was hard for Mom?”
    “Oh, Katy. Do you know how much your mom loves you?”
    I nod.
    I close my eyes and I take a deep breath. I’m tired from all the heavy thinking, so I lean my head on The Rat’s shoulder.
    He smells like cigarettes and sweat.

The Rat finishes his omelet and drains his cup of coffee. Then he readjusts his tiny cowboy hat, lets out a big sigh, and picks up his toolbox from the floor. He jerks his thumb for me to follow him. He settles up the bill, and we head out the door.
    “I gotta go to work. You going to be OK on your own?” he asks.
    “Yeah,” I remind him. “I’m almost fifteen.”
    “Right, you’re a young lady,” The Rat says, kind of chuckling to himself. Like he thinks it’s funny. It’s not.
    He needs to be told it’s no joke. I
am
a young lady.
    “Mom let me go to the Mont Royal Tam-Tams with Leticia by ourselves last year.”
    He shudders.
    “Drum circles aren’t my thing,” he says, looking kind of grossed out. “OK then. Have a good day.”
    He walks away from me, but he keeps turning back and looking at me standing on the corner, like he’s terrified that he’s actually leaving me alone. Like he thinks I can’t handle being by myself. If he knew me, he’d know I prefer it. When he gets to his car, he looks back at me one last time.
    I