Beige

by Cecil Castellucci

  “Good thing you know how to cook,” Trixie says, grabbing The Rat’s hand. “Have you made Katy your pasta puttanesca yet?”

  “No. Not yet,” The Rat says.

  “Well, you should. Mmmmm.”

  As Trixie and The Rat talk, they give each other looks that say I’m sorry and I forgive you all at once. They are a team. If I’m going to be stuck in this town for the summer, then I don’t want to be left out. I want to say, How come you never cook for me? How come you just hand me the take-out menus? Why are we always ordering in or going out?

  Instead I say, “Fine, I’ll sit for you.”

  Lake is lying on my bed plucking away on my guitar. She is sporting her usual outfit of black jeans and a tight T-shirt. She wears black every time I see her pretty much. It makes her look kind of doom and gloomy.

  Lake pauses her guitar noodling to pull the pink and purple knit blanket from my bed and wrap it around herself, like she just got a chill, even though it’s one hundred million bagazillion degrees outside.

  I don’t want her wrapping my blanket around herself. She smells like BO because she doesn’t wear deodorant or shave her armpits. It’s my mom’s blanket, and it still kind of smells like her perfume.

  “So, The Rat tells me you’re staying all summer,” Lake says.

  Fact. She’s just stating the facts. I just nod because if I say yes, I know I’ll start to cry, and I don’t want Lake to see me cry.

  “Guess I’ll be getting a bigger bribe,” Lake says.

  Bitch, I think.

  “Yep. Guess so,” I say.

  Lake smiles. She seems as if she’s going to make another bitchy comment. Then she looks at me, and for a second, her face softens. I think I see in her eyes, behind that look, that she’s saying, Hey, Beige, I understand disappointment. I understand.

  But then the moment is gone and I’m left wondering if I made it up. I look up at her again, though, just to make sure. But now she doesn’t look sorry for me at all. She’s just plucking away at my guitar. She is probably just glad she can get another piece of equipment at Guitar Center. I’m not quite sure why she keeps coming over and then just sits there, kind of ignoring me and playing my guitar. Doesn’t she have anything better to do?

  I put my nose back into my book. I can’t read while she’s just sitting here in my room. Just plucking away. Just casually ruining my mother’s blanket.

  I want her to stop playing, which means I’ll have to distract her from the guitar, and that means talking. I need to get her talking so she’ll stop playing.

  “So, what’s your band called?” I ask.

  She gets into the I’m-getting-comfortable-now-because-I-can-talk-about-my-favorite-subject, ME, pose.

  “The Grown-Ups,” she says, and sticks out her boobs, displaying the name emblazoned on her T-shirt. “We’re great. This is my new T-shirt design. I silkscreened it myself.”

  The blanket slides a bit off her shoulder, and so she yanks it back up. Then she looks at me, and I can tell she can see that I’m annoyed.

  “What’s your problem, Beige?”

  I’m caught. What can I say to be polite? I’m blank. I am at a loss for words.

  “My mom made that blanket,” I say. “It still smells like her.”

  Lake looks at me like she doesn’t care.

  I tell the truth.

  “I miss her,” I say quietly.

  “Oh.”

  She pulls on the edge of the blanket and it falls off her shoulders. I pull it toward me. I want my mother’s blanket to comfort me. That’s why I brought it with me to Los Angeles. I want it around my shoulders. Maybe I am getting ready to talk about me.

  But I’m not. I don’t open my mouth and tell her that my mom made it for me when she was in rehab. When she was pregnant with me. That my mom made a blanket big enough for a king-size bed because she was freaking out, and knitting was the only thing that kept her from not losing her mind while the junk was leaving her body and I was growing bigger and bigger inside of her each day.

  She knit then. Everyone she knew then got a knit blanket when she was in rehab, she said. She doesn’t knit now. Even though a bunch of her friends have a knitting circle. Even though I keep asking her to teach me. Even though Leticia says it would be cool to know how to knit and we should totally learn how.

  “That was then, Katy,” Mom says. “I knit all I had in me.”

  I pull the blanket closer around me. A silence 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 wave. I want to say, God, it’s not like you’re leaving me forever now. You already did that. Don’t act all worried and guilty about leaving now. You left me when I was a baby. I don’t expect you to come back.

  I walk down to Sunset Boulevard and explore the neighborhood, by myself. On the way there, I pass that guy I always see walking everywhere in the neighborhood. He’s either reading or listening to a little radio or talking on his cell phone. He ignores me when I nod politely to him.

  On Sunset there are four cafés, a florist, a cheese shop, a bunch of clothing stores, and a bunch of furniture stores. If I had money, I could spend it really easily. Maybe babysitting for Trixie isn’t such an awful idea.

  No.

  Wait.

  It is awful.

  My summer job could have been making discoveries relevant to the study of civilization. And now I’ll be changing diapers.

  One of the clothing stores has all old vintage clothes. I don’t want to go in there. The salesgirl seems like she’d laugh at anything I looked at. Besides, it’s a bit too funky for me in there. But outside on the sidewalk there is a five-dollar sale rack. That’s pretty cheap. I could get a lot of stuff for five dollars. I could just check it out. I pull through the clothes, even though I’m sure there’s nothing here I would wear. But there is no harm in looking. I’m holding onto a pale-pink beaded sweater when I look up and I see him coming toward me. Leo. He’s reading an extreme sports magazine. He’s going to pass right next to me.

  I’m prepared.

  I lift my hand up and I say, “Hello!”

  He doesn’t even slow down. He doesn’t even look up. He totally ignores me and just keeps walking.

  “Hi!” someone says back. I look over the rack of clothing.

  It’s that kid with the helmet. I read his name again. Garth Skater.

  “You’re The Rat’s kid, right?” he says. “How are you? That is so cool that you remembered me. I didn’t think you’d remember me.”

  He licks his finger and scores himself a one in the air.

  I wasn’t even saying hello to him. I then kind of want to remind him that he’s wearing a helmet! With his name on it! Who wouldn’t remember him?

  “What’s your name again?” he asks.

  I don’t want to tell him my name. It’s none of his business. But he’s looking at me so expectantly. I guess I should say something.

  “Beige,” I say.

  He furrows his brow, like he doesn’t understand me.

  “Beige,” I say a little louder. The name feels strange on my tongue.

  “Oh! I get it! It’s ironic! ’Cause you’re so cool! Nice. I like it. Beeeeeeeeeiggggggggge!”

  He makes his hand surf the air in front of him as he says it.

  “Anyway, see ya,” I say, and I walk away. I’ll head to the Los Feliz Library. It’ll be a cool escape in there. And there are computers. I’ve decided to go through all the classics they have in the teen section. I’m going to start on the letter zed and go backward. Why start at the beginning? I bet no one ever actually gets to zed. I kind of feel bad for zed. I’ll be the girl that loves zed.

  “Hey, wait up! Beige!”

  I don’t turn around at first, because I forget that I told him Beige was my name.

  “Yo!” Garth skates up to me.

  “Yeah?” I say.

  “Wanna hang out sometime?” he says.

  He blurts it out. Unsmooth. Is he asking me out? I don’t want him to be asking me out. That’s not right. Then again it doesn’t feel like he’s asking me out, like a boy asks out a girl. It feels safe. It feels like he just wants to be friends with me. Maybe he just wants to hang out with me because of The Rat. No one has ever wanted to be friends with me because of that reason. I wonder if he’s using me. He doesn’t look like a user.

  I shrug.

  “OK, great!” he says. “That’s wicked! I’m around here all the time ’cause I’m taking drum lessons at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. Actually I’m late for my lesson. So, you know, cool! I’ll see you!”

  And then he skates awkwardly away.

  What a mess he is! He didn’t even ask for my number. He doesn’t even know how to get in touch with me. He’s the biggest loser I’ve ever met. Even bigger than me.

  And now he thinks my name is Beige.

  I meet Lake by the entrance of what looks like a crappy garage. There’s an angel hanging over the entrance. She takes one of the million keys from her key ring and opens the door.

  There is musical stuff everywhere — instruments, racks of guitars, two drum kits, five amps, and a piano. A minifridge sits in the corner, and rock-and-roll action figures are strung up from the ceiling along with blue Christmas lights. There’s a beat-up couch against the wall.

  “First things first,” Lake says. “Don’t touch any of my shit. Or at least ask first. This is, like, my sacred space. And never, ever touch my guitars.”

  “Don’t worry — I don’t want to touch your guitars.”

  I don’t even want to touch my guitar, I think.

  “Good, then I’ve communicated my feelings and now we have an understanding about it,” Lake says.

  Is she joking? She didn’t communicate anything to me except that she’s bossy.

  I sneak a peek at the guitars. I don’t want to look at them too long, ’cause I bet she’d think that my even looking at them too long would hurt them.

  I can picture Lake rocking out and picking up one of her guitars and smashing it into a million pieces. I bet she’s that kind of person, the kind of person who smashes a guitar to emphasize her point. She probably gets it from Sam Suck. It’s a gene I was born without. I wonder how hard it would be to smash a guitar. I wonder which one on the wall would break the easiest. I’m measuring them all with my eyes.

  “This is my jam space,” she continues. “This is where I come when I need to create or when I can’t take my grandma anymore. It’s like my fortress of solitude. You know, when I need to be on my own.”

  She closes her eyes for a second and does a Zen breath.

  “Don’t you live with your dad?” I ask.

  She gives me a look, so I know she thinks it was a dumb question.

  “There are no dumb questions,” Mom says. “Questions are points of entry to inquiry. And inquiry is the road to knowledge.”

  “For years my dad could barely take care of himself. You think he could take care of me?” she says. “Want a Coke?”

  That’s a question I can answer.

  “Sure,” I say.

  She opens the minifridge and grabs us Cokes. She throws me mine and I barely catch it. Lake laughs.

  “That wasn’t too graceful.”

  I shrug. Usually I’d be embarrassed, but something about the space makes it OK to be clumsy. I open the Coke and take a long sip. It buys me time to think.

  “You know, I’ve never taken anyone here who wasn’t a musician or here to jam,” she says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I don’t usually mix with civilians,” Lake says.

  “Civilians?”

  “Anyone who doesn’t play music.” Lake turns her back on me and busies herself with something.

  I look around again at the space. It’s messy, but the
mess doesn’t bother me. It makes sense here. The place has a certain feel to it. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s that, civilian or not, somehow I don’t feel judged.

  Lake picks up one of the guitars and starts playing it. It sounds kind of nice. It sounds like I’m dreaming. But I don’t say that. I just let her keep playing and singing mumbly-like to herself. I watch her as her sturdy hands move along the neck of the guitar. Her hair spills over her face and her brow is crinkled, concentrated. I notice that she has blond roots growing out. She’s really a California blonde! That makes me want to laugh. But she would hate it if I laughed, so I won’t. But she looks soft as she plays. She looks nice, even pretty.

  She catches me staring at her. She glares back.

  “It’s not a song or anything. I’m just noodling. It helps me to think,” Lake says. I don’t know why she has to eyeball me like she’s angry. Then she starts playing again, and the notes she pairs together fill up the air between us.

  I take my book out of my bag and put my nose in it. I try to concentrate on the words, but the words Lake whispers to herself as she continues to noodle keep mingling with the words I’m reading in the book and they don’t go together. I don’t want to be listening, but I am. Mostly I don’t want Lake to know I’m listening. So I just make it look like I’m reading. But really, I’m relaxing, maybe for the first time since I got to Los Angeles. I can breathe. I do it. I take a deep breath.

  After a bit Lake stops with her strumming and mumbling half-singing and says, “You want to jam before the others get here?”

  I give up pretending to read. I put my book down.

  “I don’t play, remember? Music is not my thing.”

  “Too bad,” Lake says. She noodles a bit more, and I watch her fingers on the neck of the guitar. Her fingers are long. They lazily press the strings, caressing them, really, and the result of the caress is always the same thing: music.

  “So, what is your thing?” she asks.

  “I have no thing,” I say. Why does everybody think that every single person has to have a thing?

  “Lame. I’d die without music. I’d just die.” She plays some more. I close my eyes. I realize it’s not the music that I like. No. It’s the sense of liberation in this space. Like the air in here is clearer. Or there is more oxygen so you can really be alert.