Addicted To You .L.S.

Fourteen.

Now (June)

Mum is gone by the time I wake up in the morning. On the kitchen table she's left a note and a new cellphone.
Call me if you're going to leave the house.

After I make some toast and grab an apple, I call her at the office.
"I'm going to the bookstore, then maybe to get some coffee, if that's okay," I say after her assistants transferred me over.

I can hear a printer and some chatter in the background.

"All right," she says. "Are you going to take that car?"
"If I have permission." It's a deadly little dance we're doing, circling around each other with closed-lipped smiles, careful not to bear our teeth.
"You do. Keys are on the rack. Be home by 4. Dinners at 7."

"I'll be home."
She hangs up with a perfunctory goodbye. I can here the strain in her voice.

I put it out of my head and get the keys.
Stopping by the bookstore, I buy a paperback, mostly so I'm not telling mum a flat-out lie. Ten minutes later, I'm pulling onto the old highway, heading north, out of town.
There's no traffic this far out. Just a trick here and there on the narrow two-lane road. I roll the windows down and turn my music up loud, like it's enough to shield me from the memories.

The house is at the end of a long dirt road riddled with potholes. I manoeuvre around them, making slow progress as two big chocolate Labs bound out from the back field, tails wagging. 

I park in front of the house. As I get out, the screen door bangs open. A girl my age in polka-dot rain boots and daisy dukes runs down the stairs, her red pigtails bouncing. "You're here!"
She gallops up and wraps her skinny arms around me. I return the hug, smiling as the dogs circle us, yelping for attention. For the first time since Marry dropped me off, I feel like I can breath.

"In really glad to see you," Rachel says. "No, Blake, stop." She yanks the dogs muddy paws off her shorts. "You look good."
"You too."
"C'mon inside. Mums at work, and I make cookies!"

Rachel's house is cozy, with multicoloured rag rugs scattered over the cherrywood floors. She pours coffee and we sit across from each other at the kitchen table, bowl-sized mugs warming our hands.
Silence spreads over us, punctuated by sips of coffee and the clink of spoons against ceramic.

"So..." Rachel hums.
"So."
She smiles, a big stretch that shows her teeth, so genuine it almost hurts. I don't think I can even remember how to smile like that. "It's okay that it's weird right now, you've been gone a long time."

"Your letters," I say. "They were— You have no idea how much they meant to me. Being in there..."
Rachel's letters had saved me. Full of random facts and going off in three directions at once, they're a lot like her: scatterbrained and smart. Her mum had homeschooled her since she was a kid, which is probably the only reason we hadn't met till that night. Rachel's the kind of person you notice.
I trusted her. It had been this instant, instinctual thing. Maybe it was because she found me that night. Because she was there when no one else was, and I needed that when everything had been taken away. But that's only part of it.

There's a determination in Rachel that I've never seen before. She has conviction. In herself, in what she wants, in what she believes. I want to be like that. To be sure if myself, trust myself, love myself.

Rachel had stuck around even when she didn't have to. When everyone else, everyone who's known me forever, had turned their backs. That means more to me than anything.
"Was rehab bad?" She asks.
"No, not really. Just lots of therapy and talking. It was hard, to be in there and put everything on hold." I pause, stirring my coffee unnecessarily.