The week flies by, but it's long enough for you to settle into a routine: wake up and help yourself to breakfast before meeting Stan and Koji out in the hangar, work on the star racer until lunch time, and then work some more until dinner. Sometimes Rick and Don stick around and help out where they can, but usually they disappear and do their own thing. "I think it's good for them," Koji says, "They've obviously got their own stuff to work through."

By the time you need to go home, the star racer is mostly done. "Just gotta make it pretty," Stan explains. "Well, there are some bugs that need to be fixed, but it's all easy stuff from here on out."

"You probably could have been done already without me slowing you down," you grumble, remembering all the times that one of them would have to show you how to do something.

"Nonsense," Koji says. "You were very helpful, Molly. Besides, we all have to start somewhere, right? It's not a big deal."

"Yeah, we like having you around." Stan swings an arm around your shoulders. "You're always welcome here."

Rick and your dad enter the hangar. "We've got the car loaded up, we're ready to leave whenever you are," Rick says.

You look down at your feet. "Yeah, okay, I guess we should go."

"If you ever need anything, you can always call us, okay?" Koji says, wrapping you up in a hug. You nod against his shoulder.

"Seriously, kid, we're here for you," Stan adds. "Anything you need from us, you just have to ask."

Two days later, you're back in school. It's hard, but you feel better about the whole thing in general. Especially since you can now ask Stan and Koji for help with your homework if you really need it, which is often, considering you still can't focus for shit.

"I don't remember doing it like that," Stan mutters, staring at the worksheet you're holding up for him to see. "Like, I know how to do this, I just don't know how to do it like that."

Koji has been scribbling on something out of view of the screen, and he lets out a triumphant crow and brandishes his own sheet of paper at you. "I think I got it? It's like this…"

Still, you can feel the brain-fog fighting to settle over you again. You tell Rick as much, in a fit of frustration. "I'm tired of feeling like this," you fume, scrubbing a plate with more aggression than is strictly necessary. "I'm tired of feeling like I'm fighting my own head all the time. I just want to be normal."

The first weekend after your return to school, you walk down into the living room and find Rick holding up… paint chips to the walls. You watch him for a moment, before clearing your throat and asking, "What are you doing?"

"Trying to pick out paint," he says.

You frown. "Paint for what?"

"For the living room."

You squint at him before jumping the last two stairs and approaching him. You study the walls before asking, "What's wrong with it?"

"It's boring. No wonder you Wei's are so damn depressed, I would be too if everything in my house was various shades of off-white."

You snort. "Don will kill you."

"Don has a lot of things he could kill me over, and he hasn't done it yet," Rick says. "Now, your old man is at work for most of today, so if we're doing this, let's make it happen."

"Working on a Saturday?"

Rick shrugs. "You know how he is. Do you wanna help or not?"

You look back at the wall, and feel a smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. "Yeah, okay. Let me eat and change out of my pajamas first."

"What do you think about this blue?" Rick asks, holding up a sky-colored paint swatch he pulled out of his pocket.

You take it and study it carefully over the top of the aviators you found in Rick's truck. You're sprawled out in a shopping cart, chomping on a sucker the lady at the door gave you because she thought you were a lot younger than you actually are. Not that you're going to complain, free candy is free candy.

"I was actually thinking fuchsia," you hand the piece of paper back with a sniff. "Go big or go home."

"If you want Don to actually kill me, sure. There's also a nice yellow."

"I mean, that's not bad either," you consider the card he hands you. "What are my other options?"

"There's more neutral colors, or this darker green, but I thought a lighter color might be nice."

"Well, you're the one who's been thinking about this for longer than I have. But I agree with the lighter colors. I thought the blue was okay."

"I'm leaning towards the blue myself."

"Are we just painting the living room?" you ask.

"For now, yeah. Is there something else you wanted to paint?"

"My room?" you suggest. "It's pink."

"Says the one who wants the living room to be fuchsia."

You pull the sucker out of your mouth at point it at Rick. "Look, fuchsia is a good color, it's bold, it's obnoxious, it says, 'I have no regrets about who I am or what I look like.' But pastel pink? It's a good color but it's been that way since I was born."

"Alright, what color do you want your room to be, then?"

"Uh," you look at the gradient of colors displayed before you. "What about black?"

"No."

"It's my room!" you snap.

Rick gives you A Look. "Do you actually want your room to be black?"

"No," you grumble. "But what if we did, like, black and put glow and the dark stars all over the walls?"

"That's a lot of little plastic stars to put up everywhere, on top of being really fucking dark."

You groan. "Why do you have to be right about everything? Can't you let me live?"

He chuckles. "Why don't you get out of the cart and go look at some of your options? I'm gonna go see if I can get a little can of this blue to bring home before we commit to anything crazy."

"I thought we were just going for it, you know, no regrets, no apologies. If Dad has an issue, he can eat it."

"Look, Don might be a stick in the mud, but he can be reasonable. I think we should at least try to convince him to paint the living room blue. Also, I wanna make sure this is a good shade before we buy a whole bunch of it."

You shrug. "You know him better than I do."

If you weren't looking at him, you probably would have missed the way Rick freezes at your words, before swallowing hard and seeming to regain his composure. Not that he ever really lost it. You tuck this away in your mental folder of "things you aren't sure you can ask him about" and clamber out of the cart. "I'll be looking at paint," you call.

When Rick comes to find you later, you've got a handful of chips and are considering more. "What did you find?" he asks.

You hold them out for him to take. "I don't know, I like these colors, but are they really the colors I want my room to be?"

"This orange reminds me of macaroni and cheese," he says.

"It's a nice orange, fuck off."

"And this red is very bold."

"I know, that's why I like it."

Rick huffs. "Your brain isn't going to be able to relax if your walls are bright red."

"That's fake."

"It's psychology."

"Oh, so you're a psychologist too, huh?"

He chuckles. "A lot of things go back to psychology."

"Okay, so what color would you suggest?" you ask.

He holds up another color you picked out. "I thought you wanted to get away from pink."

"Like, pink pink. That's a reddish pink," you huff. "It's obviously different."

"What about this purple?"

You hum and take the card away from him. "I don't know. I kinda like it, but also kinda don't? It's, like, a grey-purple. It seems like an old-person bedroom color."

"An old-person bedroom."

"Yeah, like, 60 year old widow who wears cozy sweaters and goes to bingo with her friends and ends up drinking too much wine."

Rick snorts. "I get the point. You don't have to decide now. We'll have to come back to buy more paint anyway, so why don't you take some of the colors you think you'd like and think about it?"

"Because I'm impatient."

"You must learn to be patient, padawan."

You pull a face at him. "You spend all this time teaching me to go fast, now you want me to wait?"

Rick adjusts his glasses before pushing the cart away from you. "Pretty sure I was trying to teach you 'control,' and the jury's still out on if I was successful or not."

"Oh, screw you!" you cry, jogging after him. "I know control! I just decide not to use it!"

Don finds you and Rick painting sections of the living room walls. Rick said he wanted to see how the color looked "in different angles and lightings" and you just kinda went with it. You get to paint, which is fun, even if the smell is kind of giving you a headache.

"What are you doing?" your father demands.

"Painting," Rick says, nonchalantly.

Don huffs and rolls his eyes. "I can see that. Why?"

"Your house is boring," you chime.

"It is not! It's-" he waves a hand in a circular motion, before finishing, "It's tasteful!"

Rick says, "It's about as tasteful as plain oatmeal."

You cackle as your father splutters. Finally, he snaps, "Were you just going to paint the house without telling me?"

"Of course not, we only bought enough to see how it would look," Rick explains. "What do you think?"

Don studies the walls, arms crossed over his chest and brow furrowed. After a minute of this, he sighs. "It's a good color," he admits. "You have good taste, Rick."

"Woah now, Don, don't be gettin' soft on me."

"Oh, just accept the compliment, you ass."

"And he's back."

Your father groans, "I can't win with you."

"But you still try, that's gotta count for something."

The only response to that is Don clicking his tongue in disapproval.

"So, we can paint the living room?" you ask.

"Yes, fine, we can paint the living room," your dad sighs. "Any other changes I should know about?"

"Molly wanted to paint her room, too," Rick says.

Your father raises an eyebrow at you and asks, "What's wrong with how it is now?" You almost think he sounds hurt.

"I mean, it's fine," you mumble. "I just thought it was time for a change. But I can't decide on a color anyway, so it's probably just gonna stay the way it is."

"You have four walls, you could pick a couple different colors," Rick suggests.

You hum as you think, and then grin. "What if I did four different colors?"

"Absolutely not," Don blurts.

"Why not? It's my room!"

Rick shrugs. "She's got a point. Little creativity never hurt anyone."

The other man sighs, that way he does when he knows he can't win. "Can they at least be complimentary colors?" he asks.

"We'll see," you reply, because you still aren't really sure which colors you want still, but you are by no means making any promises one way or the other.