“-4840, yeah,” Moss rubs a finger over the embossed numbers on the card. The little differences in their shape pulled him from the sickly feeling in his gut ever so slightly. Polite words from the woman in the call center pull him back to a conversation that reminds him of the treason he was committing.

	“Okay, so that takes care of your water bill for this month. You have a lovely day and tell your grandmother I said ‘Adios’.”

	“You too,” Moss says. The rat didn't know a word of Spanish. He clears his throat and waits for the other end to click off before putting the phone down. They had water for the next month. The rat breathes out for what feels like the first time since the conversation started. He’d found the bill, set aside on a desk, when he’d been looking for scissors for his little project. Thursday was pay day so it should be fine. There was no need to cry.

	The project splayed out over the table he now turned to wasn’t the largest thing. He’d propped the library book against the wall; a bottle of Elmer’s glue, the scissors, and some leftover ribbons they’d used to tie balloons for a birthday party were to his left; and a paper box, hair tie, and a little pile of candy were to his right. They were far from organized, but it was a mess he could easily navigate.

	The hair tie would be the big thing here. He was going to tie a bow onto it, but it would take awhile, so he started with the candies. They were all his mom’s favorites. He’d sorted out the green and yellow Skittles from the rest dropping them in as he plucked them from the pile. The little paper box he’d chucked them in would shake every time a tiny candy bounced off the side. In crayon along each side were the little lines where a ribbon would go and inside them were a simple message in imperfect lettering. “I love you,” but instead of the word “love” there was a heart. Once the two bags were dropped in, he places a handful of snack-size candy bars on top. 

	He wished he could do more, but he was scared. Moss had stolen the money for them. He’d gone street to street, checking car doors and seeing which would come open. Some of them would have  cupholders full of change that someone could grab if they were quick enough. Others would have stuff like razor blades hidden under their door handle. Even when he could safely get into a car, though, he never took all the coins. And he left dollars. Whoever owned it might need it for a soda or something.

	That sorted out, he moved on to the main thrust of the gift. The hair tie on it’s own was small and black. It would benefit from something more. And that’s why he got out the ribbons. He was going to make a bow for it. One, on it’s own, wouldn’t be enough with only the thin ones that were tied to balloons to work with. What he really wanted was something big, and iconic. The big red ones that meant you really cared for someone. If he wanted it to be anything like that, he’d need to line up a lot of the little pastel ones. The book was saying to pre-measure the ribbons so that both sides were even. He randomly cuts off a bit of ribbon as long as his forearm and uses that to measure the rest. From there, he needs them all to stay put while he ties them. That’s what the glue was for. A dab of it follows each ribbon onto the hair tie. He’s extra careful, making sure none leaked onto the table.

	“Hey, can I have some?”  a mumbled, little voice says from next to him. Rocky, his little brother, stared hungrily at the remaining Skittles on the table. His little finger was pushed in against his teeth for whatever reason children did that.

	Moss looks at the clock, then to the cub and says, “With dinner.” It was about that time, anyway.  Satisfied, Rocky does his kindergartener waddle back into the boys’ room to play video games with their older brother.

	Dinner was usually Moss’s responsibility, which meant spaghetti. The thought of tying a spaghetti ribbon onto the bow briefly makes the rat laugh, but he didn’t want the sticky, starchy stuff getting stuck in his mom’s hair. Instead, while pulling an already made tub of it from the fridge, he decides to use his newfound creative energy to try something his dad used to do with it. He pulls the only other food he knows he can make out with it: Eggs.

	When it’s done, he hops from the chair he was standing on to pile the mixture of eggs fried onto pasta onto four little plates. The smell of the eggs makes Moss's mouth water. Rocky’s plate gets a fat dollop of ketchup. Danny always wanted soy sauce on his whenever their dad had made it. Moss just wanted a pinch of salt and pepper. And in a pair of little cups, he pours the leftover candies. They’d like that more than water anyway. He runs the plates over to their room, careful to step over the coats and shoes left laying around the hall. The pair don’t even look from the screen when he sets it in front of them, but some hidden sense of Rocky’s alerts him to the presence of the cup of candy. His little bald hands grab it close. Half of them are gone before Moss leaves the room.

	His own plate is set aside for the sake of the project. He wanted it done before his mom got home. The actual work of the project was fairly simple, but his hand felt so dumb. The first little bow was quick and easy, all he had to was follow the instructions. Trying again on the next sees a bow of a completely different size form. He’d go to make one of the loops only to catch onto one of the other ribbons.  Other times his finger would just slip free for some reason. But he focuses. It needed to be perfect. It’s almost a half-hour of fumbling to align everything as best as he could manage before he’s too frustrated to continue. Moss forces the hair tie through a whole in the top of the box so that the bow sits atop it like it was a proper present.

	To his credit, it was nearly perfect. The one ribbon that he couldn’t figure out how to fix was only slightly wrong, it’s knot gone too tight to continue fiddling with it. It would have to do.

	The noise of the door opening has Moss again leaping from his chair and landing with a thud on the ground. The rough landing doesn’t stop him from rushing headlong into his mom’s stomach, gripping her for dear life. He rubs his head into the soft faux-fur lining her cut.

	“I’m sorry I’m home late, I was so tired I ended up passing out at a friend’s,” she says. Moss knows better than to question it. She’d been gone three days. The important thing now was the she was home. She wasn’t dead or beaten up or arrested or anything. He can’t bear to pull himself out of the hug he was giving her, squeezing himself tightly into her soft abdomen. Another body collides with the pair, Rocky joining in as she hugs them both tightly. The cold from the outside still clung to her jacket, but that hardly mattered to either.

	When finally released from the hug, Moss all but drags her into the kitchen. Rocky stays clinging to her side all the while. “Danny made dinner!” he says. It was important to her that Danny helped around here. If he got in trouble, it would just make everything worse for everyone. Even Rocky knew not to say anything.

	“No thanks, I ate at work today. I think I’m just going to head to bed,” she says and dumps the pasta onto Moss’s plate. He’s hungry stomach goes to war with some dark feeling clouding his heart. A double-serving of pasta wasn’t the worst thing. “And you can clean up after dinner. Danny cooked, you clean, okay?” she sounds annoyed when she says it, her face the vision of exhaustion. Moss reasons it’s just the chemo. That made her feel really bad.

	“Okay,” he says. He already knew the rules. “I made you a gift!”

	Moss swipes the little box from the thing, presenting the bow first to her. She takes it delicately and takes a moment to performatively look it over. A soft hand reaches to grab the ribbon and with a sudden flourish, she pulls the top free. “Oh wow, did you make this at school?” she asks.

	“No,” he says, knowing full well that she’d seen the supplies she was standing next to. “I got the candy there, though. I won it in a game. And I made the bow here.” He grabs the paper that made the top of the box and pulls it free of the accessory. 

	“Bows are my favorite! How’d you know?” she says. She had told him that every holiday he could remember. His mom pulls him in once again, hugging him close in the way that Moss desperately, hungrily returns. It’s a painful, deathgrip of a hug. When it breaks, she returns her attention to the little box that still in her hand. She plucks a candy from it and pops it into her mouth. The hair tie is pushed onto her wrist with a warm smile and she admires it for just a second before speaking. “Sometimes I think I’d kill myself if I didn’t have you. You know you save my life?”

	He watches as she tries to make a little adjustment to the one misaligned ribbon in the thing. The seven-year-old can only smile back, his insides twisting tight enough that they must be shredding themselves. “And I made you a bow, too.”