Chapter One The Plan, in Shambles #3
Work at Dollar City to save money.
Edit Collage for Common App activity.
Go to University of Kentucky with Maddie.
With 25 percent of those steps no longer an option, The Plan was in shambles. They needed to get it back together before they fell apart too.
For Mal Flowers, that meant one thing:
They needed Maddie.
“And she dropped it on you just like that, right before school?” Maddie asked, raising an eyebrow at Mal.
Mal gave a curt nod, their lips pressed into a hard line.
It was only now, during lunch, that they were finally able to tell Maddie what had happened with Collage that morning.
Maddie—Mal’s sister—was a year younger than them in age but was in the same graduating class after Mal had been held back in eighth grade.
Earlier on, they had often been confused for twins, since they both had identical blond hair and brown eyes—but then Maddie hit her growth spurt, becoming tall and athletic while Mal stayed short and round.
Sometimes, especially in the beginning, Mal had been embarrassed to be in the same grade as their little sister, but their embarrassment was far outweighed by the perk of having a ready-made best friend in all their classes.
But in a cruel twist of senior-year fate, the two siblings hadn’t been scheduled for any shared classes until their lunch hour.
All day Mal had carried Collage’s cancelation around with them like a private rain cloud.
Now that they were finally with Maddie, it all came storming out over the round lunch table.
“The whole magazine done, just like that,” they said, flicking their hands outward as if to shoo the words away. “And the money isn’t even going anywhere. Just… away.”
Not unlike The Plan. The feeling of Too Much pulled hard at Mal’s edges. They dropped their hands to their lap, fingers drumming on their thighs.
“Well,” started Maddie, teeth snapping into a baby carrot, “it was really shit of Ms. Merritt to drop all that on you right before school started. Especially over coffee.”
“Right?” Mal still felt betrayed. Coffee time was a sacred time—and so was Mal’s space within it.
“I could hardly pay attention in AP Bio, and during the get-to-know-you thing Ms. Woodmore did in Econ—the one where you have to think of a word that starts with the same letter as your name and also repeat everyone’s back—I said I had to go to the bathroom when it got close to my turn. ”
It was worth the embarrassment, honestly. The cool water of the sink on their wrists had been a welcome distraction from their racing thoughts.
“You know, fair. I can never remember half of those on a good day.” Maddie was being nice. She always made a stellar first impression with her icebreaker answers. “Okay, so, do you want to know what I think you should do?”
“Yes,” Mal burst out, almost before Maddie finished her sentence.
This was the whole reason they’d wanted to talk to Maddie.
When Mal’s brain got Like This—worked up, overwrought, close to imploding, turning them into a useless and unpleasant pile of goo—they turned to Maddie’s much-calmer brain for advice.
Maddie’s mind could take all the tangled-up typos and key-smashes of Mal’s thoughts and smooth them out into words and sentences, into solutions.
They could already feel the shimmering cool of calm relaxing their tight shoulders with the promise of actionable steps.
“I think you should pivot,” Maddie said plainly, like it was that simple.
Mal rolled their eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
“Yeah, okay.” Maddie swatted playfully at Mal’s knee. “This direction is a dead end right now—and, really, I am sorry, I know you would have kicked ass as editor in chief, Mal—but you can definitely find another direction and just… pivot to that.”
As helpful as she could be, this was also what happened sometimes with Maddie: She gave answers Mal didn’t fully understand. Or, well, that wasn’t true. They understood the words she was saying, the concept. Sure, find something else to do instead of Collage and do that.
But the disconnect was that, while it might be that simple for Maddie, for Mal it was not.
“I can’t just pivot.” They had a hard enough time following the straight lines they were supposed to, even with The Plan to guide them. Trying to follow whatever shape a pivot made… Mal could feel their body tensing just at the thought.
“Mal,” Maddie said, her voice calm. “You can absolutely pivot. You are a smart and capable badass.”
No, thought Mal, that was Maddie, with her straight A’s and soccer captainship and probable scholarship to University of Kentucky in Lexington for one or both of those—the Way Out of Covington that she talked about like it was an incantation that would change them both for the better.
Their sister made it all look easy, banging out last-minute papers after practices and still managing to show up at the kitchen table with coffee for late-night sibling study sessions.
But Mal often struggled even with simpler things—like remembering to brush their teeth, which Maddie insisted Mal should add to their morning routine.
When she explained that for her, this was not something she had to actively think about, just something she did automatically, Mal’s mind was blown.
They had to run through their morning routine every day in their head like a checklist. But they were always losing parts of it, erased by their anxious thoughts.
Pivoting sounded similarly mythical to Mal. But Maddie was trying to help, and so they tried—they always tried—to listen.
“What could I even pivot to?” they asked.
“Anything, really,” Maddie said matter-of-factly. “Any club here would be lucky to have you. You get things done.”
That was not all the way true. Mal got Collage things done.
They had prioritized it in The Plan because it was the thing they were best at.
And, to be honest, sometimes they didn’t even think they were good at Collage.
They hadn’t been good at the writing part, certainly.
In fact, they had fallen into an assistant editor role in sophomore year because they were so bad at the writing part that Ms. Merritt had taken pity on them when they asked for it.
She said she “recognized potential in Mal’s editorial eye,” whatever that meant.
The truth was, Collage was just the place in school where Mal felt the most like they fit, or the least like they didn’t.
But Mal couldn’t explain this to Maddie, because Maddie didn’t know about The Plan.
While Mal shared everything else with their sister, anytime they got close to sharing this, their skin suddenly felt like it was on too tight.
Telling Maddie about The Plan would mean admitting they needed one.
That all those things that came so naturally for Maddie didn’t for them.
That Mal’s Way Out of Covington was uncertain at best.
And that there was something so fundamentally Incorrect with Mal that they needed an elaborate system in place to mitigate it.
Walking the thin line of The Plan alone was frightening, but it was nothing compared to the horror of having to invite someone else into it. Mal shook their hands out to release the tension, caught themself, and stopped.
Sensing Mal’s impending spiral, Maddie added, “Would it help if we made a plan?”
Mal nodded frantically.
“Perfect,” Maddie said, scooting their lunch tray aside to make space on the table. “Let’s do this.”
And so Mal fished out their planner from their backpack, folding the planner in half at the spiral binding.
Mal’s planner was a bit like their brain.
It was where they kept anything that really mattered: to-do lists, assignments, scheduled appointments and due dates, notes to themself, practice phrases for tricky situations.
Mal’s own brain had the bad habit of kicking those sorts of things out, so their planner held it all back in.
As long as Mal kept everything—everything—neat and organized inside it, they could stay neat and organized too.
Often, all this organization made their planner feel cumbersome and heavy to carry, but thankfully the full bottom half of today’s page was a blank slate. “Okay.” Mal nodded, still skeptical about the pivot. “What are the options?”
And in the bustle of the cafeteria, the siblings created a plan of attack. When Mal dotted the last bullet point in their list, something close to calm worked through their shoulders, loosening them.
“Better?” Maddie asked.
“Maybe a little,” Mal answered truthfully.
“Yes, good,” Maddie said with a smile. “Okay, what else do you need to get through the rest of the day?”
This was another way Maddie helped Mal: When their brain got all tangled up, she helped them talk it out to unknot it.
“Coffee,” Mal said. Always first on their list.
“You can do that,” Maddie said. “What else?”
Mal mulled that over, swirling their milk in its carton.
“I don’t know.” Everything still felt so dull and so spiky at the same time.
But there was a look of determination on Maddie’s face, lighting it up even in the dim cafeteria.
The smallest part of that brightness rubbed off on Mal, spreading a smile onto the corners of their lips too.
“A hug, probably,” they said.
“Absolutely got you there,” their sister said, and leaned in. She wrapped her arms tight around Mal’s shoulders and squeezed.
The pressure of the hug held Mal together, like it was pushing all their squirming and uncomfortable pieces back into place. “A little more squeezy, please.”
With a small squeak, Maddie squeezed even harder, until all of Mal’s pieces solidified. When they finally said, “Okay, thank you,” and pulled away, they felt at least 37 percent better than they had before the hug.
“Anytime. Now, do you got this?”
Probably not, Mal thought. But they knew that this was not the answer Maddie was looking for, so they nodded.
“I got this,” they said.
And with a plan and the promise of coffee, Mal really hoped they did.