Chapter Two The Extracurricular Smorgasbord
Mal had expected to spend their first week of senior year settling in: to their schedule, to the new assortments of the same people in their classes, to different teachers and how loud (or soft) they talked, and most importantly, to their official editor-in-chief duties.
But instead, they spent their days scrambling to find something new to slot into The Plan.
Luckily, Mal had two things on their side.
One, of course, was Maddie. Maddie’s unique one-two punch of frank pragmatism and unrelenting optimism was almost (if not quite) enough to offset Mal’s catastrophizing and lingering gloom.
And two was that it was the start of the school year, so all the extracurriculars and clubs and sports were actively recruiting fresh blood.
On Tuesday, Mal tried what Maddie assured them would be their best option: the brand-new esports club, which met after school in the school library’s small computer lab.
The computers had been updated since the last time they’d used the library.
Now they were all sleek new towers, lit with internal blue lights and attached to large monitors—some of which had been co-opted and attached instead to consoles that people were setting up when Mal peeked their head through the door.
Immediately, they felt a surge of bitterness that the school didn’t have the budget for a literary magazine yet could somehow afford this makeover.
But they needed to replace Collage with something.
And as Maddie had reminded them when they met in the hall, Mal was already a gamer.
A casual gamer, sure—they didn’t have time to play a whole lot, between work and homework and Maddie’s soccer games—but enough that they considered it an actual hobby.
They had never thought of gaming as a viable part of The Plan because it didn’t feel academic enough.
But since it was a whole club now, they tried to convince themself it was Official. Doable. The Plan–able.
But as the room filled up with mostly boys (and the stale smell of needing a shower), Mal couldn’t help wrinkling their nose.
They full-on scrunched it when the club president, a short white boy wearing an Attack on Titan hoodie, stood up and said, “If you’re not a real gamer, you better leave now, because we’ll know,” then glared pointedly at Mal.
But they didn’t wholly give up—they were a real gamer; the hundreds of hours on their Animal Crossing file could attest—until they learned the sort of games they’d be playing: shooters, mostly, and all with open online play.
Mal had tried open online play exactly once, with Maddie.
They had been in fourth grade, Maddie in third, when they’d snuck onto their dad’s pawnshop PS4 late one night.
As soon as Mal spoke into the headset, a very adult-sounding man told them to do things so vulgar that, even though at ten they didn’t know what they were, exactly, they knew they were Not Good.
Neither Mal nor Maddie had played online since.
Mal left the lab without taking one of the blood-splatter-printed flyers with future meeting dates.
On Wednesday, Mal had to work at Dollar City after school, so Maddie’s pivot plan had them trying a few options that tabled during lunch hour. After scarfing down their line lunch, they headed toward the tables on the far wall, trying their best to look like someone worthy of joining something.
First, they stopped at the yearbook table.
It seemed closest to Collage, in that they would still be working on a publication.
And it was an actual class, which Mal liked; they couldn’t think of anything more Official than that.
When Adira, a popular and very pretty Black girl in Mal’s grade, talked to them about documenting everyone’s memories of the year, it sounded like a lot of responsibility, but she assured Mal that the team would help them learn.
Yearbook also sounded much more hands-on than Mal really liked.
Part of what had made Collage perfect for them was that its business was conducted largely from the safety of an e-mail inbox, where students sent their pieces for Mal and Ms. Merritt to retrieve.
It was easier to hide behind red pen and Word docs than to go out and take pictures of people doing things in the hall (candids, Adria called them). Still, Mal was hopeful.
At least until Adira said it would take a bit of rearranging their schedule—which would likely change their lunch period, because that was when yearbook met.
Mal grimaced. They looked back at their lunch table, where Maddie quirked a smile and gave them an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Even if it fixed The Plan, Mal wasn’t sure they would be okay without their lunch hour with her.
They trudged toward their second option: the band table, hung with a red tablecloth and a parade-size pennant with an embroidered bulldog.
“Oh hey, Mallory,” said the boy behind the table. Mal remembered him vaguely from a math class years ago. He smiled, but Mal could tell it was the same Not Really Smile they sometimes made when they felt a little grossed out. “Thinking of joining the band?”
“It’s Mal,” they corrected. “And yes. If I can?”
“Well, do you have any experience?” asked the girl beside him.
“No, she doesn’t,” answered the boy, before Mal could.
“Uh, no,” Mal confirmed. “And I use they/them pronouns.” They had since sophomore year. Pretty much everyone knew that, Mal thought. But maybe not everyone knew Mal.
“Oh, cool, thank you,” said the girl, smiling. “Well, we have a beginning band—it’s mostly freshmen, but you don’t have to be one to join it. Do you know what you might be interested in playing?”
Nothing was the honest answer. But with Maddie watching from across the cafeteria, giving them an encouraging thumbs-up from her seat next to her soccer friends, Mal knew it wasn’t the one they should give. “Clarinet?” they tried.
“Yeah, I could see her as a clarinet player,” the boy said, and made a face like that was supposed to mean something (what, Mal couldn’t guess).
“Yeah,” agreed the girl, shooting him a glare before smiling at Mal again. “They would be pretty good at it, I bet! And we even have free rental ones you can take out every year.”
She went on, but Mal had already mostly stopped listening. The idea of putting their mouth on a communal-use rental instrument, no matter how thoroughly it had been cleaned, made their insides crawl.
Thursday brought what Maddie tried really hard to frame over breakfast as a promising new start: art club, which held an interest meeting in Mr. Stackhouse’s expansive, paint-splattered art room before school started.
When they arrived and saw Parker, their fellow Collage orphan, Mal started to believe Maddie might be right.
It made them feel brave enough to catch Parker’s eye, point to her Little Twin Stars T-shirt, and give her a thumbs-up, which Parker answered with a twirly spin before sitting down across from them.
But then the students started sharing their work, and Mal decided firmly that the club wasn’t for them.
It was clear that everyone in the room had actual artistic talent.
Despite Maddie’s instance, Mal absolutely could not fake it until they made that.
By Thursday evening, Mal was fatigued from all the trying—and from their first real algebra homework of the school year.
Maddie, having finished her calculus assignment shortly after they got home a few hours ago, now huddled with Mal in the Flowerses’ living room.
They had been spending their weeknights together in some variation of this arrangement for as long as they’d been old enough to look after each other, since both their parents worked late.
Mal bent over their homework in the L-corner of the powder blue sectional, with Maddie body-doubling for extra support in the closest reclining seat.
“These off-brand shows are always so weird,” she said, shaking her head as she hit the Play Next Episode button on the free streaming service they used. “They’re making them ice cookies on a rowboat in a swimming pool?” She snorted a laugh.
“Yeah, they fully miss the point,” Mal agreed, grateful to look up from their math problems again. “The whole reason The Great British Baking Show is so good is because it’s so cozy. Like, the worst thing that could happen is your cake takes a tumble and your baking pals give you a hug about it.”
“Now, that’s my kind of catastrophic failure.” Maddie reached over, half hugging Mal with one arm. She fixed them with a certain look, one Mal knew meant she was shifting to Serious Maddie. “How are you feeling about tomorrow?”
Mal scrunched their nose at the idea of the Collage send-off party. “More like that kind of catastrophic failure.” They nodded to the TV screen, where the opening recap showed the end of the last episode again: a baker’s whole boat capsizing, sending her and her cookies into the pool.
“Nah, come on, Mal,” Maddie said, shifting back to sitting and then pressing her socked toes into Mal’s thigh. “We’ll find something. Let’s think.”
As if to punctuate Maddie’s words, the kitchen door swung open with a creak. Maddie kept talking, naming a few options Mal hadn’t yet tried—orchestra, debate—but Mal went still, listening. It only took a few moments for them to pick out the noise of sneakers on the linoleum.
Their mom was home.
“What are you two up to?” she asked, popping her head through the open door.
Her hair, the same blond as Mal’s and Maddie’s, was in a slightly bedraggled version of the curly updo she’d had before school.
She wore the distinct expression of Having A Long Day—something that was happening more and more frequently when she came home from the dental office where she worked as a receptionist.