Chapter Two The Extracurricular Smorgasbord #2
Once, when Mal and Maddie were smaller, their mom had been a stay-at-home mom, because the cost of having them both in day care had been more than she made at her part-time job.
Back then, things had been different. The three of them had gone on adventures to the zoo or the aquarium or the park, or even just on walks around the block collecting interesting fall leaves for a vase on the coffee table.
Mal remembered feeling special then, like their mom’s job was to make the Flowers siblings’ lives exciting—and she was very good at it.
But when Maddie started middle school, their mom had gone back to work to help support the family, and their adventures slowed down.
A pattern quickly emerged: Every year or so, their mom would get bored of her job, or mad about it—coming home trying to hide her tears or in desperate need of a nap—and would find a reason to leave it.
At first, Mal remembered overhearing their parents fighting behind their bedroom door: about how it was a waste to send her mom to night classes if she wasn’t even going to use them, about how the jobs weren’t even hard; she just had to do them.
But by the time Mal was in eighth grade, their dad started to look tired too, and the fights eventually stopped.
Now everyone knew to brace themselves when their mom started showing signs of an Impending Exit.
She had that look about her lately.
“Math,” Mal answered carefully.
“Still?” their mom tutted.
“I’m distracting them,” Maddie confessed, hitting the pause button on the TV remote. “With baking. When they’re done, we’re going to make some snacks for their last Collage thing tomorrow.”
Mal frowned. They had only told their parents about the magazine’s cancellation in the barest way: that it had happened. The rest of the mess was theirs to clean up. With Maddie’s help.
“Have you found something new yet?” their mom asked, turning and heading back into the kitchen. Her voice grew muffled from the distance and the shifting clang of pans. “There’s still time, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Maddie answered for them. “Plenty. And Mal has some promising leads.”
Mal shot Maddie A Look, which said I do not and thank you at the same time. Maddie shrugged easily.
“Good,” their mom answered. She raised her voice over the sound of the faucet she’d turned on—probably filling a pot to start making dinner.
“You just need something, Mal. It doesn’t even have to be something you love, just something you have.
Colleges just look to see that you do something, to figure out where you’re at in the pack. ”
A chill crept through Mal at their mom’s words, and they leaned a little closer to Maddie instinctively.
This was how their mom talked about college for them: They weren’t at the bottom bottom, like Those Kids (whoever they were), but they weren’t close enough to the top that they needed to be truly impressive, like Maddie.
This was their place in The Pack (their mom’s own version of capital-letter thinking): passably mediocre.
“Got it,” Mal said flatly, looking down at their math homework.
“Maybe something a little more practical,” their mom mused from the kitchen between hums of some country song Mal couldn’t recognize. “Something actually useful—like science. You’re not bad at that.”
Mal clenched and unclenched their hand where it held their algebra notebook.
Science hadn’t been so useful when Sixth-Grade Mal had wanted to become a freshwater aquatic biologist and aquarium habitat designer.
When they’d learned that such a career existed, Mal had been certain that it was what they wanted to do with their life.
But their mom had chided them for being impractical, and for messing up her rock garden when they borrowed gravel and plants for practice aquatic landscapes that they set up in buckets in the backyard, trying to attract tadpoles that never showed.
That dream hadn’t followed them beyond the summer, and the Mal who started sixth grade did so thinking their goals were A Problem.
Now, sitting on the sofa, Senior-Year Mal narrowed their eyes at their paper, trying to keep the itch of overwhelm at bay.
“Hey,” Maddie whispered, dipping her head close to Mal’s.
“We’ll find something great. Don’t worry.
She’s…” Maddie waved a dismissive hand, something she did often enough that Mal understood it meant both A Mess and Like That.
“And we’ll be out of here soon, okay? Just one more year, and we’re off to Lexington together, and she’ll be here alone, fussing at herself.
” Then, with a decisive nod, she sat up and said, louder, “Hey, Mom, let me help you with dinner.”
After a belly full of spaghetti (one of their favorites) and an admittedly really fun late night of making snacks with their sister, Mal could almost believe Maddie was right. But on Friday, with the Collage funeral looming later after school, they still hadn’t found a replacement.
“What about soccer?” Maddie asked. Once again, she and Mal sat brainstorming at their lunch table, their heads ducked together among a circle of Maddie’s teammates.
Mal shrugged. “Unless you’re actively recruiting benchwarmers…”
Maddie scoffed. “Who says you’d be a benchwarmer?”
“Me,” said Mal, biting a chicken nugget in half. They went to every single one of Maddie games, so they knew that actually playing soccer wasn’t for them. Mal was fat, but that didn’t mean they were unfit; they walked everywhere. They knew fat people could be athletes, too.
But soccer was Maddie’s Thing.
One of the things Mal had secretly liked about Collage was that it was entirely theirs.
Since the Flowers siblings were so close (both in age and relationship), Mal often lumped themself into Maddie’s activities and hobbies.
Mostly, it was nice—but it wasn’t always.
Even in frivolous things, Maddie always seemed to excel.
One Christmas, for example, Mal got an embroidery kit.
They were so proud of the sloppy backstitched shark they’d sewn onto the neck of an old sweatshirt.
They’d shown Maddie a few basic stitches so she could try too.
And by the next afternoon, the knees of Maddie’s jeans were covered in beautifully satin-stitched flowers worthy of a Craftsagram post—and a braggy, emoji-heavy Facebook post by their mom.
Mal had never picked up their project again.
Not that there was any risk of it with soccer, but Mal didn’t want to make Maddie feel the way they had felt that day. Maddie needed her own Things, too.
“Thanks,” they said, pushing a mushy pea on their plate with a fingernail. “But I think I’ll pass.” They sounded much calmer than they felt.
“We’ll find you something,” Maddie said, and the way she said it meant it wasn’t optional: If Maddie set her mind to something, it would happen. “We’ve still got the weekend. That’s two whole days to come up with a new plan.”
Mal nodded numbly. Maddie sounded so certain, and they wanted to be too. But with the End of Collage party approaching in just a few short hours, Mal couldn’t help feeling like they were approaching the End Of The Plan, too.
And they were afraid—really afraid—that this would also mean the End Of Mal.