Chapter Four The Haus on 3rd Street
For another, they loved walking, especially on mornings like this, when the warmth of sunshine on their cheeks was tinged with just the tiniest bit of a breeze, crisp with the promise of the coming autumn.
It was an easy way to be alone, to breathe the fresh air and the various smells of the city.
Mal did some of their best noodling on walks—their best processing and planning—with one cheap earbud tucked into their ear with a playlist, the other dangling free so they could listen out for cars or weirdos.
If Mal ever felt Off, or Anxious, or Out of Control, they went for a walk about it.
They had gotten very good at walks.
At the speed they walked, the seventeen blocks would take them about forty minutes, which was a solid amount of time for a Self-Talk.
Self-Talk was another proper noun for Mal: a sort of inner dialogue they had in their head before they had to Do Something.
They had picked up the phrase from somewhere—maybe from their eighth-grade therapist, who insisted they try Positive Self Talk.
But on most days, Mal thought asking for their self-talk to be positive was a stretch.
Often, it was very much the opposite: Mal’s brain picking its way through the imagined minefield of everything that could (and probably would) go wrong so they could be prepared. So, Self-Talk it was.
On the agenda for this walk were a few topics.
The first order of business was what, exactly, they were about to do—and, really, if they should even do it.
Though the idea had felt pressing in the loud panic of Friday afternoon, with their mom’s cold warning in their head, now that Mal had had sleep and a quiet shift at work to think about it, they were pretty certain it was a terrible idea.
Yes, keeping the magazine alive in some form still felt appealing, but Mal had limited ability.
Some people thought about it as “spoons”—a theory of living with chronic illness that often showed up in their social-media feed—but since Mal wasn’t chronically ill in the way those content creators were, they thought about it instead like a page to be edited.
On any given day, Mal felt like the page of their brain came prefilled with a paragraph or two.
Even if it was not the most concise (some days it felt more like long strings of AAAAAAAAA in all caps and bold than actual words), those couldn’t be deleted.
They included nonnegotiables: wake up, go to school, go to work, go to Maddie’s games, go to sleep.
The rest of the page quickly filled with things that should be nonnegotiables but often became negotiables by accident: brush teeth, drink water, eat food, get homework at least mostly done, shower.
Once, their brain page had included more: hanging out with their friends at Covington’s many coffee shops, chatting on an Animal Crossing roleplay Discord, trying (and mostly failing) to flirt with classmates they thought were cute.
But as trying to keep up with their daily paragraphs—and The Plan, which took up an immovable paragraph all on its own—had gotten harder, those kinds of activities had to be edited out.
Trying to run Collage entirely on their own would fill in at least another ten to fifteen lines’ worth of space on Mal’s brain page. And there were only so many more lines and paragraphs that could fit. It would be a big commitment—one Mal wasn’t entirely sure they were willing to make.
And then there was the matter of Emerson.
Most people in Mal’s life who were not Maddie, their mom, or their dad existed in their periphery like a same-face NPC from Zelda or an oft-ignored Animal Crossing villager (Pietro, maybe).
But Emerson Pike refused to be relegated to NPC status.
Anytime she showed up in Mal’s life, whether in the school hallways or (like she had all weekend) in Mal’s thoughts, she was much like her writing: incredibly excited but sloppy, needing a lot of editing when it came to commas and word order and, dear god, using fewer exclamation points.
Mal could never decide if they were impressed with Emerson or absolutely terrified of her.
There was a particular courage required to live life as bright as she did.
All their interactions left Mal feeling a little spiky.
Emerson was loud, and wiggly, and always, always going and doing and saying and thinking—and it was too much for Mal to keep up with, because Mal had their hands full keeping up with themself.
So either way, Mal knew Emerson would take up at least a paragraph’s worth of valuable brain-page space simply by virtue of existing.
(She was taking up several lines already, impossible to erase and highlighted in an eye-burning yellow they could neither change nor take their eyes off.)
But Emerson also came with a brain page of her own—and if Mal was going to do this, they needed that space.
They needed what she knew about zines, because they knew nothing, and that frightened them.
More frightening still, they needed her: a truth they were not entirely comfortable with, even as they headed her way.
They crossed to the other side of 12th Street, the unofficial divide between the Covington where Mal lived and the Covington people weren’t afraid to walk around in after dark.
Mal always felt more than a little out of place on this side of things.
Austinburg, the neighborhood where they lived, was loud and a little messy, and everyone knew everyone and shouted hello or fuck off depending on the day and the quality of their relationships.
Here, the streets were quieter and more neatly kept, with nicer cars parallel parked along them and more trees than Mal was used to, fall colors just starting to flirt with the edges of their leaves.
Unlike the old Victorian townhome Mal’s parents owned (a rarity for Austinburg, where many people rented), which needed new gutters and a fresh coat of paint, these houses had been either well kept all along or renovated in varying degrees of historical accuracy.
Many had already started to decorate for fall, their wrought-iron fences lined with bundles of mums in autumnal oranges and cozy golds and their sweeping front steps stacked with pumpkins in fancy shades of blue-green and white.
And the closer Mal got to the river, the nicer the homes got—and the more at ill ease they felt.
The Haus on 3rd Street was very much Not In Their Neighborhood.
That was the third item in this walk’s trifecta of Self-Talk: the Haus itself.
Mal had only been once before, with their mom when their Aunt Tina had come to visit from Lexington.
It felt very much like the sort of place you bring someone from out of town to show them how cool Covington could be (because the Haus was legitimately cool, which Mal could even tell as they’d tried their best to take up as little space as possible while they waited in the coffee line).
But because of that—to Mal, at least—it also felt incredibly out of reach for people like them.
It was also kind of snobby, a darker part of Mal Self-Talked to themself.
Maybe this was the general insecurity they felt whenever they came out this way, but in their mind, the Haus on 3rd Street was where people who wanted to be seen having coffee went, rather than people who wanted to actually have coffee.
The place they went when they had space on their brain page (and in their budget) for coffee as a treat was now half a block ahead: Uncommon Grounds.
The vibes were immaculate: clove-scented with mismatched chairs and artsy decor in shades of rich red and dark brown, a cozy little pocket of fall all year-round.
When Mal passed the shop, its windows festooned with a garland made of orange and yellow leaves, they felt like they were walking past the last bastion of comfort on what was becoming a more and more uncomfortable journey.
And then the thought crept in: Should they even continue?
They could text Emerson that they’d changed their mind—tell her to ask Stella for editorial help; Stella would love that—and go sit by the river for a while.
Their long walk, the chill breeze, and all the gem-toned decorations had them feeling autumnal.
What difference would it make if they turned around now, ducked into Uncommon Grounds, and got a small pumpkin-spiced coffee to take with them?
The idea was so tempting that Mal could almost taste the spicy, bold flavor on their tongue.
And surely they could find another Thing if they looked hard enough.
Maybe they could do soccer. They already did everything with Maddie anyway; what was one more thing?
It wasn’t exactly useful—the word rang in their head in their mom’s voice—but surely a zine wouldn’t be, either. Mal’s steps slowed.
But then their pocket buzzed.
hi!!!! i’m here!!!
meet me in the back room when you get here!
the one that’s like, off to the right, not to the left, past the all-gender bathroom then through the little hall thing!!!!!
you can’t miss it!!!!
Frowning at the screen, Mal sighed. It would be a jerk move to blow Emerson off when she was already there.
And while Emerson bordered on Too Much, Mal was also at least a little curious to see what she was wearing today, whether it was the same bird-print dress that had swished through their thoughts all weekend.
The walk sign changed from a red hand to a white silhouette of a person, directing them to go.
Mal always followed directions—so they went.
The Haus on 3rd Street was indeed a house.