Chapter Eight Honk If You’re a Loser
CHAPTER EIGHT HONK IF YOU’RE A LOSER
“Hey, space cadet, wait up!”
Maddie called after Mal, saying quick good-byes to her soccer friends and half jogging up the sidewalk to catch up with them. “What are you in such a hurry for?”
“What? Oh.”
Mal hadn’t realized they were in a hurry.
They had just been walking—and mentally running through the zine To-Do List they’d outlined in their planner earlier.
But now that they drew their attention back to their actual surroundings, they realized they had been absolutely booking it out of Holmes High this Friday afternoon.
“Sorry,” they said, a beat later than they probably should have.
“It’s cool,” Maddie said, catching up with ease. “It’s actually a little chilly today, so a brisk walk sounds nice.”
It was, to be fair, a very nice day for a walk.
It had stayed cool the entire day, with a crisp wind that promised colder weather to come.
Fiery red and golden-orange leaves had started to fall, though some hadn’t fully changed yet, as if they were just giving up after a long summer.
But golden or green, Mal’s secondhand Doc Martens crunched over them all.
They pulled their hands into the sleeves of their sweatshirt—which, for the first time, they wore not aspirationally but because they actually needed it against the bite of the breeze.
The siblings walked home together, little tornadoes of bracken and brown leaves picking up around them.
“I bet you’re just excited for the scrimmage,” Maddie said, keeping up the pace now. The soccer season hadn’t officially started, but Holmes was playing a scrimmage against Newport that evening.
“Oh shit,” Mal hissed.
“What?” Maddie asked.
“I have a zine thing tonight.”
“A zine thing?” Maddie’s face fell—Mal caught it in their periphery.
It matched the fall of her voice, pitching down with disappointment.
But then she pulled her expression back up, fast enough that anyone but Mal might not have even noticed.
“Look at you go, Mal.” She gave Mal a playful shove of their shoulder.
“Getting things done. This is what, the third meeting this week?”
“Fourth, actually.” Mal had met Emerson at the Haus yesterday, too: a brief touch-base to organize all the pitch forms so ideas didn’t get lost. Mal needed to keep everything in order if they were going to pull off this issue by the end of the month—and so they wouldn’t forget other important things, like Maddie’s scrimmage. “I’m really sorry, Maddie.”
“Don’t be,” Maddie hummed. “It sounds like you have a lot to get done.”
Mal nodded. Ms. Merritt had been shouldering more work than Mal had realized. They were learning that there were a dozen tiny choices that needed to be made for any given big choice—and Mal, as editor in chief, felt responsible for making them all.
It was… A Lot.
“I mean, I’ll have Emerson’s help,” Mal added, mostly to calm the spiral of their own worried thoughts.
“Yeah, okay,” their sister said, perching her elbow on Mal’s head as they walked farther into Austinburg. (If she had been anyone but Maddie, Mal would have been annoyed.) “But be careful with her, okay? I got paired up with her for an English assignment last year, and it was a mess.”
Mal frowned. “How so?”
“She had all these really cool ideas for the presentation, but then she got lost in doing those and never actually did the reading.” Maddie shrugged, her elbow bobbing on the crown of Mal’s head. “So I had to do that part of it all on my own.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Emerson I know,” Mal said, frowning.
The Emerson whom Mal knew was a force to be reckoned with—a glittering tornado of ideas and positivity and little wiggles and bright colors.
And true, that sometimes made her messy, but that was where they came in.
With Mal’s careful notes and outlines and lists, the creative fury of Emerson was not tamed but directed.
Made more powerful by their work together.
It was nice, Mal thought, smiling to themself, to know someone whose brain worked so well with theirs.
But anxiety quickly crept in, turning Mal’s stomach.
Did they really know Emerson? It sure felt like they did.
Each e-mail and text and coffee Mal shared with Emerson felt like one with a very old friend, a friend like Mal had never had before.
But in reality… outside of her bad punctuation and nervous-making flash of red hair, they had actually only known her for a handful of days.
The Emerson whom Maddie talked about sounded a lot more like the Emerson Mal had always worried about before they started getting to know her. Mal’s frown deepened.
“Just don’t bite off more than you can chew with her, I guess,” Maddie said. “Anyway, I think you’re doing cool stuff. I’m so relieved you get to keep your magazine.”
“Okay, one, it’s a zine,” Mal corrected, playfully shrugging out from Maddie’s arm. “And two, this is just school stuff, really.”
“This isn’t a school thing,” Maddie said plainly. “That’s the whole deal, right?”
Mal’s frown deepened. “It’s still a school thing. I do it with people from school.”
“You do it with Emerson.” Maddie batted her eyelashes at Mal teasingly.
“Yes.” Mal’s eyes darted away from their sister, their cheeks coloring. “And Nylan, and Parker and James and—”
“Sure, sure.” Maddie cut them off with a laugh and playful smirk. “But hey, when you finish up tonight, come to the scrimmage, okay? I need you. You’re my good-luck charm.”
“Yeah, of course,” Mal promised. How they’d make it was still uncertain—probably by texting their mom for a ride, something Mal tried to avoid at all costs—but they meant it when they added: “Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll be there.”
But for the next few blocks, Mal didn’t feel there. They were somewhere else. About seventeen blocks ahead at the Haus, in fact, worrying and wondering whether Maddie was right—whether Emerson would leave them hanging after all, lost in a flurry of half-finished thoughts on bright Post-its.
About a dozen of said Post-its later, Mal and Emerson had settled on what they would need, and from whom, in order to get the first issue of MixxedMedia printed by the end of the month.
“Quick and painless,” Emerson said, dusting her hands together with overexaggerated motions. “What’s next?”
“I should pack up, probably,” Mal said. “My sister has a soccer scrimmage tonight, and I need to go.”
“Oh, dang it,” Emerson said. “See, I saw this going like: You say, I don’t know, Emerson, what is next? And then I say, Actually, I have this thing, and I then invite you to it.”
Mal went very still. Their heart skipped in their chest, then raced on. “What?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter now,” Emerson said, standing up and making a show of looking disappointed. “Maybe next year.”
Mal couldn’t help it. They smiled and, leaning back in their cozy chair, took the bait.
“I don’t know, Emerson,” they said, adopting the same wistful tone Emerson had used in their imaginary conversation. “What is next?”
“It’s funny you should ask,” Emerson said, brightening immediately.
“Because actually, I have this thing.” She paused for dramatic effect.
“The Pride Center is hosting its last Movies Out-side—get it? Like out of the closet?—before it gets too cold. They put up this big sheet thing on the back of the building and show a queer movie. There’s snacks!
Kettle corn! Candied apples! Community!” She twinkled her fingers in little waves. “You should come with me.”
“With you?” Mal swallowed hard.
“Yeah, of course.” Emerson waved a hand like that was obvious. “And Sam will be there, and about a billion other people too. It’ll be a blast.”
“I wish I could.” They legitimately did—it sounded like a fun, if absolutely overwhelming, time.
Mal had been comfortably out (whatever that meant) for what felt like forever, but they had never really connected with other queer kids; making The Plan work took up so much of their time that they never really had extra left over to try.
There had been one friend, a girl named Brett, whom Mal had suspected was also queer, but then they failed eighth grade and Brett went to a private high school and that connection fell, like so many others, by the wayside.
“But my mom is going to pick me up like”—their eyes flicked to the old clock, a buzzy fuzz of anxiety needling at their chest—“any minute now.”
“But they’re playing But I’m a Cheerleader,” Emerson protested. “It’s a classic.”
“I haven’t seen it,” Mal admitted. “It sounds—”
“What?!” Emerson spoke over them. “Then you have to come!”
“I wish I cou—”
But before Mal could finish their sentence, a blaring car horn sounded through the windows by the desk. Their stomach dropped.
Mal really wished she wouldn’t do that.
“Who the hell is that?” Emerson asked, making a sour face.
“That… would be my mom,” Mal admitted, packing up at hyper speed. If they didn’t move quickly, they knew she would honk again. She always did. “I have to go.” They stood, heading through the door.
“Hey, wait, I’ll walk you out!”
Emerson followed Mal as they stomped back through the Haus, trying not to think about all the eyes watching them as they went.
Among them was Emerson herself, crashing out the front door just in time to hear the blare of a fresh HOOOONK from Mal’s mom and to see the message written on the back window of her minivan: HONK IF YOU LOVE SOCCER.
“Honk, honk!” Emerson called, waving.
Mal’s cheeks burned as red as the handwritten letters. “I am… so sorry.” In that moment, they badly wanted to be the sort of person who would go to a movie with Emerson. But piling into a minivan to go to their sister’s soccer scrimmage was much more their speed. Mal swallowed.
“Don’t be.” Emerson grinned, playfully shooing her hands out at Mal. “Go have fun. I’ll fill you in on the movie later. Really, it’s a travesty you haven’t seen it yet.”