Chapter Ten I Guess We Co-Work Now
“Hey, Mal! Do you have a minute?”
What Mal had was a mouthful of overcooked spaghetti.
It was Pasta Day at school, one of the best line lunch days, second only to Square Pizza Day.
Something about the soggy noodles reminded them of the kind their dad made when they were little and he was left to watch them and Maddie while their mom attended night classes for medical coding.
He hadn’t been a very good cook then, but he hadn’t been store manager of Glen’s then, either—only assistant.
It had felt like there was more of him to go around then, without the extra work and with their mom out most evenings.
Mal looked up and said, “Hmmpf?”
Beside them, Maddie giggled, quieting her conversation with her teammate to listen in.
Hovering above them at the round cafeteria table was Parker, her hair in zigzaggy braids with bright pastels plaited in, perfectly matching her heart-print sweater. Parker giggled too. “Finish your bite, it’s okay. I’ll wait.”
Mal’s cheeks flushed red, but they chewed through their bite and then said, “Sorry. What’s up, Parker?”
“Hey, I was wondering—do you and Emerson have, like, office hours or anything?”
“Well.” Mal blinked. “No?”
Parker’s face fell. “Bummer. I’ve been working on my piece for this month, but it’s just not coming out right. I thought we could co-work some, get some good creative energy going.”
“That’s a cool idea,” chimed in Maddie, who was much neater with her spaghetti. “Maybe you could meet up with Mal and Emerson at the Haus?”
Mal cast a side-eye at Maddie, who shrugged and grinned. She did this—pushed them, gently. Sometimes, like when she got them to try pistachio ice cream even though ice cream should not be green, it was nice. Other times, like now, it was annoying. “I’m sorry, but what is co-working?”
“Co-working,” Parker repeated, emphasis on the co, like that explained it all.
“Sorry, my dad uses the term a lot; I forget it’s weird businesspeople speak.
Like, we would hang out and work together.
I think it’s what tech people say when they want to get stuff done but still hang out somewhere cool. ”
“The Haus is cool,” Maddie hinted, picking at her piece of overly dry garlic toast.
“I’m really more into Kawaii Café,” Parker said.
It was one of the newer coffee places in Covington, but from the ad Mal had gotten on their criminally neglected Instagram, they could see how it would fit her vibe, with its pop design and neon lights.
“Their boba game is strong! But if that’s where you work, I can meet you there. What time?”
Mal and Emerson hadn’t nailed down an exact time to work today, since Thursdays were their open afternoons. “Would… four p.m. work for you?”
Mal still wasn’t sure co-working made sense when it came to editing or writing, which both seemed like things best done alone.
But after their work shift last night, Mal and Emerson had FaceTimed each other to work on editing and layout ideas, respectively, and Mal felt like they got a lot more done with Emerson’s periodic humming or fussing over Prince Pringles (she was right, Mal thought; he did kind of hate her, despite her constant doting) than they might have alone.
They had coincidently gotten no homework done, but that was a problem for Later Mal.
“Yeah, sure,” Parker said. “I’ll meet you there!”
And with that, she was off, her pastel-blue skirt swishing around her round hips.
Mal took a deep breath and speared their fork back into their soggy spaghetti.
“That sounds like a fun afternoon, Mal!” Maddie’s voice was chipper. “You’re going to have a whole team soon.”
“I don’t think writers work in teams,” Mal grumbled.
“But you do work a lot, apparently.” She caught Mal’s eye. “How are you holding up?”
“Good,” Mal answered quickly—and, to their surprise, truthfully. “There’s a lot to do. You know, like—” Mal started, and then cut themself off. They didn’t need to info-dump. Maddie swore she never minded, but Mal always felt guilty if they overshared. “Just… zine things.”
Zine Things was as good as capitalized lately. It was often their answer to Maddie’s check-in questions.
“How about with school?” Maddie asked, watching Mal carefully.
“In a very cool and chill way,” she rushed to add when Mal made a face.
She’d been through thick and thin with Mal when it came to school, so she knew better than most how quickly Mal could go from Fine, Really to Not At All Fine, Oh No, What Is Happening.
She redirected. “I just… I know Mom can kind of hound you about stuff, and I want to make sure we’re keeping you up to speed. How are you doing?”
“Me?” Mal’s voice pitched up slightly. “Fine, really.” They waved their hand, nonchalant. “I’m keeping up.”
It wasn’t untrue—by and large, Mal was able to keep up with their homework and the extra time planning the zine.
But it wasn’t entirely true, either. They were already a couple of lessons behind in Algebra II before missing last night’s assignment.
But this wasn’t unusual. It had historic precedent, in fact; part of the reason Mal had been diagnosed with ADHD in the first place was because of how far behind they’d gotten in math during their first go at eighth grade.
“Mom was snooping with me this morning,” Maddie shared, rolling her eyes. “I told her you were great, thank you very much, obviously, but I wanted to make sure you really are.”
Mal shook their head. They hated it when their mom tried to snoop through Maddie. It was less about being snooped on—she also did that directly anyway—and more that it was through Maddie, specifically. It felt unfair to both of them in a way Mal couldn’t quite put into words.
“I am,” they said. “Really.”
From the look in Maddie’s eyes, Mal could tell she didn’t entirely buy it.
“Okay,” she said anyway. “I believe you.” She twirled her soggy spaghetti with gusto. “And I believe in you. You got this.”
Maddie waggled her eyebrows and turned back to chat with her friend. Mal rolled their eyes but hoped she was right anyway.
Mal got to the Haus just before four p.m. and quietly added CO-WORK: Parker to the day’s date on their wall calendar so it would match their planner for the day. They had just settled into their chair when something pink and shiny landed in front of them with a clatter.
“Emerson,” Mal said, blinking up and then back and then up again. “Why the hell do you have a toaster on our desk?”
“It’s my emotional-support toaster, Mal!” she exclaimed, plopping into her chair with enough force to send it wheeling a little bit away. As she scooted closer to Mal again, she added, like it made all the sense in the world, “For my Pop-Tarts.”
“For your…” Mal shook their head and laughed, a vibrant, silly thing that matched Emerson’s energy. “For your Pop-Tarts?”
“Yep.” Emerson nodded solemnly, then thunked a reusable Costco bag onto the desk too.
What Mal wanted to ask was Are we allowed to have snacks here?
Because the café part of the Haus sold pastries—beautiful pastries from the queer bakery in Cincinnati, all fresh berries and flower petals and fiddly little chocolate bits, which Mal had on more than one occasion considered buying even though they really couldn’t afford a twelve-dollar cruffin.
Bringing in outside food felt a little like breaking the rules.
But Mal remembered that when it came to the Haus—and probably to life in general—Emerson made her own rules, so instead she asked, “Emerson, why do you need an entire economy-size box of Pop-Tarts?”
“I don’t need them,” she said, like that was obvious too.
“We need them. We’re staring down a deadline, Mal!
We will need fuel! And strawberry Pop-Tarts are, like, the quintessential easy comfort snack.
And I wanted to bring stuff in now, when I have half a brain to think about it, instead of then, when we’re staying up to a million o’clock, trying to get everything put together at the last minute. ”
“Okay, one, we won’t be doing things last minute because I don’t do things last minute.” Not these sorts of things, at least. Their homework was another story. “But two, that’s pretty smart.”
“I’m pretty smart.” Emerson floofed her big red hair and then winked, which made Mal’s stomach feel fluttery. “Come on, help me plug this in.”
“Right here? On the desk?”
Emerson flicked her hands at Mal in mock frustration. “Unless you have a better plan, Mal!”
As it turned out, they did have a better plan.
It just took a little bit of work. Stifling giggles, Mal and Emerson went out into other parts of the Haus looking for a shelf.
The lending library was their first stop, but all the sturdy wooden shelves were in use.
Then they went to the back garden, but it had rained that morning, so the stack of wooden crates that might have worked were too wet to haul inside.
But they finally found what they were looking for in the actual stockroom—or rather, Emerson did, while Mal stood anxious watch outside, too nervous to go into the employee-only space—a broken shelf which in a past life had been a display space for a pop-up shop, until a tantruming toddler had crashed into it over the weekend.
Once Mal and Emerson dragged it back through the building (trying, and failing, to be quiet the whole way), they found out it was perfectly Economy-Box-of-Pop-Tarts-size.
“It’s like it was meant to be,” Emerson said, awed, and then laughed.
“Divine toddler intervention,” Mal joked back, putting the toaster on the top shelf. It was a little too tall to act as a countertop, but it would do. They dangled the cord down the back of the shelf. “Here,” they said. “Now we can plug it in.”
“The official MixxedMedia Snack Shelf is in order!” Emerson crowed, clearly pleased with their work. “MixxedSnacks!”
Mal was caught mid-laugh by a voice cutting through their shared mirth.