Chapter Seventeen Supply and Demand, Baybee #2
“I think that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves,” Mal said.
“That’s keeping up with our readers,” James replied.
“Yeah, I had at least ten other people say they wanted a copy after I sold out,” Parker said, leaning in.
“And I’m sure we could have used a few more copies here,” Nylan added, looking at Emerson, who nodded. “People seem to have really liked them. I saw a lady buying one the other day when I came in and honestly felt a tiny bit famous?”
“I think it’s a little ambitious,” Mal said, anxiety rising hot in their chest.
“I think it’s supply and demand, baybee,” Emerson said, nudging Mal with her knee. “We’re making cool stuff. People want it.”
“That’s why I wanted to join,” Alex piped up, looking sheepishly around the table.
Even as their brain did everything it could to resist the idea, Mal considered that maybe it was time to pivot again—to take MixxedMedia bigger than their first little run. While most of Mal felt intimidated by the very idea of it, at least part of them also felt excited. They wanted to do this.
But there was a problem.
“I don’t think one hundred and thirty-five bucks is enough to make that many more copies,” they said. “Someone who can math, math for me?”
They looked at Emerson, who raised her hands in front of her. “It’s not me.”
“It could double our print run,” said Nylan. “Which is at least a start?”
“But I think we can go bigger,” Parker said, leaning in even further. “We just need a little extra funding.”
“We used to do fundraisers for Collage every year,” Nylan suggested. “Why not for this?”
“Oh, but that tired old bake sale was always such a mess,” James protested.
“And I bet it would be even harder to hold it somewhere not at school,” Alex said.
“Oh, yeah, fair,” Nylan admitted, frowning. “I don’t particularly want to have to tote a bunch of cupcakes all around town.”
“Plus, it would be a jerk move to try and sell them here when Sai sells baked goods in the café,” Mal added.
Parker sighed. “It was a good idea, at least.”
“It still is,” Emerson agreed, “but we need a new thing. What if we do a mini zine fest?”
“A what?” Mal asked.
“A mini zine fest,” Emerson repeated, waving her hands at them like that cleared it up.
“We could all make our own little zines—there’s this super cool way to fold them so you can get a bunch of pocket-size pages out of one sheet of paper, I can show you, I’ve watched like thirteen YouTube videos on it—and then sell them for like a dollar a piece. ”
“And you said prints were how much a page?” Parker asked, cocking her head.
“Five cents!” Emerson clapped her hands excitedly.
“Oh, damn,” James said. “That’s like—how many zines a dollar?”
“Don’t make me math in this, my moment of triumph!” Emerson squawked.
“Twenty,” Nylan said smoothly. “And at ninety-five cents return on that, that’s… a lot of funds raised.”
“She gets it!” Emerson said, standing from her seat and pointing at Nylan like she’d just won a watch.
But Mal didn’t get it—not really. Their body was flushing hotter, and they could feel the rise of red blotches in their cheeks. “It’ll cost our time, too,” they reminded the group.
Mal’s was already running at a near-loss.
“Time, schmime,” Emerson said dismissively. “We’ll just make more of it!”
Mal shot her A Look, one that was more than a little wounded.
Emerson didn’t understand what that meant, but Mal’s Dollar City shifts did.
They couldn’t just wander in late, like Emerson sometimes did for their Monday and Tuesday shifts at the Haus.
And Mal’s growing stack of late assignments understood too.
The closer they got to the middle of the semester, they only kept compounding, as did their mom’s acute awareness of their existence—and Mal’s failure.
“I have extra time the next couple of weeks,” Parker volunteered. “I’ve been working on some costume things, but I’ll wrap those up soon. I can fully be a zine queen for this.”
“Oooh, I like that,” James said. “Count me in too.”
“What should we make them about?” asked Nylan.
“Literally anything,” Emerson said, like this was an invitation, not an indictment. “I was thinking of making a zine about making zines!”
“That’s so meta,” James cooed, impressed.
“I learned this dice game from one of the girls in my Secrets & Sorcery game earlier this week called Paladin, Wizard, Rogue,” Parker mused. “It could make a cool zine too, and it’s super quick to explain.”
“I like where this is going!” Emerson exclaimed. “And they’re so quick and easy to make, I bet even our esteemed editor in chief can find the time to write one!”
“No.”
Though Mal hadn’t meant for it to, the word came out loud and flat and final. Mal didn’t write. They were the editor for a reason.
“Or not,” James said quietly.
“We’ll work on them,” Emerson said, undeterred. “But I think we could do it. And there’s this cool Halloween-y festival in my neighborhood at the end of the month—we could absolutely get a table there to sell them. It’ll be great!”
Mal doubted this—but Emerson had, as Emerson did, used that Way she had about her.
The whole staff was now ignited with excited chatter about what they might make, texting Kodi and Stella to let them know the new plan and pulling sheets of paper from their notebooks so Emerson could show them the folds she was talking about.
Faster than Mal could say We’ve veered dramatically off course, and this is not at all in The Plan, it was settled: on Thursday, October 31, from five to ten in the evening, MixxedMedia would host what Emerson insisted was their First Annual Mini Zine Fest at something called the Haint History Festival in Mainstrasse Village.
“Sound good, Editor in Chief?” Emerson asked, plopping back into her chair beside Mal, who sat on the very edge of theirs.
It sounded like a lot of things—a bunch of work, new things to learn, another date Mal would have to cram into their planner—but good wasn’t one of them.
“It sounds,” Mal sighed.