Chapter Eighteen A Mixed Bag
The beginning of October was, much like the sacks of Halloween candy Emerson brought into the Zine Lab every few days, a mixed bag.
The weeks that unfolded in the back room had some absolute winners, not unlike Skittles, Snickers, and those weird peanut butter toffees no one but Mal liked.
Editing Emerson’s submission for the November issue, which by popular vote had been given the theme Finding Our Voices, was certainly a Good Candy.
The short story, told through text messages that Mal was almost certain was inspired by their text messages, finally helped Mal understand that sometimes commas in weird places were, as Emerson insisted, an artistic choice and not just a grammatical error.
It was hard not to see this in the gushing texts the story’s main narrator, Emmy, sent the love interest, Max.
Though Mal did note that Max felt like a really generic name for a nonbinary love interest, complete with a tongue-sticky-out-y emoji in the comment margin, the story opened their eyes to seeing punctuation in a light they hadn’t before: as a choice in self-expression.
It didn’t make them stop tightening their jaw whenever they felt the urge to correct something, but it did make them consider voice more before they marked things, which came in handy later in the week when they edited Kodi’s first ever personal essay about tomboy style and finding masc-presenting community.
Mal had liked that piece so much that, the next time she’d come into the Haus, they’d asked Kodi about good places to thrift clothes.
Kodi was midsize, and though Mal knew they’d have more difficulty finding things in their larger size, it was nice to hear from another plus-size masc-leaning person where the good places around town were.
But the best candy of all was that the back room of the Haus—which Emerson had officially christened the MixxedMedia Zine Lab, with a very glittery poster she’d plastered on the wall by the snack station—had also become a place for more than just work.
It was no longer only Mal and Emerson sneaking in time to hang out.
James and Alex did the same, reading quietly together at the big worktable.
Even Stella dropped by periodically, though she was always there, she insisted, for something else happening in the other rooms of the Haus.
Still, she seemed to linger in the lab long enough to catch up on chat and goings-on and (to Mal’s astonishment) to compliment the changing space.
Sam ducked in now and then to say hello too, and on one occasion they came by to ask Mal if they were okay with them writing an article about the Zine Lab for school.
Mal’s chest had swelled with a warmth at someone outside the MixxedMedia staff recognizing the space as a lab, no longer just a back room.
Flattered (and more than a little flabbergasted), Mal had said, “Yeah, sure.”
One Tuesday night felt especially sweet—a Baby Ruth of an evening.
Finished with their work for the night, Mal joined Nylan and Parker at the worktable to finish their coffee while the two of them played a board game about building flowers.
As Parker laid down three cards to form a beautiful pink lotus blossom, she said to Mal, very casually, “Mal, how did you know you were nonbinary?”
“Uh,” said Mal.
“Should I go?” asked Nylan, pointing toward the hallway door.
“No, stay,” Parker rushed. “You’re kind of my person, Nylan, I want you here too.” She looked between Mal and Nylan and drew another card. “I guess I’ve just been having some, like. Gender feels. And I was wondering if I could ask you about them, Mal.”
“Yeah, sure.” Mal blinked. No one had ever asked them about this—even when they’d first figured it out themself.
“I guess I just always knew?” they floated.
“It was a feeling I had, in my gut, that I was beyond the boundaries of the girl I was supposed to be. Something different. And then when I found the word ‘nonbinary,’ it all kind of suddenly made sense. Like, ‘Oh, duh. I’ve always been this.’ And then there was the word for it. ”
“Hmm,” hummed Parker.
“Does that… help?” asked Mal.
“Yeah, sort of.” Parker chewed her lip as Nylan played half a crocus’s worth of cards. She watched Nylan carefully. “I still feel kind of like a girl. And also… like something else too. Something bigger than that word.”
Nylan nodded encouragingly. Parker flicked the corner of her cards.
“You can be both,” Mal said. “Nonbinary girls are a thing.”
“Isn’t that, like, cheating?” Parker asked.
“You can’t cheat with gender,” Mal replied, smiling. “It’s kind of—” In a way that felt very like something Emerson might do, Mal wiggled their fingers and waved their hands around, as if to say a big wiggly soup we’re all floating around in.
“Fluid?” Nylan suggested.
“Sure,” said Mal.
“I guess I’ve just…” Parker flicked the corners of her cards faster. “I’ve been thinking about trying out she/they pronouns? But it feels like a huge step, and I worry I don’t look they enough. Just—”
She waved down at her outfit: a ruffly yellow skirt and an oversize sweater in bright pink and vivid blue, with a stark-white Peter Pan collar sticking out from its neckline. Her space buns glittered with a handful of sparkly hair clips shaped like cute animals.
“Okay, I really understand that feeling,” Mal said.
“I had a full-on crisis freshman year when I was figuring everything out because I didn’t look like the nonbinary people I followed on Instagram.
I’m fat, and I don’t dress super androgynously, and I have, like, really big boobs.
” Parker snorted, and Mal smiled. “But nonbinary doesn’t look like any one thing.
Or maybe it looks like everything, because we’re all different. ”
“Are you sure?” Parker still seemed skeptical.
“I mean—no,” Mal admitted. They laughed, but it was gentle. “But also yeah. We’re all just figuring it out, I think.”
“And I think you don’t have to change pronouns everywhere all at once, if that doesn’t feel comfy?” Nylan gave Mal a tentative look. Mal nodded. “We could try them here, in the Zine Lab, if you want?”
Parked nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good.” They played two cards, then placed a wooden token on the flower it created. “Thank you for listening, friends.”
“Literally my favorite thing to do,” said Nylan, putting down the last cards in her hand. “That, and beating you at Lotus.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Parker hummed. “You seem to love beating me at Wingspan just as much.”
“And Mario Kart!” Nylan beamed.
“And if you ever want to talk to me more about gender stuff, Parker,” Mal added, suddenly feeling a bit like they were the one who should be asking whether they should leave. “Please do?”
“Yeah, of course,” said Parker.
And Mal felt good knowing they would.
But the thing about mixed bags was that there were always the duds: the Dots, the yellow Starbursts, the suspicious, halfway-unwrapped Twix at the bottom of the bag. And in the first weeks of October, Mal had plenty of Bad Candy, too.
Report cards had gone out at some point—something Mal would usually track in their planner, but there was so much other stuff, so many of Emerson’s stuck-in Post-it notes and all-caps reminders about Maddie’s soccer schedule, that they had forgotten to add it in—and exposed Mal’s less-than-stellar-math rebound.
Despite protesting to their mom than they weren’t failing anymore, that there was enough in-class work that they could probably pull a low B by the end of the semester, they had still been told in no uncertain terms that all non-school activities (minus Maddie’s soccer games) were off-limits until Mal’s teacher confirmed they were caught up on their homework.
Mal struck a tearful bargain with Mrs. Grimes after school on Friday: They’d get it all done this weekend if she would allow them to do only the odd-numbered problems. When she’d agreed, Mal had sent Emerson a photo of their math textbook, their middle finger extended in front of it.
While Emerson sent back a punk-rocker emoji, a middle-finger emoji, and a crying emoji, Mal turned to walk not toward the Haus but home with Maddie, who chatted gleefully about the revenge the soccer team planned to take later that month for having to play a game on Halloween: dressing up like zombies before they took the field.
Much to their manager’s upset, Mal called out of work (something they never did without a plan) and spent all of Saturday bent over the kitchen table, absolutely miserable among all the makeup math problems that swam before their eyes.
In their planner, they made a chart to keep track of each chapter they worked through.
Once, checking off those numbers might have felt satisfying, but every time Mal ticked off another, it felt hollow.
Instead of working on logarithms for a second chapter straight—something that mattered only to Mrs. Grimes and their mom—they wanted to be working through edits with Emerson, with the whole staff and all the Haus a little too loud in the background.
They only got a break around noon, for Maddie’s soccer game, and they paid for it by staying up well past three to finish the five assignments they’d promised themself they’d get through before sleeping.
In the strange in-between moments right before Mal finally fell asleep, they had the fleeting, delirious thought that if they did make a mini zine, it would be about how much they hated math. But they forgot it by morning.