Chapter Eighteen A Mixed Bag #2
Things with Maddie continued to be strained, too.
Or, well—things with Maddie continued to be absolutely lovely, because that was who Maddie was.
On Sunday morning, she cursed Mrs. Grimes for being the reason Mal was missing most of the editing day with the MixxedMedia crew, offering to check their work so Mal got the most bang for their buck.
Mal watched as she patiently looked over their horrendous handwriting, doing her best to copy their chicken-scratch style when she erased bits of the wrong processes Mal took to get the correct answer; Mrs. Grimes always took off a point if the steps were wrong, even if the answer wasn’t.
Maddie was, without a doubt, the best sister Mal could have ever asked for.
But as they watched her, they still had an odd feeling in their gut—cold and hard like a stone, and just as heavy.
Though they couldn’t figure out what the feeling was exactly, they suspected at least some of it had to do with the contrast between their own achingly slow pace and the speed with which Maddie whipped through pages. Mal was sure of this: it was Not Good.
But even as Monday dawned to find them miraculously caught up (and mercilessly tired), Mal still didn’t think there were enough hours in the day to get all the things that needed doing done.
Schoolwork intensified at the same rate Mal’s capacity to deal with it diminished, and the holidays were catching up at Dollar City, where Mal spent an achingly long Wednesday night helping the manager set a Christmas planogram.
And the weather was reliably cool now, which meant Maddie’s soccer schedule was in full swing.
And then there was the zine. More than anything else Mal did, working on edits in the back room helped calm all the sudden, busy noise in their mind.
But there was still so much to do. Though the November issue was coming together much more easily now that Mal and Emerson knew what they were doing, the Mini Zine Fest still loomed at the end of the month, full of unknowns and (perhaps even worse) forms to fill out and fees to file for a table at the festival that would play host.
It felt sometimes like other people had more hours in their days, or maybe that their days were longer than the ones Mal got stuck with. Mal compensated for this by simply using more of the ones they did have—by staying up later, waking up earlier.
The following Sunday night found them up later than usual, taking advantage of the Haus being open late for a Queer Soup Night in the large conference room.
From where they stood indecisively in front of the snack shelf, unable to decide between a clementine and some beef jerky, Mal could hear laughter and the jangling acoustic guitar of the Indigo Girls filtering through the hallway.
They did their best to ignore it, to get through the work at hand, but it needled at them, making their skin itch.
“Oh, hey. Once you send Stella’s feedback, we’ll be done with our tasks for tonight,” Emerson said, crossing out the task she’d finished (renaming a batch of Nylan’s photos to correspond with her poems) in her notebook with a green pen.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mal moaned, feeling guilty preemptively. It was like this was another homework assignment they hadn’t done yet, and Emerson was calling them out. “I’ll finish them, I promise.”
“Oh, I know you will.” Emerson waved her hand dismissively. “You always do.”
Mal had been expecting a scolding—they had just gotten one from their mom this morning, checking on Mal’s homework before allowing them to leave for the Haus—and when Emerson didn’t deliver, it gave them pause.
“Thanks,” they said after a beat. They shook their head. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I get… weird when there’s a lot of Things.”
Emerson shot a warm smile at them. “I’ve noticed.” Mal frowned, but Emerson rushed to add, “But it’s cool. I do the same.”
“I just…” The late hour had lifted away the gate Mal usually put between their mouth and all the thoughts that jumbled around in their head. “I don’t know if it’s an ADHD thing or like… a probable autism thing, or what.”
It was something they had never said out loud to anyone else—not even Maddie, who knew all Mal’s secrets.
This felt like a dark one—like without a diagnosis, it wouldn’t count, or like it would be a repeat of sophomore year, when a team of chorus jerks told them they were only nonbinary because TikTok had convinced them they were.
But in truth it was something Mal had been considering for a long time, something they stayed up late researching, measuring themself against.
“I get to be kind of…,” Mal trailed. There were never any words for when they got Like This: like they had so much going on inside of them that their being got shoved out of their body to float somewhere beside it; like making a single choice would fix every single thing piling up around them and also break them into a thousand little pieces; like there was something fundamentally different about them—maybe fundamentally wrong with them—for not being able to handle it all like everyone else could, just powering through, just Doing The Things.
And so, like they sometimes did when they were on their own, Mal expressed it in the easiest way they had: They paced a couple quick steps, opening and closing their hands so their nails bit their palms and then shaking their hands out a few times, fast, until the tension started to slip out of their fingers.
Mal looked at Emerson, leaned back in her managing editor seat, her cat mug of coffee clasped in one hand and the green pen still in the other. They asked, “Do you know what I mean?”
Emerson didn’t miss a beat before replying, “Yeah, I do.”
And then Mal was moving in short, quick steps that carried them to their comfortable chair, collapsing into it so their knees knocked Emerson’s. “I knew you would,” they said, like it was a confession. “I don’t think anyone else would, but I knew you would.”
Emerson smiled, put down her coffee cup, and clicked her pen three times before putting that down too. “Duh,” she said, and nodded like it was simple.
But it wasn’t, not for Mal. They waved their hands in the space between them. “Why, though? How come you get it?”
“Because I’m neurodivergent too, Mal.” Emerson shrugged.
Somehow, Mal had known this, even though it wasn’t something they’d ever talked about before.
They could see parallels in the way the two of them did things, Emerson working not the same as but in perfect parallel to Mal, who brought order to her chaos like notes made tidy in a Google Doc.
And they had figured out a while ago that they didn’t have to explain their thoughts the way they did with other people—their parents, certainly, or their teachers, or even sometimes Maddie. Emerson just got it.
Got them.
Of course she was also neurodivergent. Mal’s shoulders, which they hadn’t realized were tensed up to their ears, relaxed.
“I’m ADHD,” Emerson went on, leaning in close and tapping her fingers on Mal’s knee.
“Like, the H is in bold and sixty-four-point font. I don’t know if I’m autistic, but I wonder sometimes.
I have depression and anxiety too, and I saw on TikTok that sometimes those are a misdiagnosis for it, especially in AFAB folks.
But definitely ADHD—capital, bold, one-hundred-and-twenty-point Comic Sans H. ”
Mal was quiet for a moment, looking at Emerson—at her cheeks, her lips, her forehead, her right ear, and finally her eyes. They held her gaze for a moment, their lips pursed. “Is that why we vibe?”
“Oh, absolutely, yes,” Emerson agreed emphatically.
“I thought it was just because we had crushes on each other,” Mal blurted out.
“Oh, it’s that too,” Emerson said, and smiled, her index finger tracing a circle around Mal’s kneecap. “Or else I’m not sure what I’ve been flirting with you all this time for, honestly.”
This was how they had always wanted to talk about liking someone, plainly and honestly, but knew they shouldn’t because they were supposed to be Coy and Mysterious.
That had been Mal’s problem, ultimately, in all their relationships: with Jess, who eventually dumped Mal for not being able to read her emotions the way she wanted; with Ava, who never really forgave Mal for saying her seventh-grade-formal dress was “definitely green” and not “pretty”; with their first boyfriend in middle school, Ryan, who said they couldn’t keep him guessing, whatever that meant.
With Emerson, they didn’t have to do those things.
Mal grinned. “Yeah, same. I like it. Keep doing it.”
“I’ll make a note of that.” Emerson smiled—a new sort of smile, a soft one, which Mal watched unfurl on her lips.
It was still big, but less toothy. Closed-lipped.
Special. “But yeah. It’s because we like each other, and also because our brains match.
Or maybe don’t match—but are definitely in the same font family.
Like, you’re Georgia and I’m Georgia Bold. ”
A laugh, pure joy and a little awkward, bubbled up from Mal. “That’s my favorite font.”
“You’re my favorite font,” Emerson said, and put her hand on Mal’s cheek.
It lingered there long enough for Mal to say, “I really want to kiss you, Emerson.”
And long enough for Emerson to say, “I really want you to kiss me, Mal.”
And long enough for Mal to scoot forward on their seat, the cushion soft beneath them, and for Emerson to wheel her rolling chair forward, and for Mal to lean in, their hand reaching up to Emerson’s opposite cheek, for them to marvel at how perfect and round it felt in their palm, for Mal to gently press their lips to Emerson’s.
Mal smiled into the kiss. It felt Correct, even though it was not something they’d planned at all.
For the rest of the evening, the zine was forgotten, but Mal remembered the oversweet coffee taste of Emerson their whole walk home.