Chapter Twenty Better Edited
Halloween Eve was the first time Mal wished they had worn more layers.
It was in part the late hour, they were sure, as they booked it down Greenup after covering a last-minute closing shift at Dollar City.
Under the glow of porch lights, frost sparkled like little stars on the smiling pumpkins, clinging to spiderwebs both artificial and real.
For the first time all season, Mal’s flannel-button-down-and-medium-thick-cardigan combo was not quite enough to keep them warm on their long walk.
When they made it through the front door of the Haus, they rubbed their cold cheeks with frozen fingers and reached eagerly for the cup of coffee Sam handed them on their way to the back room.
Though it hadn’t been long since they’d last visited—a few days at most—the last few weeks had been so busy that they felt like they’d been long-absent.
Their moments at the Haus had become stolen, snuck in between school dismissal and the minute they knew their mom would miss them at home, where they were still trying to get, and stay, caught up on their schoolwork.
They snuck them in after their Saturday work shifts, spending the two dollars to catch a bus back to their neighborhood in time for Maddie’s games.
It was as close to The Plan as Mal had been all semester, and it was working.
Their mom had started to back off a little, and Maddie’s smile hadn’t felt so genuine since summer.
Whatever she’d needed to think about after their maybe-fight had apparently been enough to right the Flowers siblings’ relationship, at least tentatively.
It just wasn’t really working for Mal. They felt pale, stretched thin.
And while they texted Emerson daily, sent her pictures of particularly pretty fallen leaves or interesting acorns they found on their walks, it was very different than sitting beside her, feeling her skin against their skin or (Mal thought about it more than they should) her lips against their lips.
But it was worth it, they rationalized, so Mal could fully show up for their team on Thursday. They had missed tonight’s Build It Bash for the second issue, which was due out after tomorrow’s Mini Zine Fest at Haint History Festival.
Still, they wanted to check and make sure that the staff had stayed on track in their absence.
As they made their way to the back room, they expected someone to be there, putting last-minute touches on everything—Emerson, surely, or James, who was still on the fence about his vampire-fiction zine. But the room was empty.
Except for the zines.
The worktable was covered from corner to corner with stacks of zines.
Most of the space was taken up with November issues—twice as many as the last run, finished with days to spare.
About a third of the tabletop was reserved for mini zines, some of them printed in color—Parker’s cartoon about Covington’s neighborhood cats, Emerson’s zine about making zines.
There were a few missing—James’s, of course, and Mal’s own, which they had run off earlier in the day and planned to work on tonight, alone in their room.
(They still weren’t entirely sure they were brave enough to bring them to the festival.) But the work was done, and someone—Emerson, they guessed, from the sparkly pink yarn that tied them all together—had even arranged them how Mal liked, in neat bundles of ten, tied together for easy transport.
Mal was struck with a strange feeling—one that made them want to cry, even though they weren’t sad. It mingled in their mind with all the little rebellions of the past two months—the name change, the secret sales, the success that at first seemed impossible—and made the corner of their eyes sting.
As it turned out, they didn’t have to check on their staff, but they were still glad they had. This felt like a special treat all on its own. Mal smiled.
“Oh, good, I didn’t miss you.”
They turned at the sound of the voice, their unsipped cup of coffee sloshing dangerously, to see Sam wiping their hands on the front of their apron.
“I know you’re wrapping up. I’ll be out soon,” Mal said apologetically, before Sam could say anything else. The wet stains on Sam’s apron usually meant dish washing. Mal had spent enough late nights at the Haus to know that dish washing meant closing time.
“Yeah, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” Sam said.
Instantly, Mal braced, their shoulders tensing in anticipation of bad news. Tentatively, they said, “Yeah?”
“Jesus, Mal, you look like I’m a ghost or something. Chill! I just wanted to check in about that article I’m writing. I’m almost done with it, but I was wondering if I could ask you a couple questions so I can include some of your thoughts. Would that be cool?”
Mal blinked. Sam’s MixxedMedia article had completely slipped their mind; they must have forgotten to write it down in their planner. It took them a full breath to process the question.
“That’s… really cool, actually,” they said finally, when they were sure it was. The gentle, fiery feeling of the zines on the table still kindled in their chest. “What questions do you have?”
Sam whipped their phone out from their back pocket, opening what looked like a voice note app. Holding it between them, they asked, “Well, I want to know a little bit about what you’re doing here, with MixxedMedia. Can you tell me about what made you want to start the zine?”
Mal blinked at the red recording circle on Sam’s phone.
“Uh…,” they said, trailing off.
“Don’t worry about sounding perfect,” Sam said encouragingly. “I’ll make sure you sound good when I write it.”
“I just—” Mal shook their head. “I don’t do really great answering on the spot like this?
” They felt a little embarrassed, but it was true; in the pressure of the moment, the words they needed skittered away (like Mal wished they could).
It gave them flashbacks to reading out loud in third grade, to Joseph Green and how he still sometimes laughed remembering how their dyslexia made them pronounce comb as chomb. “I’m sorry.”
“What? No, literally don’t worry.” Sam shook their head, pressed the red button so it turned back to gray and slid their phone back into their pocket. “I should have asked first. I’m sorry. Is there an accommodation that would make it easier for you?”
Mal squinted up their face at the word—it was one their mom always insisted they didn’t need, because they were “high-functioning.” But the sweat beading on the back of their neck begged to differ.
“Is there a way I could get the questions in a doc and answer them for you there?” Mal floated. “I’m… better edited, I guess.”
“Oh, of course.” Sam said, like it wasn’t a problem—and maybe, Mal considered, it didn’t have to be. “I can get them typed up and e-mail them over by tonight. I’m on a tight turnaround, though—do you think you could get them back to me quickly?”
“Let me—” Mal swung their backpack over their shoulder, fished out their planner, and looked at the rest of the week.
Between the Haint History Festival tomorrow, MixxedMedia going on sale the day after, a Saturday shift at Dollar City to finish the Christmas reset, and the mountain of homework waiting for them on Sunday, there wasn’t much space left.
But this felt like too important an opportunity to pass up.
Repurposing one of the lurid green Post-it notes Emerson had slapped into their planner with nothing but a drawing of a smiley heart, Mal wrote in SAM—QUESTIONS—PRIORITY and made space for it on the grid for tomorrow morning, before school.
It would mean waking up early—but that was what coffee was for.
“Yep,” they said, trying to sound sure. “I got you.”
“Cool,” Sam said. “I may submit it to my school’s paper too—would that be cool with you?”
Despite the flutter of anxiety in their stomach, Mal grinned. “Do you think they’d really run a story about our little zine?”
“Um, by the looks of it,” Sam said, grinning and nodding their head in the direction of the worktable over Mal’s shoulder, “there’s nothing little about your zine, Mal. I absolutely do.”
Mal doubted that, but they nodded anyway. “Yeah, sure, of course.”
“Cool, cool, cool,” said Sam. They pointed to Mal’s coffee. “Want me to freshen that up?”
Mal looked down. “Oh. Uh, no, it’s fine. I probably shouldn’t have any more. It’s almost ten o’clock.”
Sam chuckled. “Let me know if you change your mind! And give me your e-mail on the way out, okay?”
“I’ll follow you out now, actually,” they said, looking back at the neat rows of zines one last time. “It looks like the team took care of everything here.”
One bus ride and about thirty minutes later, Mal spread out on the floor of their bedroom, all the clothes that had previously been strewn across it now shoved neatly into a pile in one corner.
Spread out instead was Mal’s mini zine, stacked in different phases like a punk-rock version of the life cycle of a butterfly: caterpillar copies still in need of their center cut; pupa copies that were cut but not folded; butterfly copies in their final forms, little pocket-size pamphlets containing a piece of the way Mal’s mind worked.
Mal frowned down at them all. Even as they pulled another unfolded paper to them, they still weren’t sure if they wanted the mini zines to fly free of this room. The idea of anyone actually seeing them still felt frightening.
There was a sudden knock at the door, and Mal startled. They did quick math in their head about who might be on the other side before finally saying, “You can open it.”
Like they’d calculated, Maddie peeked her head in. She said, “Hey.”
Mal said “Hey” back.
A quick beat passed, Maddie’s eyes dipping down to Mal’s work and Mal using their hands to cover the legible top sheet, before Maddie asked, “Do you want to come flop on my bed and play Animal Crossing with me?”
It didn’t sound bad, Mal had to admit. They had been going since earlier than they should have been, with the promise of another late night and another early morning ahead of them. But finishing their work felt Important. If not for the Mini Zine Festival, then at least for themself.
“I can’t,” they said. “I have to finish this project.” But it was easier, sometimes, to work with Maddie around—with the familiar sound of her existing close by. “If you want you can come flop on mine, though, and gossip with me about your neighbors.”
Maddie was very invested in the goings-on of Scary Town.
“Yeah, okay,” she agreed.
For a while, though, she just hovered in the doorway instead of going back to her room to get her Switch. Enough quiet stretched between them that Mal, finishing a fold with a borrowed bone folder, finally looked up.
“Do you like Animal Crossing, Mal?” Maddie asked.
“I love Animal Crossing, Maddie,” they said, and snorted a laugh that reminded them of Emerson’s.
“What do you love about it?” Maddie leaned a hip on the doorframe.
“I mean, the museum, obviously.” Mal was pretty sure they owed their love of biology to that game.
“And I like the clothes and that I can buy whatever I want without having to worry about it being in my size or costing too much. But mostly I think I like the idea that a bunch of different species of animals can live side by side with a human and they all understand each other and get along.”
The idea had always enchanted them. Most days, Mal felt like they didn’t even understand other humans, let alone anteaters.
“And you like playing with me.” Maddie said this like it was a question, even though Mal couldn’t hear the upturn of a question mark in her voice.
“And I like playing with you, yeah.” Mal had the sudden feeling that this was a pop quiz. “But I play on my own, too.”
The space between them grew quiet again, Mal looking at Maddie and Maddie looking at Mal. They couldn’t shake the feeling that this was some sort of assessment. Eventually, though, it seemed like they must have passed, because Maddie shrugged and said, “Okay. Music up or music down?”
Their sister knew Mal’s work modes: Need More Noise or Need No Noise At All.
“Music up,” Mal confirmed. “It’ll help me focus.”
Maddie nodded. Her eyes strayed to the far wall. “Is that my charger? I’ve been looking for it.”
“Nope,” Mal said. “Yours is still downstairs by the sofa.”
Her face screwed up, thinking for a moment, as she retraced her steps. “You’re right. Okay, I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” Mal said. “Just come in when you do.”
And she did. She stayed until every one of Mal’s zines was folded.