Chapter Twenty-Five Where Things Fit
The plan was to act like nothing had happened.
Mal didn’t feel good about it. Even as they sat in their comfy, armless chair at the editors’ desk, the plan sat with them like a stone on their shoulders, weighing them down.
But they did feel confident about it. The e-mail had been deleted so quickly there was no way for Emerson to notice it—if she had even checked the inbox, which she never did, because that was Mal’s job.
So on Friday, Mal continued, business as usual: They sorted through the articles for the December issue that had started to show up in the zine inbox, they scooted out of the way when Kodi needed a new pad of Post-its from Emerson’s drawer, they said “Yeah, sure” when Nylan offered them a prawn cocktail chip from a bag she’d bought from Jungle Jim’s, and was pleasantly surprised when it was less prawn and more cocktail, like Nylan had promised.
But business was not as usual. Mal knew it. It stiffened their movements, flattened out their smile.
Any curve left in their smile vanished when Emerson finally entered the room.
But Emerson was business as usual too: She said hi to Alex and sipped her cat mug of heavily sugared-and-whipped-creamed coffee and chatted with Theodora while she waited for her Pop-Tarts to toast. She sat in her rolling chair, and her movements were fluid, not stiff, and her laughter at Parker’s joke seemed genuine.
Mal smiled again too. The plan was working. They knew it would.
And so they were surprised when Emerson turned to them and asked, deathly quiet, “When were you going to tell me about the NKU e-mail?”
Mal’s stomach dropped; they imagined it plummeting so hard it left their body, crashing through the wooden floorboards beneath their chair. A chill swept over them, prickling their skin.
“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” Mal said.
It wasn’t the right answer, but it was the truth.
Last night, when Maddie had snuck into Mal’s room and asked what was up, they’d said “Nothing,” and when Ms. Merritt caught them in the hall, all excitement about Collage coming back, they’d said no, and when Sam had smiled and waved at the counter when they’d walked in earlier, they hadn’t said anything at all—not even please, may I have my mug?
Presently, Mal’s coffee was growing cold in a cardboard cup on their coaster.
Mal hadn’t even wanted to talk about it with themself. They’d spent last night listening to chill beats on the loudest volume their blown-out earbuds could produce, humming along to keep their thoughts quiet.
“What do you mean, Mal?” Emerson asked. Her voice was still a quiet whisper—a feat, Mal knew, for her—but now Mal could tell it wasn’t flat, like their mom’s often was when she used it with them.
It was still lilting and round. Emerson was excited.
As if to prove this, her hands started working in her lap—waving happily but subtly so the others couldn’t see.
She reached out, grabbing Mal’s, and fluttered them together with barely contained glee.
“It’s so cool! We did it! We got the magazine back! ”
“I don’t want it,” Mal said, their voice a flat whisper.
“What?!” This exclamation, Emerson couldn’t keep quiet—the word squawked out, and Mal knew other people at the worktable must be looking.
Emerson giggled, then corrected her volume.
“You’re silly, Mal. Come on, pull it up!
Sam said it came through yesterday. I can’t believe I had to hear it from them and not you! ”
Mal shook their head. Emerson kept on whispering.
“They said we’re fully funded again, is that true? And that we can start in the new semester! And that Ms. Merritt will be our advisor again, and—”
“No,” Mal said, their voice low but insistent. “No, we won’t be doing that.”
“Did a new e-mail come through?” Emerson was oblivious. “Let me—”
“I deleted it,” Mal said sternly. “Because it’s not happening.”
“They changed their mind?”
“No. Collage is dead.”
“No, it’s…,” Emerson started, and then stopped, and then really looked at Mal.
Mal wasn’t sure what they looked like in this moment. They didn’t feel entirely tethered to their body, for one. For another, the feelings bubbling below their surface were ones they had not yet untangled, so they had no idea what their face might be doing.
“Oh,” Emerson said at last. “You don’t want to do it.”
“I don’t,” Mal hissed.
Emerson was quiet for a long time—so long that Mal finally looked up at her.
They couldn’t read her face; arranged on it was an expression Mal hadn’t seen on her before.
A part of them wanted to rush over and soothe it, to kiss her forehead until it smoothed out again.
They didn’t like seeing that confusion creasing it. They didn’t like being the cause.
“Why?” she finally asked.
“Because I didn’t fit there,” Mal spat under their breath. In their chest, they could feel heat rising. Maybe it was anger. It rumbled at least a little with embarrassment, coloring their cheeks bright red.
“Don’t be silly, Mal,” Emerson whispered, and her expression shifted to something Mal recognized—something playful, but earnest. “You were that magazine. The rest of us were just—”
“No, I—” they started, then stopped, then redirected. “I didn’t fit there, not really. I had to fit myself into it, make myself fit it. And it’s different here.” With little motions they hoped none of the others could see, they gestured around the space from their lap.
Emerson was quiet for a little while. Mal looked down, but they could still feel her gaze on their cheeks. It made the flush there burn even hotter. Finally, she said, “You don’t want to give up MixxedMedia.”
“Of course I don’t.” Mal made a scoffing, coughing sound that they felt guilty about as soon as it left their mouth. They looked up at Emerson again. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“I have good news for you, then!” Emerson interrupted. Her voice was quiet, but getting louder, squeakier. Her grin kept getting wider and wider, too—like it was growing in proportion to the gloomy feeling suffocating Mal. “You don’t have to.”
Mal raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Of course not!” Emerson seemed relieved Mal was with her. “We can pick up Collage too, but we’ve obviously got to keep going with MixxedMedia, we’ve built too—”
“What, and do both?” Mal’s eyebrow raised differently now. Stiffer. Incredulous.
“Yeah, duh,” said Emerson, like it was that easy.
“No,” Mal hissed in a whisper. “We can’t do both.”
This was an either/or—not a both/and. How could Emerson not see that?
“Of course we can,” Emerson reassured Mal, her voice rising. “We’re getting better and better at—”
“Not everyone can just keep going and going like you do, Emerson,” Mal said, their whisper cutting. “Some of us need to slow down.”
Emerson was quiet for a second, her expression wounded, but she recovered. “Well then, we can just really hit the planning hard over winter break and get everything in order. We could meet here, or we could come to my house, we have a study—”
“Of course you have a study,” Mal rolled their eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Emerson asked, her eyes wide and stunned.
“Just that—that not everyone’s like you, Emerson,” Mal said, increasingly desperate.
“Not everyone has this endless well of—of resources. Of energy and ink and money and people to hold on to all the Things we have. Some of us have to carry our own things, Emerson. And some of our arms are tired. Like, some of us are really close to dropping all of it.”
“Are our parents fighting?” they registered Parker whispering in the background.
“Shhh,” Nylan hushed her.
“Mal.” Emerson’s face contorted. “I don’t want to slow down, I get—last time I—” She shook her head minutely, knowing Mal knew what she meant. “We have a team—”
“We can’t always rely on everyone else, Emerson,” Mal said, cutting off whatever she had to say about the rest of the staff.
Mal realized their voice was raised—to and then slightly beyond its normal volume.
They pushed back their chair and stood. “Some of us have to do shit all on our own. We don’t all live in big fancy houses on Mainstrasse, with money and medicine and—I don’t know—people who give a shit. ”
“Mal, I know—” Emerson started.
“You don’t,” Mal said. “You don’t get it, Emerson. I can’t do both. I can’t make compromises on my priorities. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Emerson pleaded, her voice small. “We can—”
“I can’t, actually,” they said tiredly. “I have to go to my sister’s soccer game.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason Mal wanted to leave so badly. They grabbed their backpack, slung it over their shoulder. When they turned to the room, they saw the rest of the staff staring back at them. Mal’s skin felt hot and cold at once.
“I’ll text you later,” they said, and they knew it wasn’t enough. They could tell Emerson was hurt, they could see it on her face, and they had a horrible, heartbreaking realization that it was all their fault. But they couldn’t stop, either. “Just—not right now.”
“Sure,” said Emerson.
And with that, Mal left, throwing their cardboard cup in the trash on the way out.