Chapter Twenty-Seven What Comes Next
In the magical way that it always did when Mal was up against something proper-noun Important, time vanished suddenly—and before they knew it, it was nine and Emerson was coming through the Zine Lab door as the last of its staffers—Parker and Nylan, holding hands—filtered out.
“Hey,” she said, giving Mal an uncharacteristically small smile.
They deserved that. The last time they had really spoken, here in this back room, it hadn’t been pleasant.
Mal still didn’t feel pleasant, if they were being honest. Anxiety spun circles behind their rib cage, mixing them all up.
Where had the hour they’d spent practicing this conversation gone?
They wished they were better at time: that it didn’t move for them in unequal ways, that they could fit inside of it right.
And so, instead of greeting Emerson back, Mal said, “Can we talk?”
Emerson came over to the desk, a fresh coffee in her hand despite the late hour, and grimaced. “Oh no. Does this mean you’re breaking up with me?”
“What?!” Mal spat the word like it tasted bitter in their mouth. “No, of course not! I don’t ever want to do that.”
“I don’t ever want to do that either.” Emerson smiled—a real one this time, sweet and soft. But just as quickly as it had shown up, she squelched it. “But that’s not how you made me feel this weekend, Mal. It wasn’t cool.”
“I know, I know.” Mal should have expected this—having to confront feelings first. They wrung their hands in their lap. “I’m sorry I made you feel like I might. I just—I get Like That sometimes.”
But the way Mal said it was Like That, proper noun—the same words their parents always leveled at them. Shame surged through them. They hurt Emerson when they got Like That.
“Everyone can get Like That,” Emerson said. She sat in her rolling chair but didn’t scoot close yet. “I can get Like That. Just—even when you do, can you do me a favor?”
“I can try.” Mal swallowed. They’d always try for Emerson.
“That’s all I can ask, really.” Emerson took one scoot closer.
“I just—I want you to remember that I’m on your team, always.
When you’re Like That, or when you’re like this—” She mimed pulling her own hair and made a quick, high AAAA sound.
“Or when you’re like this—” She flapped her hands and wiggled her hips like she had that first time in the library.
“Or like this—” Going very still, she did her best zoned out impression.
“Or like this—” She mimed switching between typing on a laptop and writing on a piece of paper and reading a book.
“Or like this—” She mimed crying, hard and graceless. “Or like this.”
Emerson reached out and grabbed Mal’s hands, holding them tight in hers like she was trying to press the meaning into them. Mal understood. They just… couldn’t believe it.
“Even when I’m…” They trailed off, their eyes dropping to their hands where Emerson clutched them. “Not Good?”
“Mal.” Emerson waited, not for Mal to look at them, but to make sure Mal was listening. They were. “You are Always Good. All the versions of you.”
Mal smiled at their lap. Their eyes felt wet, and they let them stay like that.
They went quiet, and Emerson followed them there, her thumb gently stroking the round shape of the bone at the bottom of their thumb.
For a while, Mal focused only on that—the feeling of Emerson’s palm, its weight and shape, its minute movement against theirs as she traced the same curve over and over—letting it ground them in the moment.
Mal still didn’t believe her—not all the way—when she said that every version of them was Good.
It felt like too big a thing to accept all at once.
But her words made Mal brave enough to consider something more manageable: that maybe all the versions of them that existed here, in the back room that had become the MixxedMedia Zine Lab, were Good.
That, Mal could believe.
That, Mal did believe.
“Emerson?” Mal finally asked, their voice small and a little shaky. “Have I ever told you about The Plan?”
Emerson shook her head. “I don’t think so, no—not if it’s in caps, like”—she arced a hand through the air like she was underlining the words, before quickly rejoining Mal’s—“The Plan.”
“It is, yeah.” Mal laughed, but it caught in their throat.
They had never spoken about The Plan out loud with anyone—not even Maddie, who knew almost everything about them.
Or had known almost everything. At some point that had changed, but Mal couldn’t quite pinpoint when.
Even now, Mal couldn’t think of a way to explain it to their sister that she might understand.
But if anyone could, Mal knew it was Emerson.
“So I have kind of always had this plan,” Mal said, looking at her then.
“When it comes to where I’m going in life, I mean.
And it’s pretty simple, mostly—The Plan was to make it through high school, get the best grades I could, work on Collage so I have something to put down as an extracurricular on my college applications, and scrape a high enough score on the ACT that I can get into whatever school Maddie does for soccer and then just… go there.
“Like, those were the steps—easy to follow, or easy enough—and then I would get out. I would achieve The Plan. Things would be okay. Easy-peasy.”
“It sounds like… a lot, actually,” Emerson said hesitantly. “Why do you feel like you need to do all that—follow The Plan?”
Mal had never asked themself this, so the question stopped them short. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—why is that The Plan?” Emerson prompted. “Why the grades and Collage and going to college with Maddie?”
Mal shrugged. “I don’t know.” But that wasn’t true—at least not all the way. They tried again. “Because that’s what I had?”
Emerson’s thumb still worked over Mal’s, keeping them from spiraling away. “Can you tell me more about that?”
“I don’t know, it’s just what felt Correct.
Or, well.” No, Emerson felt Correct. Mal backtracked.
“Not Correct—it was just the only option.” That’s what their mom had said: that she wanted Mal to have options.
It was only now that they realized this was the one option she’d created for them.
They tried to justify it: “I’ve never really had my own Things—Maddie did all the Things.
So it made sense to follow her along, I guess. It’s what I’ve always done.”
“You don’t have your own things?” Emerson cocked her head.
“Not really.” Mal felt a little embarrassed saying it, but it was true.
“The stuff I have wanted to do wasn’t always practical?
Like, I really wanted to go to space camp as a kid, but we couldn’t afford that.
And I’ve always really enjoyed crocheting little animals, but there’s only so many of them you can make before you’re out of bed space, and also that’s something I can do alone.
And none of those really count the way Maddie’s things do—for school, I mean.
For life. I never really had a Thing I was into. ”
“Except Collage,” Emerson said.
“Yeah, except Collage,” Mal echoed. “So it became part of The Plan. And if I could do The Plan, I could finally get out of Covington.”
For a couple of breaths, Emerson just looked at Mal, and Mal let her. Finally, she asked, unable to keep a little hurt from creeping into her voice, “Why is leaving Covington part of The Plan?”
“I don’t know.” Mal shrugged. Saying the words now, from this place, to this person, felt wrong; this Covington was one they loved.
But it hadn’t always been their Covington.
“My Covington used to be really small, Emerson. Just school and work and home. And Maddie wanted out, so it was easier to want what she wanted than figure out what I might want. But then Collage got canceled, and it all got… really messed up. And suddenly The Plan was falling apart, and I was afraid I would fall apart too.”
“Which is why you got on board with starting MixxedMedia.”
“Yes,” Mal said emphatically. “Or—it was, in the beginning.
Which is why I wanted it to be just like Collage—so I could still cram it into The Plan.
But then we started actually doing things and…
it was not at all like The Plan. And it was really scary.
And for a while there, I was really scared it was all over.
“But then… I started really loving what we were doing? And this place? And you?”
Emerson’s hand tightened on Mal’s. “You love me?”
“Of course I do,” they said, like it was obvious.
Because to them, it had been—for a long time.
It was always Emerson: at the editors’ desk, waiting for a kiss with a coffee.
In their DMs, spamming them with videos of animals being cozy and cute that she labeled US in caps lock, with too many exclamation points.
Emerson in their margins, always on their mind. She was Good—they, together, were Good.
“I love you too, you goof,” Emerson said and—as if she couldn’t stop herself—wiggled her hips, dipping forward to press a kiss onto Mal’s nose. “I’m glad we’re doing this together.”
“See, that’s it—so am I.” Mal’s face was earnest, their cheeks glowing pink when Emerson stayed close.
“I love what we do here. And—I don’t know if I have ever loved doing something before?
Not anything like this. I love Animal Crossing, and Simon Snow books, and Skyline cheese coneys, but everything I’ve done, I’ve just…
done. But I want to do this—to make MixxedMedia—with you, and with Parker and Nylan and James and—jeez, even with Stella.
“I think what we do is exciting and good and Important, capital I, and needed—not just for us, but for people who might read what we write. And for, I don’t know…
” Mal trailed off, thinking of Fran and the thrill of excitement they felt about teaching her to make ADHD zines of her own.
They thought of James and VampyreGays, and how a new installment would be coming to the next issue of MixxedMedia.
They thought of the two little girls from the Haint History Festival, of their take-home zine kits and what they might have made with them.
Wildly, impossibly, they even thought of their mom—of her options, and how she might have had more of them if she’d had a place like the Zine Lab when she was Mal’s age.
“For people who might need to make stuff like we do—who might want to use their voices, but have never had anyone to show them how.”
Emerson was quiet, her lips a little wobbly and her eyes a little shiny. Mal rushed on, before they lost the route their words were leading them down.
“I feel like I matter here, Emerson. Like I fit. And I’ve never felt like I’ve fit anywhere.
At school, I’m too weird, or too far behind, or too wrong.
At home, I’m too stupid or too fat or too much like me and not enough like Maddie.
Even in Covington, I’ve always felt… not right.
Like I shouldn’t really be here. Like I can’t be here as me and still be all the things I am: fat and queer and nonbinary and—” Mal drew a breath and tried the word.
“Autistic, probably, all at the same time.
“But here, in this back room, at this desk, I can be all those things, and I can matter because of them. Because they make up the whole me, and… it turns out I really like that person?” Mal felt strange saying it out loud.
“When I stopped trying to cram myself into the places I’ve always tried to fit, it was like…
I could finally realize I was the person I needed to be, and I was where I needed to be.
Even if it looked different than where I thought I was supposed to be going.
“I really love it here. In this room, yeah, but also at the festival in Mainstrasse, and walking by the river, and even keeping the stupid ledger sheet for the sales even though that’s math.
I really love being a part of it all. Of something that matters to me.
With people who matter to me. With you.”
“I really love you being a part of all those things.” Emerson’s voice was strange—a tone Mal hadn’t heard her use before. It was a little husky, a little quiet. “Of things with me, especially.”
“And what I am afraid will happen,” Mal went on, the words rushing out of them fast, “is that if we go back to Collage, it’ll all be over.
Or that—I don’t know. That it won’t be the same.
We found—I found—all of this because they pushed us out, Emerson.
They said we weren’t important enough to keep going.
But we’re so important. I don’t want to stop making space for that. ”
Emerson swallowed, then asked the same question Mal had been asking themself all weekend: “So then, what comes next?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Mal admitted. “And I don’t think I can figure it out—not alone.”
Mal looked around the Zine Lab. They could hardly remember what it had looked like anymore, on that first day.
They remembered thinking that it wasn’t anything special.
But now, with Emerson’s toaster and Nylan’s twinkle lights and Kodi’s posters and the stack of manga Parker checked out from the library and then forgot, with the warm smell of coffee and the frost on the window, Mal couldn’t think of the back room as any place other than theirs.
All of theirs.
“I think we need to call a meeting,” they said.
Emerson trilled a sweet laugh. “You do love a meeting.”
Mal nodded, resolute. “And I think we need to let everyone know what’s going on. I wish I hadn’t deleted that e-mail.”
“I had Sam resend it,” Emerson admitted, suddenly sheepish, “and I archived it in the inbox, just in case.”
“That’s very organized of you,” Mal laughed, impressed. “I just—what makes this place so special—what makes what we do so special—is that we do it together. I think whatever comes next, we need to figure it all out together.”
Emerson beamed. “And then whatever it is, we’ll do it together too.”
Mal knew they would.
A cacophony of feelings swarmed their mind, loud and indistinct and not all good. But this feeling—Emerson holding their hand, promising to face down the unknown with them? This feeling was unambiguously Good. They smiled, leaning in.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” they said. “If you don’t mind, I mean.”
“Honestly,” Emerson said, laughter twinkling in her voice, “I’d be upset if you didn—”
The ’t got trapped between her teeth as Mal pressed their lips to hers.