Chapter Twenty-Nine The Meeting to End All Meetings
“Are you ready for this, Mal?”
Emerson’s voice came from beside them, her chair rolling up close to Mal’s. She dipped her head down low to find Mal’s eyes. Mal smiled and kissed her quickly, stealing a soothing taste of her peppermint lip balm.
The jittery nerves raged in their chest anyway, radiating through their belly, their fingers, the tip of their nose.
It wasn’t bad, not entirely, but it was there: Mal was nervous, anxiety tugging at their edges.
The nerves also felt a little like excitement; Mal always had trouble untangling those two.
“I’m ready,” they said, regardless.
The rest of the MixxedMedia staff had found their way to the Zine Lab on Friday evening, and the whole room was now alive with the sound of their chatter. Mal turned toward the noise and Emerson full-on spun around twice in her rolling chair to join them in looking at the gathered staffers.
Everyone was there: Nylan and Parker, sitting almost as close as Mal and Emerson and splitting a box of green-tea Pocky; James, with Kodi and Alex admiring his new Pride flag socks; Stella, at the far end of the table, looking disinterested as Theodora chatted happily in her direction.
And there was another new face, a person it took Mal a moment to recognize as Jade, who had written for Collage but then dropped along with their funding.
By her warm (if shy) smile and little wave, Mal guessed she was coming back.
Even as the fate of MixxedMedia was up for discussion, the zine staff was growing.
For Mal, that settled it.
“Okay,” they said, to themself but also to Emerson, who Mal gave a resolute nod. “Let’s do this.”
Emerson leaned forward and pressed a quick but firm kiss to Mal’s forehead. She nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Mal stood.
The effect was instant: The room went quiet as soon as Mal headed toward the worktable, all eyes landing on them. Everyone was so attentive that it was almost a silly formality when they said, “Let’s get started, okay?”
Heads nodded all around the table.
“So…,” Mal started, pursing their lips together tight before going on. “We have a bit of a situation.”
“Yeah, we figured,” said Nylan.
“I love you, but you’re terrible at hiding things,” James said.
“It’s that ADHD urge to wear every single thing on your face,” Parker said, and Emerson laughed along with them.
“Come on, Mal,” said Stella. “Tell us what’s up. We’ll take the bad news first.” Theodora nodded in agreement.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Mal said, clearing their throat to try and clear their annoyance at Stella out of their mind. “There’s really not bad news.”
“Rad,” said Alex.
“Spill the beans,” Emerson encouraged, squeezing Mal’s thigh under the table.
“So, I want to preface this by saying I think what we do here at MixxedMedia is important,” Mal said. “For us, yeah, but for the community too. What we have to say resonates with people. So much so that folks are taking note.”
But how did Mal break the news to them? To Nylan and Parker, who were the first to make it into this back room? To Alex, who was the first entirely new member of the staff who hadn’t come from Collage? To Jade, nodding attentively along, the first one of the defected staffers to come back?
This was where Maddie would know exactly what to say, where their mom would chide them because they didn’t. There was a version of Mal who might have chided themself, even.
But instead of worrying, they took a breath and let their best self dive in.
“We’re so good at what we do here that one of Sam’s professors at NKU and her friends have raised some money for us,” they said, then corrected, “For the school. They’ve raised enough to refund Collage starting next semester and to keep it running for a few years after. Like a legacy project in our honor.”
“Stellar,” said Stella, clapping.
A few others joined her in her small celebration—James, who looked pleased, and Jade.
But Nylan frowned delicately, and Kodi looked like she had smelled something foul.
“So—what?” asked Parker, an edge of defensiveness in her voice. “This meeting is to tell us we’re done here? Packing it up and going back to school?”
“That… sucks,” Alex said, his face falling.
“No, no,” Mal rushed to clarify. “Let me—so. Let me explain. The funding is there to restart Collage as an official school project again, and Ms. Merritt is already working on the administrative side to get things together. So that can happen, if that’s what we want to do.
But this meeting is for that: to figure out what we want to do. Together. As a group.”
“Like, to talk about it,” Emerson interjected. “Chat it out. Discuss where we want to go. Also, to eat snacks.” She swiped a stick of Pocky from Nylan.
“And there are options,” Mal added. “The ones I see are: One, we can keep MixxedMedia running, or two, we can close it down for Collage. Or three, I guess, which is that we can do both.” After a beat, they said, with a flap of their hands, “Discuss.”
“Well, I am staying here,” Parker said, first and fervently. “It won’t be the same, after this. I like what we do here.”
“Yeah,” agreed Nylan. “I don’t know if I could go back to the land of prefab layouts and phony prompts. I’m staying here, too.”
“I mean, I feel like I’m staying here by default,” Alex admitted. “I never wrote for Collage.”
“Me either,” said Theodora. “I don’t really like school activities? They feel…” She fluttered her fingers like she was trying to dust them off. “So I think just MixxedMedia for me too.”
“Hear, hear,” said Kodi. “I love our gay-ass zine. I didn’t know we could do this, but now that I do, I don’t want to go back to… not this.”
James made a strange noise, half between a sigh and a groan. “I don’t know,” he said. “VampyreGays says yes, but my college applications say Collage looks a lot more official than what we’re doing here.” He made a face. “Would we be allowed to do both?”
“Fully,” Mal reassured. “All options are on the table right now.”
“Nice,” said James. “Well, then James King will be going back to Collage, but VampyreGays has found his happy offline home here.”
Nylan reached across Parker and gave James a high five.
“This is real cute and kumbaya and all,” said Stella, “but I’m out.”
“Of course you are,” said Parker, and rolled their eyes.
“Oh, come on, not in a bitchy way!” Stella rushed to defend.
“When we first started, we needed Through the Garden to get people buying the zine. Or… I thought we did. But I don’t think MixxedMedia needs that anymore.
Actually, Talia is the odd one out with all your essays and things.
She’ll be better suited for Collage. And honestly, so will I.
It’s been cool seeing the zine grow, but…
I don’t feel like I’ll fit here with where this is going. ”
“You mean because it’s really queer?” Kodi asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes!” Stella said emphatically. “Which is super cool! And I am glad you all have this. But I’m not, and so I’m going to leave you to your space.”
Mal couldn’t tell whether that was kind of Stella or a little selfish. Maybe both; she had always been a bit like that. But it was nice that now, at least, Mal could remember the kind part too. They looked at Emerson, who hadn’t chimed in yet.
“What about you, Emerson?” they asked.
“Wellll…,” Emerson trilled, trailing off. She looked around the room dramatically. “I want to go wherever Mal goes. Which is…?”
Looking back at Mal, she cocked her head and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“So, here’s what I’m thinking,” Mal said, and then started on the one bit of this conversation they had run through beforehand, chatting it out with Maddie late last night on the sofa.
“What we’re doing with MixxedMedia is too good to stop, so we should keep doing that.
But at the same time, the funding for Collage is…
really cool. And we did that because of MixxedMedia.
So for those of us who want to write there, I say we do both. ”
“Sold,” said Emerson, beaming.
“But,” said Mal.
“Oop,” said Parker.
“I don’t think I should be editor in chief both here and there,” Mal said.
“Please don’t quit,” Nylan squeaked immediately.
“I’m not—or not here, at least. And—oh, god, this sounded so much less corny in my head last night when I was practicing what to say, but whatever, I’m just going to say it—I love y’all too much to quit.
You’re kind of my family now.” It was true, ringing like a bell in Mal’s chest—and in their voice, which was strong and sure.
They thought they saw it reflected in the faces of the people gathered around the table, too—Parker and Nylan nodding in tandem, James giving them a soft smile that contrasted with Kodi’s wide, open one.
“What I would like to do is get stuff set up with Collage again over the first month or so, and then, if she’s agreeable, hand the reins over to Stella and work full-time on the zine. ”
All eyes turned to Stella, sitting at the opposite end of the table.
She said, “You’re joking, right?” Stella knew as well as Mal did—had—that Collage was all Mal ever wanted.
But Mal had found what they needed instead.
“I’m not joking,” they said. “I think you’d be great at it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Just like that?”
“Well—mostly? I want to help you get set up, so you don’t have to figure it all out on your own, like I did when I took over,” they said.
Though they would still probably not consider Stella a friend, they were much closer to it than they’d been in years, and Mal wanted to honor that by giving her—and the magazine—the best chance they could.
“But yeah, after we get everything set up together, it’s all yours. ”
Stella shook her head like she wasn’t sure whether to be shocked or to just take the win. “Well. Yeah. Of course. I’m in.”
“Perfect,” Mal said. “Then that’s the plan.”
“Hell yeah,” said Parker.
“Okay, but to be clear,” said Nylan. “Collage will start back up again, and we can write there if we want, but… we also get to keep doing MixxedMedia?”
“Yep!” said Emerson.
“And I want to talk about what that looks like,” Mal said.
It was something they hadn’t planned; they could tell Emerson was looking at them sidelong.
“Since we’re officially unofficial, we can think more about what happens beyond the school year.
We could take the zine through summer, and even into college with us. If we want.”
“That would be rad as hell,” said Parker.
“We could look into doing art covers,” Kodi said. “I’ve been doing screen printing workshops at the Hellmann Center, and I have ideas.”
“Oh,” said James, interest piqued. “And what if we took it online?” He dropped his voice and waggled his eyebrows. “I do have some experience with blogging, you know.”
“That would be so cool,” said Alex. “I’ve been thinking of making a TikTok for us, too, and some micro-documentaries about what we’re doing…”
The meeting went on, and from the head of the table next to Emerson, Mal took a moment to observe: to watch the ideas bloom on people’s faces, to hear the thrill of excitement in their voices as they grew.
And instead of watching from the sidelines, Mal was part of it all.
“Yes, and,” they said, standing up and leaning over the table. “What if—actually, let’s take some notes. Someone really smart and cool and pretty taught me a way to keep track of ideas as we come up with them. You know what we need?”
A burst of bubbling laughter erupted from Emerson, who dove toward her desk drawer.
“Post-it notes!”