Chapter Thirty Bigger
The Collage office was different than they remembered.
Stella would be on her way to the room soon.
They had agreed to meet after school—and after she had time to grab coffee from The Post, which Mal had never been to.
It was on the other side of Covington, in Stella’s neighborhood, so Mal knew they had a good ten minutes before she got back and they had to give her the Collage editor-in-chief rundown.
For now, Mal was alone with the office.
Leaning a hip on the battered old desk, they remembered what this room had once meant to them: something to do, a place to do it, a way out, and a future ahead of them.
But as Mal looked around now, they couldn’t conjure up those feelings anymore. The desk was only a desk: cheaply made, shoddily put together, an afterthought. Mal trailed their fingers over its surface. The plastic wood veneer felt thin beneath them.
Since they were alone and there was no one there to see them do it, Mal sat down.
The old Formica chair was all metal legs and metal arms with wooden armrests.
Ms. Merritt had brought it in as a special treat for Mal last year, when they’d taken over as student editor: one of the nice chairs from the classroom, which was mostly filled with chipped armless chairs with tennis balls on their feet.
The arms of the chair were much too narrow, so Mal needed to slide into it—and they squeezed Mal’s hips uncomfortably even when they settled.
And the back left leg had always been a good half inch shorter than the rest. Last time they’d used it, Mal had needed to duct tape a wad of cardboard beneath it to even it out.
Now, from a semester of living under a stack of boxes, the wad had compressed. Mal wobbled, frowning.
Maybe they could have done good work here this year. They had last year—or at least, they’d done what they were meant to do. There was a time when that was all Mal had expected for themself.
But they saw now that the chair had never really fit.
It had always left them sitting the way they were now, with its arms digging into their hips, needing something bigger, something that fit them better.
And even when the duct-taped leg was at its best, Mal had always worried about the wiggling, about whether it would bother Ms. Merritt.
And the plastic coating on the desktop had always made their insides feel itchy if they touched it too long.
Before, Mal had thought that this was just how it was.
But now they had an armless chair, one that was comfortable and sat them at just the right height for the overly grand desk where they worked.
When they wiggled, it was because they wanted to, and no one minded.
Emerson had found their chair, and Emerson had made the Zine Lab a Wiggle-Full Zone.
But it had been Mal who sat and wiggled and worked.
Who helped build the back room and welcome new people in and fold pages and field e-mails.
Mal had done a lot over the last season. They had always loved fall because it was a time of slowing down, of coffee and coziness and color—but for them, this fall had been a season of growth.
They were bigger than this room now.
And it didn’t feel shameful or frightening: It felt good. Exciting. Like something to be proud of.
Mal smiled at the white cement block wall. This wasn’t their place anymore.
“Sorry I’m late. The traffic out of Latonia was a nightmare.” Stella’s voice rang in their ears, making Mal jump. “You like plain black coffee, right?”
Mal blinked up at Stella, who held out a cup of coffee, the cardboard collar around it embossed with a shiny foil eagle. The tendril of steam drifting up from its plastic lid filled the cramped office with the delicious, earthy scent of a fresh brew.
“I didn’t ask for coffee,” Mal said, looking up at Stella.
“And yet I got one for you,” Stella said, rolling her eyes. “It’s almost like that’s something friends do for each other, Mal.”
Mal blinked in surprise. Is that what Stella was—a friend?
They might not have thought so, especially with Stella leaving MixxedMedia.
Back at the Haus, the rest of the team was getting together all the tools and materials they’d need for the first-ever Layout Party without her, which felt like a decided break in…
whatever sort of relationship it was that they had.
Mal wasn’t sure they wanted to be her friend; even after all this time, Stella’s rapid departure from their life still sometimes stung.
But… maybe they could be one day, if Mal wanted. They took the coffee and smiled.
“Thanks, Stella,” Mal said, and meant it. “That’s really nice of you.”
“It’s a single-origin pour-over,” Stella said. She grabbed Ms. Merritt’s chair from her desk and wheeled it over, sitting beside Mal. “None of the drip stuff like at the Haus. You’ll see the difference.”
Mal took a sip. They had to admit, it was good. But it wasn’t theirs the way the Haus was.
“Well,” Stella said. “What have you got for me?”
Mal nodded. “I’ve made a list. Let’s get to work.”
“Okay, I have to admit—I’m kind of into this excuse for bonus baking.”
Maddie grinned at Mal from the other side of the kitchen table.
The two siblings were stationed together, along with a small army of cooled sugar cookies and an array of icings dyed in seasonal fall shades.
(The colors were at Mal’s insistence. They knew all too well that this was perhaps their last chance to use them before red and green took over for Christmas.)
Mal squeezed their plastic icing bag, outlining a yellow leaf on a round cookie. With much greater precision and accuracy, Maddie piped an outline of a zine on hers.
Though both the Flowers siblings were exhausted, the mood in the kitchen was light—much lighter than it had been earlier in the day while their mom rushed around preparing Thanksgiving dinner.
Mal hadn’t known there was a wrong way to stir the green bean casserole mix, but they found out today that there was.
Even Maddie got an earful when she discovered that their dad had purchased whole-berry, not jellied, cranberry sauce, and had been sent on a mission to the Kroger down the street to right the wrong.
It had been A Day, proper noun. But with their mom now exhausted and upstairs watching TV in her room, their dad out for a midnight Black Friday blowout at Glen’s, and the community cats sleeping somewhere snug and sound, Mal hoped, with their bellies full of the turkey they’d sneaked out to them, the night was as sweet as the icing Mal licked off their finger.
“Thanks for volunteering to help,” Mal told their sister. MixxedMedia was holding a Friendsgiving dinner tomorrow and, like she always had with Collage bake sales, Maddie had signed up for baking duty. “Sorry it’s so last-minute. Nylan texted to remind me, and I—”
“It’s cool, Mal.” Maddie waved an icing-covered hand at them, then went back to carefully lettering MixxedMedia onto her cookie. “I’m happy to support you, really.”
Mal believed her. In the weeks since their talk about college, things had changed between them—subtly, but enough that Mal could feel the shift. It felt comfortable, like they both had more space to be themselves, together. The same Flowers siblings they had always been but better.
Giving up on making their leaf cookie pretty (it would taste good regardless), Mal was quiet for a moment, considering something.
“Hey,” they said, looking up at Maddie as they selected a pumpkin-shaped cookie to decorate next.
“Hey,” said Maddie, pausing her work to look back at them.
“Do you want to come tomorrow?” Mal asked.
“To work?” Maddie shook her head and teased, “Black Friday at Dollar City isn’t really my thing, Mal.”
“No,” Mal said, laughing. “To the Haus. For Friendsgiving.”
Maddie went still, her hand hovering over her cookie so her icing bag dripped an orange blotch onto the otherwise-pristine zine rendering. After a moment, she asked, “But isn’t that a zine thing?”
“Yeah.” It was, at its core, a get-together organized by Nylan and Parker, who had insisted their next working meeting also be a celebration.
Mal had been considering who, if anyone, they would like to invite.
Their mom had been out from the start—they couldn’t imagine her in the back room of the Haus, didn’t want to share it with her even if they could—and their dad, they knew, would be too busy.
The idea of inviting Maddie had made them nervous but in the way that Mal often couldn’t discern from excitement.
“But it’s also for family and friends, and you’re both my family and my friend. So. I would like it if you came.”
“Yeah,” said Maddie, looking down at her cookie. Instead of frowning at her mistake, she grinned and used a paper towel to wipe the blotted bit off. “Yeah, I would like that too.”
Mal smiled. “I get off work at noon, and we can go after.”
It turned out that feeling had been excitement all along. It bloomed now in Mal’s chest, warm and welcome.
“Well, we better finish these cookies, then,” Maddie said.
And the Flowers siblings worked into the night together.
“MAL!”
Of course it was Emerson’s voice they heard first: loud and with the L held a little long, as if Mal was an exclamation point themself. They smiled, tucking into the back room and dodging around Parker and Nylan, who were hanging a framed copy of their first issue over the door.
“Hello, my person,” Emerson greeted them. It was the word they settled on instead of partner—something they felt included both that word and the So Much More of them—and she still did a hip-wiggling happy dance every time she used it. “What did you bring?”
“Hi, my person,” Mal said back, feeling the thrill of Correctness in their chest. “And sugar cookies.” They held out a Tupperware toward her, but Emerson ignored it, much too busy snaking her arm around their side and wiggling as close to them as she could.
“Maddie helped. I bet you’ll never be able to tell which ones she decorated and which ones I did. ”
“Oh, I will,” Emerson said, “because yours will be perfect.”
Mal snorted a laugh.
“I brought some derby pie too,” said Maddie, who came into the room after Mal, a sheepish smile on her face. “Where can I put it down?”
“Oh, Maddie!” James said, coming over and taking Mal’s cookies. “Here, we have a table set up by the coffee maker, I’ll show you.”
“You good?” Mal asked their sister under their breath, checking in.
“Totally,” said Maddie with a grin, as she followed James further into the bustling room.
Everyone was there: the writers, of course, but also their friends and at least one other sibling (Alex’s—a sister named Vanessa).
It seemed like they were all happy to spend their Black Friday here in the back room rather than shopping (or, in Theodora’s case, in addition to shopping).
Emerson had insisted they would be, but Mal suspected her real reason for insisting on this date was because she wanted to try everyone’s leftovers.
And with the mishmash of wonderful aromas now floating through the Zine Lab, Mal couldn’t say they blamed her.
“I still think we should turn this into a holiday decorating party,” Emerson said, smiling beside Mal in the editors’ corner.
Despite the cold outside—it felt not like fall but like winter, and Mal was almost certain they’d seen a couple of snow flurries on the long walk here with Maddie—the Zine Lab felt warm, smelling of cinnamon from Nylan’s apple crisp and sage from Kodi’s mom’s corn bread dressing.
Mal sank into their editor’s chair and surveyed the room, Emerson doing the same beside them.
“Nah,” they said, watching as everyone milled around, chatting happily as they filled their plates with food. “Let me have one last day of fall.”
“Fine, you fun-sucker,” Emerson huffed like she was mad, but she rolled over until her thighs were touching Mal’s anyway.
“This is really nice,” Mal said, resting their hand on her sparkly skirt.
“I mean, I do have killer legs,” Emerson said.
Mal laughed. “I mean this—all of this. I’m glad we’re doing it.”
“I’m glad you’re doing it,” Emerson said, doing a happy little wiggle beside them.
And surrounded by a room full of friends, Mal was too.
But they weren’t only here for friendship and a feast—they had things to do, too. And so Mal almost felt bad—almost—when they stood, clapped their hands once, and said, “Okay, team, let’s get to work.”
But instead of groaning, everyone gathered around the worktable, some with plates of cookies, or leftover sandwiches, or cups of Parker’s party punch (Sprite and rainbow sherbert and swirls of edible glitter, “for that extra queer flavor”).
They looked as excited as Mal felt when they asked, “So, what do we want our January theme to be?”
“Holidays, obviously,” said Emerson, before anyone else got a chance to talk.
Parker laughed. “You had your chance last month, Emerson!”
“And y’all didn’t take it,” she lamented.
“But it’s the January issue,” Kodi added helpfully. “So it should be something New Year–themed, right?”
“I guess that’s a holiday,” Emerson said, perking up.
“We could do ‘Resolutions,’ ” Alex proposed. “And explore what that means or what we’re wanting to do for the new year.”
“Those can get so preachy so fast,” said Kodi. “But I like the idea of looking forward.”
“What about ‘Reflections’?” James suggested.
“I thought we had a ‘Something Our Something’ theme?” asked Theodora.
“Yeah, but I have a great idea for a Doriel short with mirrors,” he said.
“I don’t know if looking forward hits right anyway,” said Nylan. “That’s our whole brand, right? We’re pretty forward-thinking in what we do.”
“Yeah, what if we do something more about where we want to go?” posed Parker. “Now that we’re all MixxedMedia all the time. Like… Conjuring Our Creations.”
“That sounds a little Halloween-y,” said Kodi. “But yeah, we need something epic to let people know we’re here to stay.”
“That we’re a family,” Emerson said. She blew a raspberry at Mal before dipping down to press a cheeky kiss to their sweater-clad shoulder.
Mal grinned as the conversation progressed, and then raised their own hand. With the other, they gave Emerson’s thigh a gentle squeeze. It was warm and present and just right beneath their palm.
They said, “I was thinking we could try ‘Cultivating Our Community.’ ”
And around them, the room filled with the joyful noise of making things together.