CHAPTERONETHE PLAN, IN SHAMBLES
Mal Flowers had not expected their world to end so early on a Monday morning.
“I’m sorry,” they said, clutching tightly to their disposable coffee cup, “what?” Like their voice, Mal’s hands shook. Hot black coffee sloshed out and all over the top of the desk where they sat.
“I truly hate to say it, butCollageis canceled,” Ms. Merritt repeated. “I’m sorry, kiddos.”
The rest of the magazine staffers started to make noise—disappointedoh maaaans and disbelievingwhaaaats and at least onewell, whatever—and Mal was suddenly thankful their coffee spill gave them something to do. It was easier to focus on fixing a mistake than on what was happening around them. Mal went through the motions of cleaning up, mechanically mopping up their mess with a brown paper towel.
Though they looked calm on the outside, Mal felt the inside of their brain rage with the pure chaos of too many audio files playing all at once. It screamed with so many voices—some from the classroom around them, some their own panicked thoughts, at least one inevitableI told you sothat soundedsuspiciously like their mom—that they couldn’t fully process a single one. Here and there, something would break through: Someone was packing up their bag and leaving,Collagewas canceled, Ms. Merritt was launching into an explanation about budget cuts that Mal didn’t want to hear,Collagewas canceled, their fingers were burning from the hot coffee spill,Collagewas canceled.
Mal cleared their throat, trying to dislodge the uncomfortable urge to scream.
“I’m sure you all have questions,” Ms. Merritt said from the front of the classroom. “Anyone? Mal?”
Mal pursed their lips around responses likeWhat the fuck?andHow could you?and that silent scream ofAAAAAAA. What came out of their mouth—almost ten seconds later—was “I need more coffee, I think.”
If anything could get them through this, it was coffee.
They stood up, carefully sliding their round hips out of their desk. With stiff, robotic steps, they walked away from the rest of the magazine staffers (or what was left of them, anyway). As everyone who hadn’t left right after Ms. Merritt’s announcement began launching into questions, Mal marched behind their (now-former)Collagesponsor, through the doorway into her cramped office, and toward the student editor’s desk.
It was purposeless now. Just like Mal.
They had expected to spend the first few weeks of school correcting roll-call pronouns to they/them and reminding teachers it was justMal, notMallory. Instead, the first day of the first week had started with their one and only extracurricular—Holmes High School’s long-running literary magazine,Collage—being canceled. They hadn’t even had time to settle into their official role as editor in chief, a title they had inherited in this very office at the end of last school year.
Even thinking about this ratcheted up the noise of Mal’s mind another two decibels. They tried to quiet it with the routine of making a fresh pot of coffee. They carefully avoided looking at the now-useless editor’s desk, seeking out the ancient coffee maker on the back counter instead. Beside it were all the accompaniments Mal had carefully laid out this morning before the meeting: compostable cups and lids left over from last year, a lone shaker of cinnamon Ms. Merritt had brought in once, powdered creamer and sugar packets from Dollar City that they themself had splurged on. But the carafe in the drip machine was empty, so now their hands went through the motions of making a fresh pot.
For a moment, their thoughts were drowned out by the familiar hiss and sputter as the cycle ran. It was louder than it should have been—or maybe that was just Mal, becauseeverythingfelt loud right now. Thedrip, drip, dripof the coffee maker. The distant sounds of conversation in the classroom. Their breath inside their head, rumbling around with the dull roar of their own thinking, like their internal volume was turned up to eleven.
But Mal knew a fresh cup of coffee could make it better—could makethembetter, with caffeine to sharpen their focus and routine to keep them steady. Before the cycle finished, they removed the carafe and refilled their cup, holding on to it as if doing so would hold them together. The heat of the cupagainst their palms grounded them in their body rather than the conclusions their brain wanted them to leap to.
Still, they couldn’t reconcile the comfort of their cup with the cacophony outside. How were they supposed to give up this office? These four taupe walls, and their fading motivational posters, formed the one place in Holmes High where Mal didn’t feel like Too Much. Tucked away in the dusty, poorly lit corner of Ms. Merritt’s office, they felt safe.
They had beencounting onthis refuge.
Beneath them, in their secondhand Doc Martens, their feet were sluggish. But Mal took a deep breath, letting the rich scent of the coffee grounds fill their lungs, and did what they often had to do when they felt close to melting down: They took a sip of coffee and did what they were Supposed To Do.
They walked back into the classroom—and into the bargaining phase.
“But there has to besomethingwe can do.”
Mal knew most of the literary magazine staffers by their writing—the mistakes they made, their particular quirks—more than they knew them by name, but there were some staffers they’d come to know off the page too (mostly those who’d stuck with the magazine as long and as passionately as Mal had). This plea came from James, who wrote literary fiction and overused semicolons. Mal always liked his work because it featured fat people as complex main characters instead of as the punch line to a joke. When they’d first started editing his work, they had been curious about him and had looked for him in the halls. Like his main characters, James was also fat, as Mal had suspected. There were details in his short storiesthat Mal, who was fat too, was sure someone wouldn’t think to mention unless they’d lived in a larger body—like the uncomfortable experience of narrow restaurant booths or taking up just slightly more than one city-bus seat.
“We can… I don’t know.” James threw his hands up in frustration, sweeping his blond hair out of his eyes with a flick of his head. “Have another bake sale or something.”
“I don’t mind baking extra cupcakes,” volunteered a girl named Nylan. “The pistachio-rose ones were a big hit last year.”
Mal returned to their seat and frowned down at their coffee. The bake sale was their least favorite part of theCollageyear. Although, to be fair, Nylan’s cupcakes (decorated with rosettes piped in baby pink buttercream) were almost as beautiful as her lyrical poetry, which was also often nature-themed. Last year Mal had spent their assigned lunch hour at a table with Nylan, and whileshewas easy to chat with (about cosplay and coffee and the chilly weather that meant fall was on its way), having to talk to so manyotherstudents back-to-back over baked goods meant the annual bake sale was A Lot. Mal had been hoping to get out of it this year since they were now the editor in chief.
Guilt twinged in their stomach. They hadn’t wanted to get out of it in a the-magazine-is-over-so-there-is-no-bake-sale kind of way.
“I’m sorry,” Ms. Merritt said, shaking her head. “The bake sale was really just to cover some of the gap in the school funding, and now that it’s cut, I’m afraid that sort of fundraising won’t make much of a difference.”
“But what if we sell more magazines?” asked Parker.
Mal’s frown deepened. SellingCollageto the students of Holmes was already a challenge. While the students inthisroom adored it, the general population was fairly indifferent. Editing Parker’s short story about a Black girl adventuring in space had been fun (if challenging—made-up planet names were hard to spell-check, especially with dyslexia), but Mal doubted that even another epic, interdimensional odyssey like that could bring in enough readers to saveCollage.
“That’s how it works, right?” Parker went on, oblivious to Mal’s gloomy thoughts. Her hands waved through the air animatedly while she spoke, making her many pastel plastic bracelets rattle on her wrists. “Sell more copies, make more money?”
