History short answer
English reading (25 pgs at LEAST)
CATCH. UP.
Finals crept up like the frost on the windows, reaching out with tendrils of cold truth, and Mal could no longer deny that they had work to do. While they had managed to keep good grades in the classes that mattered to them (English, Science), they had fallen lower than they had since middle school in the ones that didn’t. With their mom’s focus on their math grade, they were managing a low B, but somehow, in the shuffle of everything else, Mal had gotten at least a hundred years behind in History. No amount of copying Maddie’s assignments would catch them up on all that reading before the looming end-of-semester exams next month.
So on Sunday morning, instead of watching their show, Maddie dutifully gave Mal the abbreviated version of the chapters they needed to read, which Mal was sure contained some colorful and creative embellishments. With her lecture, they were able to fall into the monotony of end-of-chapter questions for the second half of the day.
As they spread out at the living room coffee table, their papers in neat stacks to take up as little space as possible, part of Mal felt comfortable. This—doing what they had always done, what they weresupposedto do—was familiar. It didn’t require much thought—not the kind that mattered, at least. It only took the effort of word choice and careful commas and knowing how to paraphrase from the assignments Maddie lent them.
But in the back of Mal’s mind, a thought needled them: this was Incorrect. Returning to The Plan felt wrong, rough against Mal’s skin. As they went into their fifth hour of homework catch-up efforts, they thought about just howmucheffort it took to maintain this. Of how much of themself they had to turn off just to keep up. Of how, if they stepped outside of the bounds of The Plan even for a little while, it seemed to all fall apart around them, no matter how brief their departure from it.
It contrasted so sharply with Mal’s life withMixxedMedia. Mal had absolutely no worry about how the zine would run without them there. It was a system Mal had helped create, one that worked for the people who worked it. It wasn’t always easy—sometimes it was a little messy—and still Mal had no concerns that it would stay on track for two days withoutthem. Unlike The Plan, which pushed them out the moment they diverged from it, Mal had no worries about how they would fit back intoMixxedMediaon Monday. They knew they would fall back in effortlessly, like a strawberry Pop-Tart into a toaster.
They were a community, and Mal was an integral part of it.
But realizing this made them worry about the question of What Next, so instead they pushed the thought from their mind and filled it instead with facts about the Gilded Age.
When Mal finally got into bed that night, near midnight, it was with the good news that they were caught up enough that they’d at least stave off failure (and their mom’s ire) for another week.
The bad news was that the processing they’d told Emerson they would do hadn’t happened in the slightest.
In the morning, after a fitful night of not-quite-sleep, Mal packed that bad news in their backpack along with their catch-up work and carefully avoided Emerson throughout the day—aside from aHey, I’m okay and I’ll see you at the Haustext sent at lunch, which was met with an enthusiastic, all-capsCAN’T WAITand enough exclamation points that they filled up more than half of Mal’s phone screen.
But when the time finally came for them to head to the Haus, Mal found themself dallying, hanging back at school after the final bell and then taking the long way for no reason at all. They stopped in at the library too, spending extra time running off some mini zine pages so Kodi could show Theodora how they came together. They were still sluggish as they walked the last few blocks from the library to the Haus, thehour between their usual arrival and the start of Emerson’s shift squandered.
Mal frowned, realizing they had probably done this on purpose.
Still, Emerson bloomed to life behind the café counter as soon as Mal walked through the door.
“Mal,” she said sweetly. “It’s so good to see your actual, human face.”
Despite themself, Mal smiled. “It’s good to see yours too,” they said, and they meant it; they hadn’t realized until that exact moment how much they had missed her. They wanted to kiss her, once at the temple for her brain, and once on her cheek for her smile, and once on the lips just because. But Emerson was working, so Mal just stepped up to the counter, their hands in their pockets.
Emerson pulled Mal’s mug from the wall. “The usual?” she asked.
Mal nodded, reached toward their backpack for their wallet.
“Please, no,” Emerson said, waving them off with a grin. “It’s my treat today—for your triumphant return.”
Mal’s lips pressed into a line. They could cover it. But they said, “Sure. Thanks.”
Emerson poured, then pressed the warm mug into Mal’s hand. Mal could tell she let her fingers linger on theirs on purpose. “I’ll see you in”—she checked her watch—“exactly three hours and fifty-two minutes.”
“Yeah,” said Mal. “Okay.”
But it wasn’t, not really. As Mal made their way to the backroom, careful not to slosh their coffee over the sides of their cup, they wanted more time than three hours and probably now fifty-one minutes. There was still so much to figure out—plans to be made, conversations to be rehearsed in their head.
Blessedly, the back room was quiet today—just Stella at the head of the worktable, typing quietly on her laptop, and Alex and James working together on flash cards, though Mal wasn’t sure for what. They went straight for their chair at the editors’ desk, careful to avoid all eye contact, and sat.
The desk was just as they’d left it: barely managed mess on Emerson’s side, spotlessly tidy on Mal’s, a stack of multicolored Post-its in the center. The top read, in Emerson’s handwriting:every time i wanted to kiss you i drew a heart. The stack was at least fifty mismatched Post-its deep, each one bearing a brightly colored heart doodle in her familiar style.
Mal’s lips tugged into a smile.
They opened their backpack, pulling out their laptop and getting ready to work. On what, they weren’t sure—but whatever it was they needed to do to manage the situation withCollage, they knew they needed to do ithere, in their comfy armless chair, with the haphazard stack of coasters on Emerson’s side of the desk making them want to straighten them. Even with an unspeakably difficult afternoon ahead of them, it felt much more comfortable than working at home ever did.
It was the Correct place for Mal Flowers.
