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,Emersonfelt 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 aThingI was into.”
“ExceptCollage,” Emerson said.
“Yeah, exceptCollage,” 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 onethey 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 whatImight want. But thenCollagegot canceled, and it all got… really messed up. And suddenly The Plan was falling apart, and I was afraidIwould fall apart too.”
“Which is why you got on board with startingMixxedMedia.”
“Yes,” Mal said emphatically. “Or—it was, in the beginning. Which is why I wanted it to be just likeCollage—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 itwasall 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 labeledUSin 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. “Ilovewhat we dohere. And—I don’t know if I have everloveddoing something before? Not anything like this. I loveAnimal Crossing, and Simon Snow books, and Skyline cheese coneys, but everything I’ve done, I’ve just… done. But Iwantto do this—to makeMixxedMedia—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, capitalI, andneeded—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 ofMixxedMedia. 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 heroptions, 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 Imatterhere, Emerson. Like I fit. And I’ve never felt like I’ve fitanywhere. 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 asmeand 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 matterbecauseof them. Because they make up thewholeme, 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 Iwasthe person I needed to be, and I waswhereI 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 mattersto 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 toCollage, it’ll all be over. Or that—I don’t know. That it won’t be the same. We found—Ifound—all of this because they pushed us out, Emerson. They said we weren’t important enough to keep going. But we’reso 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 thantheirs.
Allof theirs.
“I think we need to call a meeting,” they said.
Emerson trilled a sweet laugh. “You dolovea 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.”
