Stella Willen.
For most of Monday, Mal had tried to rationalizeforgettingto ask her. With so many folks saying no, Emerson mightassume Stella was another casualty, if she even assumed anything at all.
But by Tuesday, as Mal’s list started to dwindle—and with it, their pool of writers—they had to face a hard truth: TheyneededStella. And not just as a warm body to send them words. Though they would never admit this to her, they neededThrough the Garden of Gems and Dahliasto keep readers coming back to the zine. The story of Talia and Xarrett was as popular as any Wattpad ship among the fic traders of Holmes.
But Mal would have to propose it to Stella carefully. They not only had to make the new and improvedCollagesoundgood(something Mal was still trying to convince themself of), but they also had to make it clear that Mal—and now Emerson—was in charge. They would be walking a fine line. One with too many variables for Mal’s liking.
And so, like they sometimes did when conversations felt especially out of their control, they made notes tracking possible answers for all the ways the conversation might go. Obviously, they wouldn’tusethese notes in the actual conversation, but mapping them out ahead of time helped Mal hold on to their thoughts in the moment.
Squinting down at the page, they added another few bullet points:THINK OF YOUR READERSHIP, followed byTHINK OF YOUR LEGACY.
They started to draw a line from the latter to another thought, but it slipped away as the kitchen door swung open. A gust of chilly air swept in the woody scent of changing leaves—and their dad, with a briefcase in his hand and the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Mal’s eyes flicked to their phone’s lock screen. “This is later than usual,” they said.
“Tell me about it,” their dad said with a little laugh. “We got a shipment of trees in today, and the warehouse is still full from last week’s.”
Mal’s dad was manager at Glen’s, a chain craft store. While most of the time they liked that he worked at a craft store—it meant they got a lot of fun trinkets, like stickers and cool pens, when they went on final clearance for cheap—during this time of year, they hated it. From fall through the New Year, their dad’s life consisted of only Christmas: setting Christmas, stocking Christmas, selling Christmas, clearance Christmas. It left very little time foractualChristmas—and it also meant Mal was left mostly at the mercy of their mom. Now, in early September, they always tried to get in as much time with their dad as they could, filling up on him before he went into Work Hibernation for the cold months. There was never really enough of him to tide them over until spring.
After setting his briefcase by the door and kicking off his Professional But Sensible Dad Loafers, he moved to the fridge. He swung the door open, adding to the strange light of the room. “What’s got you out of bed so late?” he asked. “Homework?”
Mal frowned. It was still early enough in the year that teachers weren’t assigning Heavy Stuff often, just little things they could finish in the morning before the bell or (as was the case for History) copy from Maddie. But they couldn’t tell their dad that, so instead they said, “Kind of?”
Coming in from the kitchen with a plate of Odds AndEnds—what Mal thought of as snacks that didn’t really match; tonight, for their dad, a little chocolate bar, half a PB&J, and a handful of barbecue chips—their dad sunk into the sofa beside them. “How do youkind ofdo homework?”
“Well, it’s for school—or,” they stopped, correcting themself. “Kind of?”
Their dad raised an eyebrow. “That’s a lot ofkind ofs.”
“Well, so.” Mal tucked their pen into the spiral binding of their planner and clicked it a few times as they spoke. When their dad got busy like this, they got to talk to him much less than normal, especially as his off days started to transform into seasonal working days. But even when the quantity of their talk was down, Mal always felt more comfortable with thequalityof their talks. More than with their mom. Their dad, at least, was not critical in the same way their mom was. Mal hadn’t told her about their meeting with Emerson, but maybe they could share this with him. “Collagegot canceled, at school.”
They glanced at their dad, who crunched a chip and said, “Yeah, your mom told me about that. I’m sorry, Mal. I know it was important to you.”
Mal laughed, a strange little sound. “Yeah, it was. But me and this”—Mal paused for the briefest of moments, calculating, then chose the word—“friend of mine, Emerson, we’re going to… take it over.”
“Oh yeah?” their dad asked. Mal could tell he wanted to be invested. They could also tell he was very tired. “That sounds cool, Mal.”
Mal nodded. They borrowed the same phrase they’d used earlier that week, when they’d finally been brave enough to fillMaddie in on their meeting with Emerson. It had been both encouraging and believable enough to get her enthusiastically on board, at least. “It’ll be a little different, but we can make it work.”
Mal still wasn’tentirelysure about this, but they tried to sound like they were.
“You’re going to run the magazine yourself?” he asked, frowning.
“Yeah.” Mal shrugged, then clarified: “Well, me and Emerson. And other kids. Parker’s already in, and Nylan.” They slid their pen out from the binding of their planner and clicked it back on. “I’m working on notes to get Stella on board now.”
Though they knew none of these names meant anything to their dad—except Stella, who was Mal’s last real friend of name-basis note—something they said did. He leaned forward, putting his not-yet-empty plate on the coffee table.
“That sounds like a lot, Mal,” he said, in his Concerned Dad Voice.
Mal shifted where they sat—curled a little harder into a ball, clutched a little harder to their planner. “It will be,” they acknowledged; there was no use denying it. “But I don’t really have another choice.” Their extracurricular investigations had made that much clear. If this didn’t work… Well, there wasn’t space on Mal’s brain page to worry about that now.
But their dad reached out, gripped their knee, gave it a squeeze that was a little too hard. “I just don’t want you to bite off more than you can chew, Mal. I know how you can get.”
How You Can Get was code for Too Much: times when Mal melted down and couldn’t make themself solid again. Whenthey became inconsolable, quick to lash out and slow to calm down. When they felt like they either needed to be alone in complete darkness with no sound or sensation, or else walking at top speed around Covington with both earbuds in and the volume all the way up. Nothing in between would do. Mal often wondered, trapped in the middle of those extremes, whether there was something off about them, somethingwrong. They already had dyslexia and ADHD. What if there was evenmore?
In those moments, Mal was even too much forthemself, which only ever made the meltdowns worse.
The brunt of these meltdowns usually fell on their dad. Normally, Maddie had already tried to intervene, and Mal’s mom, prone to melting down herself, only ever made them worse. It was down to their dad, and to late-night talks over Odds And Ends, to put them back together. This happened less now—that was the beauty and importance of The Plan—but before, it had happened much more frequently. Sometimes Mal had lost whole days, wholeweeks, to How They Could Get.
