And there it was again: Do less. The words crashed into them, taking their appetite away.
“Thanks,” they said. “Noted.” And they left the kitchen with nothing but a store-brand sparkling water, leaving their Odds And Ends abandoned on the counter.
After a stomp up the stairs, they turned not left toward their bedroom door but right, toward Maddie’s. Later, Mal knew she would be going to a bonfire with the soccer team, but now she was just getting ready, holding two flannel shirts at arm’s length.
“Red or purple?” she asked when Mal stomped in.
“Purple,” Mal answered, their voice stiff. At their side, they opened and closed their fists to the beat of the Charlie XCX song that played over Maddie’s phone.
Maddie took a real look at Mal and nodded. “Do you want to talk about it or just be here?”
Mal scrunched their nose. “Just be here?”
“Of course.”
And so Mal flopped onto Maddie’s twin-size bed, shooing away the discarded red flannel and feeling more than a little childish. They got so frustrated with themself sometimes when they got Like This—when the page of their brain started to overflow. They hadn’t even started with a particularly full page today; this morning, and even when the meeting had started, they had been able to keep up with the mess of their mind, editing away the excess. But the zine’s name change and everything that came with it had ruined all that careful work, shifted them into caps lock mode, to alternating text sizes and illegible fonts. No amount of careful self-editing could containthe absolute overwhelm they felt now as they lay with their back against the mattress, staring at the ceiling.
Maybe their mom had been right about them doing too much. But… Maldidn’t want herto be right. It was a small, rebellious thought, a spark they felt just desperate enough to foster. And they knew the only way to move forward was to edit their brain page back down, to shift things, to keep themself within the correct margins.
So, that’s what they did: They drank their sparkling water and wallowed in the Too Muchness of the day, letting it wash over them like the noise of Maddie moving around the room getting ready. The spicy feel of fizzy bubbles in their nose helped bring them back from their spiraling thoughts and into their body. Slowly, they untangled the conflicting streams of words in their brain, changing Wingdings to Comic Sans to Times New Roman.
“Mom thinks I am going to fail atCollage,” Mal finally said, and then amended, “I mean.MixxedMedia.”
“You changed the name, huh? Well, Mom thinks a lot of things that are wrong.” Maddie watched Mal through the mirror as she finished curling her hair. “Doyouthink you’re going to fail?”
“No.” This was Mal’s immediate reaction, tumbling out before they had a chance to edit it. Right away, they felt like they had to amend it. “I mean, maybe? Probably, even. I mean,” they said, echoing their parents’ words, “you know how I can get.”
“If you meanawesome, then yeah, I do. Can you throw me that scrunchie from—?” Maddie pointed over Mal’s shoulder.Mal grabbed the black satin hair tie from the bedside table and tossed it to her. “What do youwantto happen?”
Mal shrugged, sipped their sparkling water, and considered, trying to pin down an answer. They still had concerns about the whole thing—the change, the responsibility of a roomful of staffers looking tothem, not Ms. Merritt, for answers. But strangely, those weren’t the thoughts that bubbled to the surface.
“I think I want to be good at it?”
“Hey, that sounds doable to me.” Maddie gathered her curls into a half-up bun. “Don’t let Mom get in your head. Or if she’s in there, letmeget in there too, and I’ll sayyou can do this, Malover and over until you can’t even hear her.”
Mal scrunched their nose. “It gets weird in there sometimes, Maddie.”
“Well, luckily for you, I don’t mind weird,” Maddie said. “Okay, I have to do my mascara, and I can’t do that without doing the open-mouth thing.”
Mal nodded and went quiet, imagining Maddie in their head chantingyou can do this, Mal—quietly, so it didn’t feel like Too Much. Maybe theycouldbe good atMixxedMedia. It meant they still got to do their Thing, even if it was going to change in ways they thought were wrong. And it meant an opportunity to get back on track for The Plan.
But that wasn’t even the full picture. Putting their empty can on Maddie’s bedside table (“Don’t leave it there, I don’t collect them like you do,” she joked between applications), Mal rolled onto their stomach and reflected.
The part they were most excited about was working with Emerson.
Emerson, who liked colors that were too bright but who used them to such great effect Mal could see themself learning to like them too. Emerson, with her excited text messages and comfortable phone calls and messy Google Docs and a big, bold, underlined need for someone like Mal to organize it all.
Emerson was not like anyone else Mal had ever known. And although they still didn’treallyknow her—two weeks was hardly enough time toknowsomeone—they alreadyfeltlike they did. Mal slotted into place with Emerson like a perfectly placed semicolon linking two independent but closely related clauses.
Mal wasn’t sure about the zine, but they wanted to be sure abouther.
Smiling, Mal leaned onto one hip and slid their hand into their pocket, grabbing their phone.
Hey.
Their text chain with Emerson shone bright on their screen.
We should make a form for people to pitch stories for the first issue.
