“You know, fair. I can never remember half of those on a good day.” Maddie was being nice. She always made a stellar first impression with her icebreaker answers. “Okay, so, do you want to know what I think you should do?”
“Yes,” Mal burst out, almost before Maddie finished her sentence. This was the whole reason they’d wanted to talk to Maddie. When Mal’s brain got Like This—worked up,overwrought, close to imploding, turning them into a useless and unpleasant pile of goo—they turned to Maddie’s much-calmer brain for advice. Maddie’s mind could take all the tangled-up typos and key-smashes of Mal’s thoughts and smooth them out into words and sentences, intosolutions. They could already feel the shimmering cool of calm relaxing their tight shoulders with the promise of actionable steps.
“I think you should pivot,” Maddie said plainly, like it was that simple.
Mal rolled their eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
“Yeah, okay.” Maddie swatted playfully at Mal’s knee. “This direction is a dead end right now—and, really, Iamsorry, I know you would have kicked ass as editor in chief, Mal—but you candefinitelyfind another direction and just… pivot to that.”
As helpful as she could be, this was also what happened sometimes with Maddie: She gave answers Mal didn’t fully understand. Or, well, that wasn’t true. They understood thewordsshe was saying, the concept. Sure, find something else to do instead ofCollageand do that.
But the disconnect was that, while it might be that simple forMaddie, for Mal it was not.
“I can’t just pivot.” They had a hard enough time following the straight lines they were supposed to, even with The Plan to guide them. Trying to follow whatever shape apivotmade… Mal could feel their body tensing just at the thought.
“Mal,” Maddie said, her voice calm. “You can absolutely pivot. You are a smart and capable badass.”
No, thought Mal, that was Maddie, with her straight A’s and soccer captainship and probable scholarship to Universityof Kentucky in Lexington for one or both of those—the Way Out of Covington that she talked about like it was an incantation that would change them both for the better. Their sister made it all look easy, banging out last-minute papers after practices and still managing to show up at the kitchen table with coffee for late-night sibling study sessions. But Mal often struggled even with simpler things—like remembering to brush their teeth, which Maddie insisted Mal should add to their morning routine. When she explained that for her, this was not something she had to actively think about, just something she did automatically, Mal’s mind was blown. They had to run through their morning routine every day in their head like a checklist. But they were always losing parts of it, erased by their anxious thoughts.
Pivoting sounded similarly mythical to Mal. But Maddie was trying to help, and so they tried—they always tried—to listen.
“What could I even pivotto?” they asked.
“Anything, really,” Maddie said matter-of-factly. “Any club here would be lucky to have you. You get thingsdone.”
That was not all the way true. Mal gotCollagethings done. They had prioritized it in The Plan because it was the thing they were best at. And, to be honest, sometimes they didn’t even think theyweregood atCollage. They hadn’t been good at the writing part, certainly. In fact, they had fallen into an assistant editor role in sophomore year because they weresobad at the writing part that Ms. Merritt had taken pity on them when they asked for it. She said she “recognized potential in Mal’s editorial eye,” whatever that meant.
The truth was,Collagewas just the place in school where Mal felt the most like they fit, or the least like they didn’t.
But Mal couldn’t explain this to Maddie, because Maddie didn’t know about The Plan. While Mal shared everything else with their sister, anytime they got close to sharingthis, their skin suddenly felt like it was on too tight. Telling Maddie about The Plan would mean admitting they needed one. That all those things that came so naturally for Maddie didn’t for them. That Mal’s Way Out of Covington was uncertain at best.
And that there was something so fundamentally Incorrect with Mal that they needed an elaborate system in place to mitigate it.
Walking the thin line of The Plan alone was frightening, but it wasnothingcompared to the horror of having to invite someone else into it. Mal shook their hands out to release the tension, caught themself, and stopped.
Sensing Mal’s impending spiral, Maddie added, “Would it help if we made a plan?”
Mal nodded frantically.
“Perfect,” Maddie said, scooting their lunch tray aside to make space on the table. “Let’s do this.”
And so Mal fished out their planner from their backpack, folding the planner in half at the spiral binding. Mal’s planner was a bit like their brain. It was where they kept anything that really mattered: to-do lists, assignments, scheduled appointments and due dates, notes to themself, practice phrases for tricky situations. Mal’s own brain had the bad habit of kicking those sorts of things out, so their planner held it all back in. Aslong as Mal kept everything—everything—neat and organized inside it, they could stay neat and organized too.
Often, all this organization made their planner feel cumbersome and heavy to carry, but thankfully the full bottom half of today’s page was a blank slate. “Okay.” Mal nodded, still skeptical about the pivot. “What are the options?”
And in the bustle of the cafeteria, the siblings created a plan of attack. When Mal dotted the last bullet point in their list, something close to calm worked through their shoulders, loosening them.
“Better?” Maddie asked.
“Maybe a little,” Mal answered truthfully.
“Yes, good,” Maddie said with a smile. “Okay, what else do you need to get through the rest of the day?”
This was another way Maddie helped Mal: When their brain got all tangled up, she helped them talk it out to unknot it.
“Coffee,” Mal said. Always first on their list.
“You can do that,” Maddie said. “What else?”
