Emerson had indeed started to move in. On the wall over the desk, she had hung three bright, rainbow-colored paper pennant garlands, artfully pinned so they stretched across the two windows. There were also posters of some adventure game hung on the adjacent wall, with people in armor and flowing robes swinging swords or battle-axes. The surface of the desk, once bare except for a few tile coasters, now sported a trio of mugs full of writing implements: a couple mismatched pencils in one, a handful of Bic pens that looked like they may have been borrowed from the stock room in another, a collection of colorful fine-line markers in another still. There was also a very gaudy frame, about A4 size, in one corner, set into which was a photo of a very fat, very orange,verygrouchy-looking cat wearing a party hat.
“Who’s that?” Mal asked, before they could really absorb the rest.
“My cat, Prince Pringles,” Emerson answered, grabbing the photo and handing it to Mal so they could get a closer look. “He’s kind of the worst, and honestly I don’t think he likes me very much, but I love him enough to make up for it. That’s his birthday party this past June. He turned five.”
“The hat’s a nice touch,” Mal said, smiling down at the glittery 5 at the hat’s center.
“Pringy didn’t think so, but what can you do?” Emerson shrugged. She took back the photo and tenderly arranged the frame in its spot of honor on the right corner of the desk—which Mal realized then had becomeherside. “Do you have any cats?”
“Not…,” Mal considered, then finally finished, “… really.”
Emerson giggled at their obvious hesitation. The sound was so nice that Mal wanted to make her do it again, so they went on.
“I have a bunch of neighborhood cats. They’re not mine, just strays, but I feed them”—they always dedicated a small portion of their budget to cat food from Dollar City—“so they’rekind ofmine, even if they don’t know it.”
“Sometimes our children are so ungrateful.” Emerson smiled at Mal, then fingered the gilded edge of the frame lovingly.
“But hey—can we do this?” Mal asked.
“Talk about cats?” Emerson shrugged. “I mean, yeah, sure, I don’t mind pushing editor duties off for another day.”
“One, no,” said Mal, shaking their head. “We have to dig into the inbox today. James said he sent a first draft of his story he wants eyes on. But two, no, I mean—can we even decorate like this?”
“You don’t like my style, Mal?” Emerson batted her eyelashes at Mal playfully.
“I mean—” Mal stammered, thrown off by the gesture. This made Emerson giggle again, which transformed Mal’sflustered feeling into something more pressing. “It’s really colorful, and Prince Pringles’s frame is top-notch, honestly, but I mean—are weAllowedto decorate in here?”
Mal said it carefully so it sounded out loud like it did in Mal’s head: Allowed, capitalA, proper noun.
“I mean…” Emerson shrugged again. “I don’t know? Probably? No? And really—who cares?”
“I mean,me,” said Mal before they could stop themself. And then, to soften it the same way they might have for Maddie: “I just like working here together, and I don’t want to piss the owners off by doing something we shouldn’t.”
“Aw, shucks. I like working with you too, Mal.”
Mal sighed but smiled. It was nice to hear. “You know what I mean, Emerson.”
“I do,” she said, “but I mean—the answer is still the same. I don’t know if we’reAllowed, but I think we should do it anyway. Trevor is mostly never here, he just keeps the books, really, and Sai’s a big softie,plusno one ever uses this room, so why not decorate it? Make itcomfy. We’re about to be spending a bunch of time in here, right? Might as well do it in style.”
Mal blinked, willing their brain to catch up to Emerson’s words.
“You… can’t just make your own rules like that, Emerson,” they said once it finally did.
Emerson snorted a laugh. “Come on, Mal.Allrules are made up. Why not made up byus? Plus, that’s not very punk rock of you.”
Mal shook their hands in exasperation. Theyweren’tvery punk rock. That sort of rebellion belonged to Emerson. “But—”
“But nothing,” Emerson said, grinning broadly, daringly. “Look, sometimes it’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. And I already did the thing, so there. You should move in with me, Mal. Let’s make this space our own. No one else is going to do it for us.”
Mal pressed their lips into a line. They didn’t know about all that. Moving a flower-shaped pillow Emerson had put on their chair, they sat down at the left side of the desk—the side that had becometheirside—and pulled their laptop out of their bag. The answer they gave was “Maybe.”
But also, they thought to themself,Maybe not.
“That’s the spirit,” Emerson said, snatching up the pillow and putting it in her lap.
“Okay.” Mal nodded intently to get themself back on track. “Let’s get to work.”
In the middle of Algebra II, Mal was going through it.
