Wear comfy pants,
See you soon,
Please bring snacks,
Emerson&Mal,
The Editors
CHAPTERELEVENOH YEAH, THE PLAN
Mal had worried, reading over the joint e-mail Emerson had sent, that Open Hours would mean open season on their time. That all of theMixxedMediastaff would flood into the back room of the Haus as if it were the halls of Holmes High, all noise and crumbs and (at least in Stella’s case) sassy things to say. That Mal would never get anything done again.
(They had worried, too, that the staff would now associatethemwith that many exclamation points when it wasclearlynot their style.)
But in reality, it just meant that periodically, people who weren’t Emerson joined Mal in the back room.
Which was, Mal was surprised to find, kind of nice.
They were surprised too to learn that everyone was a little different outside of school. Nylan had been quiet and studious in the science class they’d shared junior year, but she was perky and loud when she worked in the back room, and she had great opinions on music and—much to Parker’s delight—anime and cosplay. Parker, already a ball of energy, was somehow evenmoreenergetic when she stopped in on Wednesday before her Secrets & Sorcery group met in another room of the Haus. Malhadn’t really known Kodi outside of her words on the page, but on her first, brief visit to the back room, she was gregarious and magnetic with a low, sweet laugh that made Mal listen closer for whatever joke she’d tell next.
Even Sam was a little different when they popped in now and then to say hello on breaks or before their shift started. More familiar. Last night when Mal was alone in the back room working late (Emerson was at a board-game café in Cincinnati for an art show that one of her friends was putting on), Sam had brought them an extra coffee. “On the Haus,” they quipped with a wink as they poured fresh drip directly from the carafe into Mal’s catfinated cup.
But when Friday morning dawned, dreary and cooler than Mal had bargained for when they went to sleep in only a tank the night prior, they woke with a start at the amount of sunlight breaking through their bedroom curtains.
Swearing under their breath, they snatched their phone off its charger.
They had overslept by nearly half an hour.
They got ready in a rush, skipping brushing their teeth and hair in favor of cramming a couple Kroger breakfast bars into their mouth, then filling up their knockoff Stanley thermos with coffee and running out the door behind their sister.
“Interesting outfit choice,” Maddie teased as they walked toward Madison Avenue together.
In their rush, Mal had thrown on whatever was on top of the Clothes Pile: the same pair of jeans they’d worn yesterday; a button-down they’d stolen from their dad’s closet last summer; a thick thrifted cardigan; and their pair of thriftedDocs. While it all went together in theory, in practice all the colors clashed, making it look like Mal had gotten dressed in the dark in the year 1997.
They shrugged. “Fair.”
“Late night again, huh?” Maddie asked.
“Yeah, we’re getting close to crunch time for this first issue,” Mal said. “And Emerson had a thing last night, so I wanted to get some behind-the-scenes stuff done without all her chatter.”
Mal didn’t mention that they had actuallymissedsaid chatter. They left out, too, that they had toasted a pair of Pop-Tarts just for the smell of it, to remind them of Emerson in her absence. Mal smiled thinking of it. But then—
“Shit,” they swore. “That worksheet for fuckingHamletis due today, isn’t it?”
“FuckingHamlet,” repeated Maddie, and she giggled. “Yeah, it is. Why?”
“I need to copy yours.” Feeling even more rushed, Mal picked up their pace so they could get to school with time to do it. “I didn’t get mine done last night.”
Maddie shrugged. “Sure, but it’s pretty easy. Fill-in-the-blank character stuff. If you’ve done the reading, you could do it yourself in like two seconds.”
Mal went quiet, walking faster.
“You’ve done the reading, right?” Maddie asked.
Mal said nothing for another beat, then confessed, “I haven’t.”
“Mal.”
