Together, they ate their eggs and caught up on the latest episodes ofBaking Showin relative silence.
“Well, beans, we’re out of paper again.”
“Emerson,” Mal hissed, but even their whisper rippled with laughter.
The pair of them had been hunched over Patron Use Print Station Number Two since one p.m., when the Covington library opened—much too late for Mal’s taste, even for a Sunday. It was the first time Mal had been into the library sincethey stopped walking Maddie to tween time when she was twelve (at her request, as it was “too babyish”), but it was much the same as they remembered it: absolutely stunning under a bit of grime and misuse, with a big bright skylight over the computer bays. This was where they were now stationed: at the very end of the row of computers, directly by the printer.
It was Mal’s job to send the correct pages to the printer in batches of one hundred and to jiggle the mouse every five minutes or so to keep the computer from shutting down and wiping everything Emerson was logged into.
“Theyknowme here, so they know I’m a noisy mess,” Emerson insisted, though she did drop her voice at least a few decibels. Standing in a crouch over the printer, she waved her hand, caught the eyes of the library worker behind the desk, and for the third time made a motion between herself and the small hutch beneath the printer, which held the reams of refill paper. With a nod from the associate, she bent, took out a fresh ream, and started to reload the printer.
“I mean,Iknow that too,” Mal conceded, swatting at Emerson’s hip as they whispered. Mal couldn’t remember when these small touches had become natural between them, but they had, and Mal leaned comfortably into the contact. “But this is a library. We have to keep it down; it’s the rules.”
“You and your ru— OH, sorry, I mean—” Emerson continued in a dramatic stage whisper that was just as loud. “You and your rules, Mal Flowers.”
“This one isn’t even mine,” Mal whispered. “It just… is.”
To be fair, Mal felt like most of the rules they followedjust were. It was how they functioned.
“Libraries are cool now Mal, haven’t you heard?” Emerson’s not-whisper was punctuated with giggles. “They’re not stuffy old quiet places anymore. If half these people weren’t like, still asleep, it would be bumpin’. Trust me.”
It wasn’t that Mal didn’t trust her; Emerson had detailed, in the short five minutes they waited outside for the doors to open, how often she came here for anime club or crafting programs or to browse the stacks. She was here just the other day, she insisted, at a button-making program with Parker, and that had been quite the ruckus. But looking around at the other computer bays, filled mostly with unhoused folks and a few kids Mal recognized from school, the vibe was still very much “quiet.”
Mal shrugged.
“Okay,” said Emerson in her usual speaking voice. “I mean—okay,” she whispered, placating Mal. “That’s it for the fourth page. Run me through a hundred of page five; let’s get this party started.”
“Emerson, there’s like eight pages still to print,” Mal said, sending the job to the printer. “This party is going to take awhile.”
“No reason we can’t partynow, though, right?” As Emerson started to collect pages from the machine as they spit out (they had been trying to collate them in groups of ten, for easy assembly later, although Mal was almost certain Emerson’s ten and their own ten were very different things), she started to hum an upbeat tune Mal didn’t recognize.
“Emerson,” Mal hissed again.
Emerson hummed harder. Mal swore they could see her lips vibrate with it. They raised an eyebrow at her.
And then Emerson started to wiggle: her hips, her fingers, her arms, her belly. She hummed harder, shimmying her shoulders.
“We’re going to get in trouble!” Mal said, and nowtheirvoice was a little too loud, to compensate for the noise of the humming.
“We’re not,” Emerson hummed, swiping another small pile of pages. “Come on. Have a wiggle. I dare you.”
Emerson hummed harder when Mal shook their head, her knees now joining in and wobbling around so she looked more like a squid than a girl.
“That looks ridiculous,” Mal didn’t quite whisper.
But in truth, it actually looked… really fun. Mal often found themself seeking movement—a walk when things felt hard, the opening and closing of their fists when things felt too much. Things feltfinenow—despite their fussing about Emerson’s volume—but they still felt their body wanting to mirror Emerson’s motions.
And so, with a furtive glance over their shoulder at the library worker at the desk (who was, to Mal’s astonishment, spectacularly unconcerned about the humming happening at Patron Use Print Station Number Two), Mal wiggled. They started with their fingers, which felt so good that they wiggled their arms too, and then their thighs, the fat there jiggling pleasantly against the hard plastic of their chair.
“Yes!” piped Emerson, whichdiddraw a look from the associate at the desk, but she gave an apologetic shrug and dropped her voice to a whisper when she went on. “See what I mean?”
“Okay, yeah,” Mal said, wiggling their hips where they sat. “I see what you mean.”
“Now we’re talking—quietly! Quietly!” Emerson raised her hands in surrender, partly to Mal and partly to the associate, who stood up from their chair to give Mal and Emerson the Librarian Look.
But in that moment, Mal didn’t mind at all. Being wiggly with Emerson feltnice. They were content to wiggle for the next hundred or so pages worth of print jobs. When the printing was finished, Emerson commandeered a couple paper boxes from the recycling pile and Mal carefully loaded the collated zine pages in. Together, they carried them to the front desk to pay.
The good vibes evaporated; Mal had been dreading this part.
