“Well, do you have any experience?” asked the girl beside him.
“No, she doesn’t,” answered the boy, before Mal could.
“Uh, no,” Mal confirmed. “And I use they/them pronouns.” They had since sophomore year. Pretty mucheveryoneknew that, Mal thought. But maybe not everyone knew Mal.
“Oh, cool, thank you,” said the girl, smiling. “Well, we have a beginning band—it’s mostly freshmen, but you don’t have to be one to join it. Do you know what you might be interested in playing?”
Nothingwas the honest answer. But with Maddie watching from across the cafeteria, giving them an encouraging thumbs-up from her seat next to her soccer friends, Mal knew it wasn’t the one they should give. “Clarinet?” they tried.
“Yeah, I could see her as a clarinet player,” the boy said, and made a face like that was supposed to mean something (what, Mal couldn’t guess).
“Yeah,” agreed the girl, shooting him a glare before smilingat Mal again. “Theywould be pretty good at it, I bet! And we even have free rental ones you can take out every year.”
She went on, but Mal had already mostly stopped listening. The idea of putting their mouth on a communal-use rental instrument, no matter how thoroughly it had been cleaned, made their insides crawl.
Thursday brought what Maddie tried really hard to frame over breakfast as a promising new start: art club, which held an interest meeting in Mr. Stackhouse’s expansive, paint-splattered art room before school started. When they arrived and saw Parker, their fellowCollageorphan, Mal started to believe Maddie might be right. It made them feel brave enough to catch Parker’s eye, point to her Little Twin Stars T-shirt, and give her a thumbs-up, which Parker answered with a twirly spin before sitting down across from them. But then the students started sharing their work, and Mal decided firmly that the club wasn’t for them. It was clear that everyone in the room hadactualartistic talent. Despite Maddie’s instance, Mal absolutely could not fake it until they madethat.
By Thursday evening, Mal was fatigued from all the trying—and from their first real algebra homework of the school year. Maddie, having finished her calculus assignment shortly after they got home a few hours ago, now huddled with Mal in the Flowerses’ living room. They had been spending their weeknights together in some variation of this arrangement for as long as they’d been old enough to look after each other, since both their parents worked late.
Mal bent over their homework in the L-corner of thepowder blue sectional, with Maddie body-doubling for extra support in the closest reclining seat.
“These off-brand shows are always so weird,” she said, shaking her head as she hit the Play Next Episode button on the free streaming service they used. “They’re making them ice cookies on a rowboat in a swimming pool?” She snorted a laugh.
“Yeah, they fully miss the point,” Mal agreed, grateful to look up from their math problems again. “The whole reasonThe Great British Baking Showis so good is because it’s socozy. Like, the worst thing that could happen is your cake takes a tumble and your baking pals give you a hug about it.”
“Now, that’s my kind of catastrophic failure.” Maddie reached over, half hugging Mal with one arm. She fixed them with a certain look, one Mal knew meant she was shifting to Serious Maddie. “How are you feeling about tomorrow?”
Mal scrunched their nose at the idea of theCollagesend-off party. “More likethatkind of catastrophic failure.” They nodded to the TV screen, where the opening recap showed the end of the last episode again: a baker’s whole boat capsizing, sending her and her cookies into the pool.
“Nah, come on, Mal,” Maddie said, shifting back to sitting and then pressing her socked toes into Mal’s thigh. “We’ll find something. Let’s think.”
As if to punctuate Maddie’s words, the kitchen door swung open with a creak. Maddie kept talking, naming a few options Mal hadn’t yet tried—orchestra, debate—but Mal went still, listening. It only took a few moments for them to pick out the noise of sneakers on the linoleum.
Their mom was home.
“What are you two up to?” she asked, popping her head through the open door. Her hair, the same blond as Mal’s and Maddie’s, was in a slightly bedraggled version of the curly updo she’d had before school. She wore the distinct expression of Having A Long Day—something that was happening more and more frequently when she came home from the dental office where she worked as a receptionist.
Once, when Mal and Maddie were smaller, their mom had been a stay-at-home mom, because the cost of having them both in day care had been more than she made at her part-time job. Back then, things had been different. The three of them had gone on adventures to the zoo or the aquarium or the park, or even just on walks around the block collecting interesting fall leaves for a vase on the coffee table. Mal remembered feeling special then, like their mom’s job was to make the Flowers siblings’ lives exciting—and she was very good at it.
But when Maddie started middle school, their mom had gone back to work to help support the family, and their adventures slowed down. A pattern quickly emerged: Every year or so, their mom would get bored of her job, or mad about it—coming home trying to hide her tears or in desperate need of a nap—and would find a reason to leave it.
At first, Mal remembered overhearing their parents fighting behind their bedroom door: about how it was a waste to send her mom to night classes if she wasn’t even going to use them, about how the jobs weren’t even hard; she just had todothem. But by the time Mal was in eighth grade, their dad started to look tired too, and the fights eventually stopped.Now everyone knew to brace themselves when their mom started showing signs of an Impending Exit.
She had that look about her lately.
“Math,” Mal answered carefully.
“Still?” their mom tutted.
“I’m distracting them,” Maddie confessed, hitting the pause button on the TV remote. “With baking. When they’re done, we’re going to make some snacks for their lastCollagething tomorrow.”
Mal frowned. They had only told their parents about the magazine’s cancellation in the barest way: that it had happened. The rest of the mess was theirs to clean up. With Maddie’s help.
“Have you found something new yet?” their mom asked, turning and heading back into the kitchen. Her voice grew muffled from the distance and the shifting clang of pans. “There’s still time, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Maddie answered for them. “Plenty. And Mal has some promising leads.”
Mal shot Maddie A Look, which saidI do notandthank youat the same time. Maddie shrugged easily.
