IN ZERO PERIOD THE next morning, I feel awful. The pressure of an impending headache pounds in my forehead. My eyes refuse to focus, warping the writing on Pham’s whiteboard into colorful nothings. In my stomach, hunger and nausea fight, like I swallowed static electricity. In short, I have every symptom of an all-nighter.
I spent literally the entire night in the newsroom. When I told my parents I wouldn’t be coming home because there’d been a Chronicle crisis, they didn’t object. They told me to call them in the morning and joked I didn’t need to use the paper for cover, reassuring me they wouldn’t tell Ethan Molloy’s parents. I was too overwrought to dispute the insinuation. Ms. Heyward went home a little past midnight, ordering the editors to leave with her. I hid in the bathroom until she was gone, then used my keys to get back in.
Under the eye-watering fluorescents, I worked for hours rearranging the page designs so I could remove Ethan’s story before deciding it was impossible. There was no way I could come up with enough lengthy headlines, extra graphics, and creative margins to replace fifteen hundred words. More desperate measures would be required. With the clock in the corner of my computer monitor reading 3:58 a.m., I started a new story—one without interviews or original reporting. We’ll never win publication of the year, but in my resolution for revenge, I decided I didn’t care. What’s important is Ethan doesn’t win.
It’s one thing he’ll never expect. Mutually assured destruction.
I wrote five hundred words of a year-in-review piece, nonsensical in the middle of March, while running on nothing except the can of cashews I keep in my office drawer. Ignoring the sky changing in the windows from black to the depressingly light blue of the early morning, I wrote and deleted, revised and reworked this hopelessly mediocre story. Finally, it was seven. To the sounds of students trudging onto campus and the custodians unlocking the doors, I forced myself to close my computer and walk to zero period.
Knees shaky, I find my desk in Pham’s room and sit. Ethan strolls in, smirking when he sees me.
“Nice blazer, Sanger,” he says. “It looked great yesterday too.”
I’m too tired to come up with a pithy retort. “Drop dead.”
Ethan doesn’t reply, no doubt considering my exhaustion a victory. When the bell rings, Pham passes out the day’s AP practice questions. Reaching me, he doesn’t drop the paper on my desk. “Miss Sanger, no. Nurse,” he orders.
“What? Why?” I ask.
“You look like you’re about to collapse.” Pham’s watching me flatly, not even pretending to sound sympathetic.
Ethan leans over his desk. “I’m worried for her as well.”
“I’m fine,” I say forcefully, shooting Ethan a look that a court could consider evidence of intent to commit murder.
Pham shakes his head. “Did you think I didn’t notice when you sat through an entire exam with food poisoning? Either you’re lying and I can’t trust a word you say, or you have no idea when you’re sick. Which means I can’t trust a word you say. If Nurse Sharp clears you, you’re welcome to return.”
I wait stubbornly, hoping he’ll reconsider. When the moment stretches into a standoff, I grab my stuff with a huff and walk out of the room. He thinks I shouldn’t be allowed to determine when I go see a medical professional? It’s infantilizing. Not pleased to find myself crossing the empty campus to the nurse’s office the second time this month, I scowl the whole way there.
I push open Nurse Sharp’s door. She looks up from her computer, then sighs. “Again, Alison?” she says, walking over to the exam table and removing her thermometer from the drawer.
“I don’t have food poisoning,” I reply quickly, not wanting her to send me home. Nurse Sharp narrows her eyes, and I know I need to explain the dark circles under mine. “I was just up all night working on the newspaper.”
Nurse Sharp looks even less pleased. “Sit,” she orders.
I drop my bag and climb up onto the exam table. “Come on,” I implore. “I can’t be the only student here who’s sleep-deprived.”
She fits the plastic tip to the thermometer pointedly. “Did you know sleep deprivation can cause heart disease? It’s not something to be treated lightly.”
“I had to stay up. Ethan sabotaged the paper, and there are two days until the final version is due to the printer.” Before I can keep complaining, she slips the thermometer into my mouth. If she takes my blood pressure, I know what she’ll find. Just the thought of the deadline hits me with a new rush of panic. Part of me still can’t believe Ethan did this. He’s upped the stakes of our rivalry to hazardous heights, turning competition into torture. The thermometer beeps, and Nurse Sharp pulls it out. “I don’t know why he would do this,” I go on.
She huffs. “Don’t you? It’s constant with you and Ethan.” She returns the thermometer to the drawer without commenting on my temperature, which I consider a victory. “Tell me, honestly,” she continues, “you’re not planning your equally ugly revenge.”
I say nothing. Of course I’m planning revenge.
Nurse Sharp shakes her head. “I don’t understand it. I mean, I understand needing to prove yourself. When I was in the military, even in nursing school, I was constantly trying to show up the guys. There’s a difference between proving yourself and fighting every chance you get, though. Why keep this rivalry up?”
It’s obviously rhetorical, but the question leaves me thinking. While she washes her hands with practiced efficiency, I imagine my days without Ethan’s and my fights. Plenty of people go through high school or do great things without this constant feuding. Why has ours gotten so out of control?
“Why don’t you just not have your revenge?” Nurse Sharp asks. “Wouldn’t this war of yours die out?”
I’ve wondered the same thing on occasion. When I’ve received a grade short of perfect on an exam we blitzed, or when Ethan’s insults really hit their mark and I had to ignore the embarrassment singeing my cheeks. They’ve never been enough for me to bow out. His newspaper victory is no different. If I syndicated his story, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I could let it go.
But I know I won’t. I tried. Ethan pulled me right back in, and I let him.
When I shrug emptily, Nurse Sharp writes a note on her chart. “Okay,” she says, her voice gentler. “I won’t send you home. But I will force you to take a nap.”
I nod, grateful not to be going home. “Fair,” I say. While Nurse Sharp returns to her computer, I curl up on the comfortable cot in the office. With the rough pillow under my cheek, my final waking thought is of her question. Why do I keep up this feud with Ethan? Being an overachiever means jumping through hundreds of hoops—why do I insist on lighting them on fire?
The answer, I know, is immature. Unprofessional. Everything I wish it wasn’t.
Even right now, with my head pounding ferociously and exhaustion running ragged through me, I recognize the undeniable thrill I get from the thought of besting him. The truth is, I fight with Ethan because I like it.