MESSENGER
I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.
BEATRICE
No; an he were, I would burn my study.
—Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare
I used to dream of you nightly
I would wake up screaming
—“Make Good Choices” by Sean Nelson
5:54 a.m.
McNIGHTMARE
Good morning!
This is a friendly reminder that you have three (3) hours and counting before suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of your future valedictorian.
Bring tissues. I know you’re a crier.
The text jolts me from sleep a minute before my 5:55 alarm, three quick pulses to let me know my least favorite person is already awake. Neil McNair—“McNightmare” in my phone—is annoyingly punctual. It’s one of his only good traits.
We’ve been text-taunting since we were sophomores, after a series of morning threats made both of us late for homeroom. For a while last year, I decided to be the mature one, vowed to make my room a McNair-free zone. I’d put my phone on silent before slipping into bed, but beneath the pillow, my fingers twitched with combative responses. I couldn’t sleep thinking he might be texting me. Baiting me. Waiting.
Neil McNair has become my alarm clock, if alarm clocks had freckles and knew all your insecurities.
I fling back the sheets, ready for battle.
oh, I didn’t realize we still thought crying was a sign of weakness
in the interest of accuracy, I’d like to point out that you’ve only seen me cry once, and I’m not sure that necessarily makes me “a crier”
Over a book!
You were inconsolable.
it’s called an emotion
I highly recommend feeling one (1) sometime
In his mind, the only thing you’re supposed to feel while reading a book is a sense of superiority. He’s the kind of person who believes all Real Literature has already been written by dead white men. If he could, he’d bring Hemingway back to life for one last cocktail, smoke a cigar with Fitzgerald, dissect the nature of human existence with Steinbeck.
Our rivalry dates back to freshman year, when a (small) panel of judges declared his essay the winner of a school-wide contest about the book that had impacted us the most. I came in second. McNair, in all his originality, picked The Great Gatsby. I picked Vision in White, my favorite Nora Roberts, a choice he scoffed at even after he’d won, insinuating I shouldn’t have gotten second place for picking a romance novel. This was clearly a really valid stance for someone who’d likely never read one.
I’ve despised him ever since, but I can’t deny he’s been a worthy antagonist. That essay contest made me determined to beat him the next chance I got, whatever it happened to be—and I did, in an election for freshman-class rep. He turned around and narrowly edged me in a history-class debate. So I collected more cans than he did for environmental club, further cementing us as competitors. We’ve compared test scores and GPAs and clashed on everything from school projects to gym-class pull-up contests. We can’t seem to stop trying to one-up each other… until now.
After graduation this weekend, I’ll never have to see him again. No more morning texts, no more sleepless nights.
I am almost free.
I drop my phone back onto the nightstand next to my writing journal. It’s open to a sentence I scribbled in the middle of the night. I flip on the lamp to take a closer look, to see if my two a.m. nonsense makes sense in the daylight—but the room stays dark.
Frowning, I toggle the switch a few more times before getting out of bed and trying the ceiling light. Nothing. It rained all night, a June storm tossing twigs and pine needles at our house, and the wind must have snapped a power line.
I grab my phone again. Twelve percent battery.
(And no reply from McNair.)
“Mom?” I call, racing out of my room and down the stairs. Anxiety pitches my voice an octave higher than usual. “Dad?”
My mom pokes her head out of the office. Orange glasses lie crooked across the bridge of her nose, and her long dark curls—the ones I inherited—are wilder than usual. We’ve never been able to tame them. My two great nemeses in life: Neil McNair and my hair.
“Rowan?” my mom says. “What are you doing up?”
“It’s… morning?”
She straightens her glasses and peers down at her watch. “I guess we’ve been in here awhile.”
The windowless office is dark, except for a few candles in the middle of their massive desk, illuminating stacks of pages slashed with red ink.
“Are you working by candlelight?” I ask.
“We had to. Power’s out on the whole street, and we’re on deadline.”
My parents, author-illustrator duo Jared Roth and Ilana García Roth, have written more than thirty books together, from picture books about unlikely animal friendships to a chapter book series about a tween paleontologist named Riley Rodriguez. My mom was born in Mexico City to a Russian-Jewish mother and a Mexican father. She was thirteen when her mother remarried a Texan and moved the family north. Until she went to college and met my Jewish father, she spent summers in Mexico with her father’s family, and when they started writing (words: Mom, pictures: Dad), they wanted to explore how a child might embrace both cultures.
My dad appears behind her, yawning. The book they’re working on is a spin-off about Riley’s younger sister, an aspiring pastry chef. Pastel cakes and pies and French macarons leap off the pages.
“Hey, Ro-Ro,” he says, his usual nickname for me. When I was a kid, he used to sing “row, row, Rowan your boat,” and I was devastated when I learned those weren’t the real lyrics. “Happy last day of school.”
“I can’t believe it’s finally here.” I stare at the carpet, suddenly gripped by nerves. I’ve already cleaned out my locker and taken my finals breakdown-free. I have too much to do today—as student council copresident, I’m leading the senior farewell assembly—to get nervous now.
“Oh!” my mom exclaims, as though suddenly waking up. “We need a picture with the unicorn!”
I groan. I was hoping they’d forgotten. “Can it wait until later? I don’t want to be late.”
“Ten seconds. And aren’t you signing yearbooks and playing games today?” My mom cups my shoulder and gently shakes me back and forth. “You’re almost done. Don’t stress so much.”
She always says I carry too much tension in my shoulders. By the time I’m thirty, my shoulders will probably touch my earlobes.
My mom rummages around in the hall closet, returning with the unicorn-shaped backpack I wore on my first day of kindergarten. In that first first-day photo, I am all sunshine and optimism. When they snapped a picture on the last day of kindergarten, I looked like I wanted to set that backpack on fire. They were so amused, they’ve taken photos on the first and last days of school ever since. It was the inspiration for their bestselling picture book, Unicorn Goes to School. It’s odd, sometimes, to think about how many kids grew up knowing me without really knowing me.
Despite my reluctance, the backpack always makes me smile. The unicorn’s poor horn is hanging on by a thread, and one hoof is missing. I stretch the straps as far as they’ll go and strike a tortured pose for my parents.