The Syllabus of Us

(Mira’s POV): I have three rules for surviving journalism school. Never turn in a story late. Never let anyone see you cry in the newsroom. And never, under any circumstances, let Julian Voss get the better byline. I broke none of those rules today. I needed that to be on record before I tell you what happened, because after today, I'm not sure how many of my rules are going to survive this semester. It was the first Monday of the year, and I got to the Campus Chronicle office forty minutes before anyone else, the way I always do. I like the quiet space before the newsroom wakes up. I like being the first person to touch the keyboard, the first to see the assignment board before Priya scribbles all over it in three different colored markers like a woman possessed by a highlighter. I had my coffee going cold beside me, my planner open to a fresh page with the whole semester mapped out in neat blue ink, and a plan already forming to pitch a story on the school's new parking fee increase before anyone else could beat me to it. The office still smelled like summer dust and old newsprint, the blinds not yet pulled up, the computers humming through their slow morning startup. I liked this version of the room best, before it was filled with noise and other people's opinions. I had worked hard for four years to make this office feel like mine, and I was not about to let anyone take that feeling away from me in week one. My planner had color codes for everything: red for deadlines, green for finished drafts, yellow for anything that needed Corvin's approval before it ran. Priya says it's excessive. I say it's the only reason I've never missed a single deadline in three years, and I intend to keep that streak alive through graduation. Then the door swung open, and I smelled his cologne before I even turned around. Cedar and something sharper underneath it. I would know that smell anywhere at this point, which is honestly a little embarrassing to admit, even just to myself. "You're in my seat," Julian said. "It's not your seat. It's the good seat, the one by the window. There's a difference, and you know it." He didn't move. He never moves when I tell him to, which is one of the seventeen things about him that makes me want to throw my stapler directly at his head. He just leaned against the desk across from me, arms crossed over his chest, looking like he had all the time in the world to stand there being smug at me before his first class. "I already emailed Corvin about the parking story," he said, and my stomach dropped straight onto the floor, though I didn't let it show on my face. Rule number two doesn't just apply to crying. "You emailed him at six in the morning? Who does that?" "Someone who wants editor-in-chief more than you do." "Nobody wants it more than I do, Julian. It is not physically possible for a human being to want something more than I want this." He smiled at that. The small, closed-mouth smile that means he's enjoying himself far too much. We've been doing this dance since first-year student, since he beat me by exactly one vote for best op-ed in our intro seminar and I told him, right to his face, in front of half the class, that his writing style was "technically correct and emotionally dead." He has never once let me live that down. I have never once let myself forget saying it. "May the best reporter win," he said, and walked off toward the printer like he hadn't just tried to steal my story out from under me before eight in the morning on the first day of the semester. I told myself it didn't matter. I had three years of beating Julian Voss to prove to myself that it didn't matter. I was going to walk into Advanced Media Ethics that afternoon, turn in flawless work all semester, keep my grade point average completely untouchable, and let my actual reporting speak for the editor-in-chief position at the end of the year. That was the entire plan, simple and clean, and I had never once needed anything more complicated than that to get exactly what I wanted. It lasted exactly until two o'clock, when I sat down in Ethics and Professor Corvin walked in with someone behind him. "Before we start," Corvin said, setting his bag down at the front of the room, "I want to introduce your new teaching assistant. He'll be grading your papers this semester, running discussion sections, and holding office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Please treat him with the same respect you'd show me." Julian Voss stepped out from behind him, holding a stack of syllabi against his chest like it was a trophy he'd been waiting all year to collect. He looked directly at me across the room. And smiled. I sat frozen in my chair, pen hovering over a blank notebook page, and thought one very clear, very loud thought. He's grading my papers now. The rivalry I had spent three years building my entire college identity around had just gotten an upgrade. A red pen. A title. And apparently, an actual say in the grades that decided whether I got to be editor-in-chief at all. I watched him hand out the syllabus, watched every other girl in the room straighten up a little when he walked past their desks, watched him get to mine last and set the paper down without a word, just that same small smile, like he already knew exactly how much trouble he was about to be for me. I spent the rest of class staring at the syllabus instead of the board, reading his name printed at the top in plain type Julian Voss, Teaching Assistant like maybe it would look less real the fourth time I read it. It didn't. I was so screwed. And the semester hadn't even started yet.