At night she sleeps on her back, legs pressed closely together, her blanket up to her chin. Sometimes she can feel hands running up her legs, sweaty shaky hands that keep on moving up the tedious slope of her legs. And then her eyes open and she takes jerky gulps of air and reminds herself that it's all in her head. Which isn't actually very comforting at all.
In her classes she takes detailed notes, makes meticulous careful transcripts of everything the professors say. But sometimes she just can't listen to the politics of third century Rome, and her hand wanders aimlessly to the margin of the page. She looks through her notes and finds simple little line-drawings of planes, of guns, of names like BEAVER and CASSIDY. There is one page where the two names are written on top of each other. The pen has bled through the paper onto the sheet beneath, and you can barely make out the letters. She likes that. Like maybe they cancel each other out, the victimized Cassidy and the criminal mastermind Beaver. Or is it the other way around? But Veronica likes the thought that maybe the two names make a different name. One that isn't evil and isn't a martyr.
When she has her weekly Italian take-out binges with her father, sometimes her chest constricts a little, and she thinks about how lost she would be without him. Sometimes when she wakes up in her dorm room and he isn't eating breakfast just down the hall she feels alone and scared.
But these things will pass. Because college will just take a little time to get used to. She tells herself that.
