Note: Long annotations at the end of the chapter!

Act II.

Daddy Gave Me a Name

Veronica seems to know exactly where she's going; because he's old, Ponyboy can't keep up. He knows he shouldn't, but he quietly rues the day his father decided to give him a name that would always make him a boy no matter how old he got. He's Ponyboy. He's supposed to be young and fast and spry enough to keep up with a seventeen-year-old girl. But instead, he's a permanent misnomer. After a minute, he catches up.

"Where're ya headed?" he asks.

"How do you not know?" Veronica asks back.

"Well, unlike you and Carrie, I ain't 10% psychic, ya see."

"I am not psychic."

"A little bit."

"Maybe."

They stop in front of a gate that Pony's seen in a million pictures in about a million of Veronica's brochures. He's only seen them because she occasionally looks at them at his apartment – not because he's trying to help her choose a school to apply to (like a daddy would do). He doesn't really know what it is, but by the look on Veronica's face (one that tries to be cool but ultimately fails, the perfect and accursed combination of Winston blood and Curtis blood), he can tell it's a big fucking deal.

"Well?" he asks. "Where are we?"

"FitzRandolph Gate," Veronica says, and she's about as breathless as Pony was the first time he saw the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa in Rome, which he pretends to "not know" why he likes so much.

"And?"

"And it's been here for over 100 years, and it's beautiful and iconic!"

"Well, why ain't we walkin' through it, then?"

Veronica looks at him like what he's just said is a capitol offense. Her eyes are so wide, so green, and so his. He wants to tell her who she is right then and there, but he doesn't. He knows better than that.

(Maybe he just knows worse.)

"This is a big moment," Veronica says. "You don't just walk through the central gate when you're some … bum off the street."

"I think there's a really big middle ground between Princeton student and bum off the street," Pony says. "I think we're both in it."

"Not to FitzRandolph Gate, we're not. God, do you ever research or think about anything?"

"Do you ever stop researching and thinkin' about everything?"

He steps forward to walk through the central gate, but Veronica pulls him back like he's about to commit another capitol offense. It's the second time all day he's not sure how she manages to be exactly like Lucy and Dally at the same time in the same body.

"Are you kidding me?" Veronica hisses.

People are staring, and he hopes Veronica never notices. She hates it when people stare at her. She's a lot like Pony used to be, too, in that way.

"What?" Pony asks. "I'm just tryin' to get things started for ya."

"Yes, maybe, but you're not listening to me. You can only walk through the central gate twice – once on the day you move in and once as you graduate. I can't be the girl who walks through the central gate!"

"But ya don't even go to school here yet, so what's the problem?"

Veronica's face turns bright red with exasperation. Pony has to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. It's not often Veronica reminds him of Darry, but when she does, she really does.

"The problem is it could mess up my application if I do it too soon," she says. "It could put a curse on me."

(She's already cursed, of course, as the only Curtis-Winston in the world.)

"You got more superstition than a Stevie Wonder song," Pony says.

"Just let me walk through the flanking gates and blend in," Veronica says.

"Whatever you say, sweetie."

Veronica beams at him and walks through one of the flanking gates. He follows, just happy to see her happy. It's the least he can do – maybe less than the least. Once they're through the gate, she turns around and smiles.

"Did you see that?" she asks. She's giddy in a way that reminds Pony far too much of Elenore. "I walked through the flanking gates like a real Princeton student! I'm blending in!"

"I saw," Pony says. "I think it's half about the gate and half about your jacket."

Veronica looks down at her jacket – the one that used to belong to Dally – and smiles. She looks so happy. She looks so happy that Pony wonders if he should be afraid of something. In his experience, happiness always comes with a price.

(It's always a price he, himself, negotiates, but he's not going to think of it that way for now.)

"OK, my good man," Veronica says. "Where are we headed first?"

Pony hits his pockets for the map Veronica handed him on the way out of the car. He finds it, and somehow, it's already crumpled up (yet still legible). He squints and reads it for a little while before shoving it back into his pocket with a decision.

"Easy," he says. "Economics building."

Just like that, Veronica looks crestfallen.

"What?" she asks. "How … you said you could do this like Mom!"

"I never said I could do it like your mom!" Pony objects. "I said I knew ya well, and I'm here."

"But if you knew me so well, you'd know that I don't want to see some economics building while I'm at Princeton for the very first time! If I can avoid economics classes in the entire four years that I'm here, I will! There's nothing interesting about economics!"

"Sure there is. But that ain't the point. We don't have to go to the economics building 'cause I think it's gonna make you love … I dunno, Ben Bernanke or whatever. I ain't Darry."

"Then why would we go there?"

"'Cause lemme tell you a secret: On any campus, even a nice one like this one, the arts buildings are always kinda fallin' apart – kinda lookin' more like high schools or haunted houses, dependin' on where you are."

"Is there a difference between high schools and haunted houses?"

"Yeah. On your first trip to a haunted house, you don't have to go around and state your name and three interesting facts about yourself."

"So haunted houses are way less terrifying."

"Now, you're gettin' somewhere. Anyway. The arts buildings are always just a little shy of shitty, but the business buildings – the economics buildings – they're always real up-to-date and nice inside."

"I don't understand what this has to do with me."

"Veronica. Try to see the big picture, sweetie. You don't gotta be majorin' in economics to sit in the economics building and study or read or whatever it is you're always doin' on your laptop. And wouldn't you rather study and read in a nice building instead of … I dunno, somethin' that looks an awful lot like a Victorian widow's house?"

Veronica's smile is back. When she grins like that, she is unmistakably Curtis. It makes Pony want to take her in his arms and then go vomit all at the same time. She is his in every way except the one that matters. He rejected her. She stands here, trusting him with big green eyes and a happy-go-lucky grin that looks so much like Soda, and he knows so much that she doesn't. He knows so much that he hopes she never will.

(When has that ever worked for him?)

"I like the way you think," she says. "I don't always get it right away, and you're very weird. But I like the way you think."

Pony can't help but smile right back at her. It hurts, but he has to do it. Veronica makes it so easy to smile.

He rejected her.

The economics building is, as Ponyboy predicted, nice as it can be. He's a little surprised when Veronica practically jumps for joy and runs to sit on one of the couches. She's adorable, and he's not allowed to think that because he's a terrible father. As he watches her flop down onto the couch of her choice, he sits across from her on a chair.

"Shoot, kid," he says. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you'd never even seen a couch before."

"Couches are one thing, but couches at school?" Veronica asks. "That's another."

"You go to a fancy school now," Pony says. "They ain't got nice stuff like this?"

"My school is all historical stuff that's cool to look at, but you can't exactly sit on it and read for hours and hours and hours."

"How many hours did you just wrap up in that?"

"At least nine."

"That's what I thought."

"My school has, like, benches donated by the estate of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. You can't sit on that! It would be like sitting on America!"

"Wouldn't mind sittin' on America 'f things go the wrong way in November, if ya know what I mean."

"I know how elections work. I'm going here, to Princeton."

Veronica looks up at the ceiling, and Pony sees the stars in her eyes. Sometimes, she is so remarkably like all of them (himself, all of his siblings, Lucy, Dally, Elenore) that he doesn't know what to do. He shifts his weight awkwardly in the chair for a little while before something occurs to him.

"Hey," he says. "Sit up for me, will ya?"

She does, and he's a little concerned at how eager she is to do what he says. It's not like Elenore, of course. Nothing was ever like Elenore, and nothing ever will be again. But there's something between him and Veronica that he's only ever seen in one other person (and that's Cordelia). Veronica gets that look in her eyes like she'll follow him to the end of the earth.

At least, that's what Pony thinks he sees.

"What's up?" Veronica asks.

Pony sighs. He's not really sure what he wants to ask. He just knows that he has a million questions. He always has a million questions. His dad always said he was born curious – said that when Pony was as little as six months old, he could have sworn he saw him try to read. That curiosity inside of him never really shut up, either. He kissed Carrie at fourteen because he wanted to know what it would be like; he married her when he was twenty for all the same reasons. The being and the feeling seemed like two different sensations, and once he got to know both of them, he knew he was right. Everybody thinks he lives too much in his head, and it's true. He does. It's when he jumps out of his head and into his skin when they should worry. When Pony remembers he's got a body, he forgets he's got a mind. They've never sat comfortably together.

He finally settles on a question.

"Tell me," he says. "Why do ya want to go to school here?"

Veronica furrows her brow and looks suspiciously like Darry when she does. Pony wonders if she ever catches herself looking like Darry or Sadie or Soda in the mirror. She's smart (and curious) enough to wonder. Maybe she's also smart enough to lie to herself. It's easy when you've got an imagination like his, and Veronica takes after him in that way, too.

(Veronica also gets her imagination from Elenore. Pony knows that's what linked him and Elenore in the first place – that they had wild imaginations and never stopped thinking and making. He knows it was Elenore's mind as much as it was her skin. It just feels worse to admit it.)

"I thought we talked about this," Veronica says. "I don't want to have to follow the same path that my grandma and my mom set up for me."

"Well, you could do that at plenty of schools," Pony says. "Columbia's got a major in creative writing, and it's an Ivy League right in the city. And if ya didn't want to go Ivy …"

Veronica shoots him daggers.

"If ya didn't want to go Ivy," he stresses, "there's always somethin' like Sarah Lawrence. I know it seems like an arm and a leg, 'cause it is, but you're the smartest kid I know. You could get a real nice scholarship, probably. And I dunno how or if legacies work at a place like that, but Willow's your cousin, and she graduated from there back in … oh, what was it? '93? Could give you a leg up if ya wanted it."

But Veronica shakes her head.

"That's the thing, though," she says. "I don't want it. Willow's been trying to get me to think about Sarah Lawrence since I finally owned up to the whole 'I'm Veronica, and I'm a writer' thing last year. And Grandma's tossed out Bryn Mawr a couple of times."

"Call it projection," Pony says. "They turned her down when she was your age, ya know."

Veronica nods.

"I've wanted Princeton for almost a decade," she says. "And I know that's not a reason, but I … I do have reasons. It's the best school in the country, they say. And I feel like … I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I deserve the best. And I'm not saying that to sound conceited. I'm saying that because …"

She stops and sighs. Pony notices the way she clutches the couch cushions on either side of her. He thinks about the can of shaving cream in his medicine cabinet right now (It took him until he, himself, was seventeen, to grow a beard, but he did it.) and how it warns you not to submerge it in water or get it too hot because the contents are under pressure. By the strain in Veronica's little hands, he's sure that she's the one creating the pressure in that can.

Veronica finishes her statement. When she does, she does not look Pony in the eye.

"I know I'm loved, and I know I'm lucky," she says, and it sounds the slightest bit rehearsed. "But I feel like … I feel like I'm worth nothing unless somebody tells me I am. And that's always come from school and being good at school. I feel like … if I get into Princeton … then maybe I'll start to like myself as much as all of you seem to like me."

Pony knows that Veronica Winston can break his heart more than anybody in the world (Hell, all she has to do is remind him that her name is Veronica Winston.). Today, in this very moment, she does him in.

"Hey," he says (and it sounds so fucking stupid). "We don't just like you. We love you."

Veronica meets his eye, and he swears he forgets how to breathe. It's like looking in a mirror if your reflection is always better than you.

"I love you," he says. "And you don't gotta go to Princeton to make that true."

Veronica smiles at him like she's been waiting to hear someone – maybe him in particular – say that to her.

"I know," she says. "And going to school here … it's not just about impressing you or my mom or my grandparents. It's about impressing myself. I want to be able to accomplish something, and I feel like … I just feel like this is it. This is going to be my accomplishment."

Pony smiles – but only halfway.

"Let's hope it ain't the only one," he says. "Let's hope it's the first in a long line of 'em."

"Of course. But I'll need this one in order to get the others. That's how it works. Ivy Leaguers help each other out."

Pony nods. For all he knows, that's true. He almost has time to think about it, but then Veronica (whose brain seems so close to his) reads his mind.

"Hey, Pony?" she asks.

"Hey, Veronica?"

"Did you ever think about Ivy League schools?"

To his own surprise, Pony laughs. Veronica wrinkles her nose.

"What?" she asks. "Is that so insane? I know you were good at school, too. I know you got double promoted a whole grade when you were a kid. That's why you grew up with Carrie and why you were in the same class in the graduation pictures. But you were good at school. You went to graduate school, even, and that's …"

"It's a choice that ain't for everybody," he says. "You gotta be outta your mind, and I was."

Veronica smiles like she gets the joke, but she's about six years too young for it to really sink in. Pony wonders if she has any idea what she's in for. He remembers when Lucy and Dally (and Elenore) came back to Tulsa around Christmastime during the first year of Lucy's program. She tried to read two books at once right there at the dinner table. Lynnie even offered to feed her like a baby. Pony knows he kept that memory because it was the first time he really knew what everybody (And by everybody, he means Darry) always meant by saying Lucy's got a good work ethic. Pony, you could be more like that if ya tried. He knows he kept that memory because at the time, he was pretty sure that besides Lucy, there would never be anybody else quite so committed to studying and success. If there ever were, Pony knew, in that moment, that he never wanted to meet her.

But then, of course, he made her.

And then he rejected her.

"Well, either way," Veronica says. "I guess it just surprises me that you only went to school in Tulsa. Carrie, too. It seems like you all were made for more than that."

"We were," Pony says. "We were made for havin' families and workin' jobs we love. It didn't matter where we got our diplomas so long as we got 'em, and we felt like we were learnin' something. I ain't like you, Veronica. I never was."

"Oh, please. We're a lot alike. You know I also have a tendency to misplace my things in the strangest places because I get so lost in my thoughts. A couple of days ago, I put my phone in the rice."

"Ain't that what you're supposed to do if it ever gets wet?"

"Yeah, but I just happened to leave it there for no reason. Tell me that doesn't sound just like something you would do, too."

Pony grins. He knows he doesn't have to say it, and he knows that Veronica takes after him in the strangest, most idiosyncratic ways. It's always odd when she picks up on the smallest bits of his personality and performance and absorbs them into hers. He did not raise her, and she should not know how to be his mirror. There is only room for one mirror in this family.

"I never thought about the Ivy Leagues," Pony says. "Not for serious, anyway. When I was real little – maybe two or somethin' – I was startin' to read a few words all on my own. I guess when my dad saw I could do that, he picked me up and said, 'Better get you on the waitin' list for Harvard if you're gonna keep goin' like that.' But I don't think he meant it."

"Why?"

Pony lets out one of those deflated laughs. In truth, he doesn't think about his parents as much as he used to. It's not like he's trying to forget them, and it's not like he suddenly doesn't miss them. He always misses them – always wonders what they would have thought of him now and then. But the longer he imagines them, the more he hates himself. He's so tired of hating himself.

(Mom always loved Carrie, but Dad would have fallen madly for Elenore.)

"Well, for one thing, we couldn't have afforded a place like that, no matter what we did," Pony says. "Darry couldn't even go to college with his football scholarship 'cause it didn't pay the whole thing – not even close. But even if we'd been the richest folks in town, I don't think Dad would have wanted me to go to Harvard or Princeton or anything like that."

"But why?"

It makes him smile.

"My dad was a weird ole guy," Pony says. "Passed it onto me, too. I think, 'f it came down to it, he'd have really made a case for the school where I coulda been the weirdest, too. That was never gonna be a place like this. My name's Ponyboy. There ain't a place for a Ponyboy at an Ivy graduation. I'll tell ya that."

Veronica tips her head like she's going to ask a question. Immediately, Pony starts to panic. He's not even sure why. But Veronica is so sharp and so quick that he feels like he has the right to be threatened.

(He feels like he has the right to be threatened by his seventeen-year-old.)

"What?" he asks. It feels like a big deal to beat her to the punch, even though she's seventeen.

"Are you a lot like your dad?" Veronica asks.

The question knocks the wind out of him. It's one he doesn't really think about – not anymore. Johnny once said that Darry looked like Dad and acted like Mom, Soda looked like Mom and acted like Dad, and Pony was somewhere in the middle of them.

(Pony asked Johnny where Sadie fit in, but Johnny just got even quieter than he already was. They're married now, so maybe Pony should have known what that meant.)

"I don't know," Pony finally says. "I'd like to say maybe I am. But I don't really know."

"Why not?" Veronica asks.

Pony exhales and realizes that his ribs are killing him. He grips his side, and Veronica (always on the edge of something), lunges forward as though that's going to do anything. He waves her off.

"'S OK," he says. "Just … hard to answer 'cause it's too easy to answer."

"What do you mean?"

Pony shrugs.

"I don't know which one of my folks I turned out more like," he says. "I didn't know 'em for long enough to figure it out."

Veronica does not look sorry for him. He's not sure why he expected her to. She just stares at him with a quizzical brow; like she's trying to remember an answer she studied all night and now escapes her. Pony almost says something, but Veronica beats him to the punch.

"How old were you, again?" she asks. "When they … how old were you?"

Pony nods. He's glad, he thinks, that Veronica has lived a life with so little loss. You can't lose what you never had, after all.

"Thirteen," he says. "I was thirteen."

Veronica bites her lip, but she doesn't seem sad. He's not sure what to call it. She's definitely listening.

"Damn," she says. "I don't know … can I say I'm sorry when it's all these years later, and I wasn't even a gleam in anybody's eye?"

It's a strange question, but it makes Pony laugh, anyway.

"Sure," he says. "You can say anything to me."

Veronica looks at him like she knows that isn't true. It's a good thing, too, because she's right.

"Thirteen," Veronica repeats.

"I know," Pony says. "It's hard for me to imagine, too, and it happened to me."

That makes Veronica frown again. She doesn't say anything, so Pony does what he does best: waxes poetic until he runs out of breath or somebody stops him.

"I never got the time to really get to know 'em," he says. "I felt like I did, but then after they died … it was like I was lookin' at photographs of old strangers. Darry and Sadie and Soda could remember stuff I couldn't. Even when I would pretend like my memory reached that far back … I knew it didn't. They knew it, too. So I guess I … I guess when I thought about 'em, I thought I'd make 'em into the best folks who ever lived. Kinda saintly, in a way. I know that's not who they were. But I never get to know who they were – not for real, anyway. I never get to know who they were gonna be. It's … it's the only way it doesn't drive me outta my mind."

Veronica just looks at him. She's not enticed (like he hoped she would be). She's just blank. That drives him out of his mind, too.

"I do the same thing sometimes," she says. "When I think about my father."

Pony clutches the bottom of the chair with both hands. He can't believe he was stupid enough to think that Veronica wouldn't go there. Then again, he's stupid enough to almost sort of forget that he's her father, so he knows his judgment isn't to be trusted. He knows he isn't to be trusted.

(Why doesn't he do anything about it? Why can't he make himself care?)

He doesn't say anything. He hopes Veronica will drop the issue and change the subject. Right about now, he'd prefer to talk about Jenny and Cal than about himself outside of himself. But Veronica doesn't drop it. She's Lucy's granddaughter, and Lucy taught her girls to be dogged, all right. Veronica's got that pushing look in her eyes – his eyes, too.

They look better on her.

"I know it's silly," she says. "But I can't help it sometimes. Ever since I was four or five, there are times when I'll just lie awake in bed and wonder what he's like. There's that song in that old musical, Bells Are Ringing, where Judy Holliday tries to figure out what her telephone lover looks like. You know … 'Is he six-foot-seven or three foot two?' Stuff like that. I can't help but play the same game when I'm all by myself. It's hard to resist."

Pony nods and listens because he doesn't know what else to do.

"Your mom loves that movie," he says. "Elenore."

Veronica nods, too, like she understands something in what Pony does not say. Maybe he's dreaming. He does a lot of that.

"She does," Veronica says.

They're quiet for a little while before Veronica speaks again.

"How well did you know my mother?"

The question makes Pony choke on his saliva. He's not sure why he can't see enough of this coming. He's not very good at predicting the future – not like Carrie is, anyway. He likes to say he has premonitions because it makes him seem more at one with the universe he claims to love and understand, but he doesn't, really. He's so wrapped up in what could (and could never) be to see things coming.

Plus, with Veronica, there's always something in his way.

"What?" he asks. "What … what do you mean?"

Veronica shrugs again.

"Well, you know," she says. "When she was growing up and stuff. How well did you know her?"

This doesn't ease his mind, but he tries to make it seem that way.

"Oh, not as well as I could have," he says. "Your grandparents moved out here when your mom was three or somethin'. They came back to visit once or twice a year, but Carrie and me … we were so busy bein' Carrie and me, we didn't pay much attention to anybody else. And then Carrie and Core and me … we moved out to Michigan when Core was six. We didn't get out here till Core was eleven, which made your mom …"

"Eighteen," Veronica says. "I can do that math."

Pony nods.

"Yeah," he says. "Eighteen. I didn't start seein' or gettin' to know your mom too well till she was already grown up."

He says it like he's defending himself. In a way, he is. In a way, he'll always have to. It's not like it matters. Two summers ago, he swore up and down to Dally that he hadn't looked twice at Elenore when she was a kid. It's true, but he knows that doesn't change anything. He knows how he looks. You don't go sniffing after your buddy's one and only baby (even after she's not a baby) and expect to get away with it.

"What's with the question, anyway?" he asks Veronica. "Seems like kind of a weird one."

"Maybe it seems like it," Veronica says. "I was just curious. I know you said before that you don't know who my father is …"

His blood runs as cold as a cliché. He'll never forget that day in the airport back in Oklahoma for as long as he lives (and judging by the way his heart keeps stopping and starting today, he's not sure how much longer that will be). Veronica looked him in the eye and asked if he knew who her father was; he looked at her right back and lied. She had such trust in her eyes that day, and he rejected her all over again. Why can't he stop? Why can't he make himself want her as much as he loves her?

"I guess I was just trying to figure out the same stuff you try to figure out about your own parents," Veronica finishes. "I figured … if somebody who knew my mom when she was young had something to say about who she used to be … then maybe I'd get an idea."

"An idea of what?" Pony asks.

"I don't know. An idea of … like, where was she, when I came to be? And I don't just mean where she was physically, but like … what was going on that she'd find a guy and never tell anybody about him? I don't know if it makes sense. But when I start to think about it … I just get all swirled up inside, and I don't know what to do."

She looks at him more deeply, and he returns her gaze. He wants to.

"I guess I just figured if anybody would understand what it's like to feel this swirled up on the inside, it would be you," Veronica says. "You always look like you've got so much going on in your head. I thought maybe …"

"Yeah," Pony says. "I get it. Sometimes ya feel more than your body can hold."

"That's exactly it."

Veronica sighs. She flops back down on the couch like it's her own private living room. When she stares up at the high ceilings, Pony stares at her. He cannot believe she's real – that her limbs and teeth and hair all come from him. He loves her dearly because her blood is his blood. It's not enough. It's never been enough.

"When it's really dark, and I really can't sleep, I like to make up stories about my father," she says.

Pony feels like he's going to be sick. He has to play along. He can't give it up. He's never been too good at keeping secrets. He loves getting caught – loves the attention that comes with it. Was he this starved for attention before the accident? It's harder and harder to remember, just like everything else. He swallows hard.

"Yeah?" he asks.

(Why would he even engage?)

"Yeah," Veronica says. "And I don't mean that in some … little orphan Annie, 'the sun will come out tomorrow' kind of way. I'm not that green. At least, I'm not that green anymore. But sometimes I think about what he must do. Sometimes I think he's a painter, mixing his own pigments in Chicago or something. Sometimes he's a film critic in Los Angeles – more like Great-Great Aunt Edith and less like Pete Butler, of course. Sometimes he's the head writer on General Hospital."

"Sounds like he's always an artist," Pony says. His voice is thick with dread.

"Yeah. It's all I really know how to think about. Plus, there's nothing exciting about what's probably true."

"What's probably true?"

"My mother probably had a meaningless one-night stand with an average white guy. He's probably an accountant or a salesman or something I can't make pretty when I'm lying awake at night. But I don't like to think about that."

(How about a novelist from Oklahoma who writes about class conflicts and intra-generational politics, Veronica? Would you like that guy to be your dad? He loves you so much it hurts him and screams its way out through his veins, but he can't turn that love into care. Would you like that guy to be your dad?)

Veronica sits up. Her hair is ruffled with static in the back. She's as adorable as she's always been.

"Is it that way for you, too?" she asks. "Do you like to make the memories you have of your parents pretty because it helps you sleep better?"

Pony laughs but in a way that lets Veronica know what she said wasn't all that funny.

"I guess so," he says. "Guess we're kind of alike in that way."

"Guess we are."

She looks down at her boots, and Pony looks down at his own shoes. He remembers when he wore the same beat-up pair of sneakers everyday of his life. Carrie used to joke that he'd wear them until all that was left were the laces. It wasn't terribly funny, but it made Carrie laugh. To this day, he's in love with the way he can make Carrie laugh just by being himself. To this day, he's in love with Carrie.

(He never stopped being in love with Carrie.)

"It's not exactly the same," Veronica says.

Pony looks up at her. This time, he furrows his own brow.

"What's not exactly the same?" he asks.

"You thinking about your dad and me thinking about mine. It's not exactly the same. I know you didn't get enough time with your dad, and I'm really sorry about that. But you knew him. You knew who he was, at least a little, and you knew he loved you. I … I don't get that, Ponyboy. I don't get to know if I meant anything to the guy who helped put me here. And I know that's all he ought to be in my mind – the guy who helped put me here and nothing more. But I … I don't really know where I'm going with this, and as always, I'm babbling like a fool. I just … I think you're the luckier one between the two of us. You get to know that your dad loved you. I'll never …"

She takes a breath like she's trying to suppress a cry. He's seen that expression a few times before (and only on Dally's face). It's almost cruel when Pony notices the ways in which Veronica takes after Dally. It reminds him of everything that shouldn't be: Dally is the guy who stayed; Pony is the guy who saved his own neck.

He leans forward to look at Veronica more closely. She's brilliant. He's not sure what he's going to say until the question falls out of his mouth and into the air between them.

"Does he ever come for you?"

Veronica is puzzled.

"What?" she asks.

"In the stories you make up when you're fallin' asleep. Does your dad ever come for you?"

He's not sure how to feel when Veronica shrugs and shakes her head.

"I don't know," she says. "I always fall asleep before I see his face. If he came for me … I wouldn't know him, even if I tried."

Pony nods because it's all he can do. He can't tell her she's right, even though – as always – she is.

He takes her to the Student Center a little while later, which she complains about ("I don't want to be a cliché, Ponyboy!"). Really, he just has to go to the bathroom. He wonders, as he shakes his hands dry, if he's always been this pathetic.

He turns his head both ways to look for Veronica, but she's not where she was before. That's when he starts to panic. Elenore trusts him to look after their daughter and take care of her for a few hours, and he loses track of her. Visions of Taken dance in his head (only Liam Neeson was a better father in that one than he is any day).

That's when he hears her voice.

"No way!" Veronica says. She echoes a bit, but he tries to follow her.

"Yes, way!" comes a man's voice. "I've read and reread the passage where Maggie and Tom die about a million times this year for my thesis. 'Brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted—living through again in one supreme moment, the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisy fields together.'"

"You've memorized a long passage. Good for you."

Veronica's voice is getting louder. Pony is getting closer. After a few seconds more, he finds her, sitting in a windowsill with a boy – a perfect stranger. It's the last place he expected to find Veronica Winston, the most introverted kid since he, himself, was a kid, too. But it's a good thing, he thinks. She's growing up.

(And maybe she's got Curtis recklessness inside her, too.)

"I'm serious," the boy says. "It's proof that we can't escape Oedipal narratives. We're built upon them."

"And I think they're nothing more than a smoke screen," Veronica says. "We read things through an Oedipal lens because we're too afraid to admit to what it really is: narcissism."

"That goes without saying. Everything Oedipal is narcissistic."

"Exactly. Because of narcissism."

"And the chicken came first, not the egg?"

"I won't fall for your tricks."

"That's what they all say."

Pony stands aside and watches. Veronica still hasn't noticed him. It's another reminder that she's his child. He could walk through the apocalypse and not notice he was headed straight for doom. Veronica is the same way. It's why she hasn't noticed Pony standing there (and why she hasn't noticed that this young man in the windowsill is flirting with her).

Should he do something about that? This guy is at least twenty-one, and Veronica is only seventeen. In his gut, he knows that's not right. But he's not sure it's his place to step in and say anything. For one, he's not her daddy; for another, it would make him a hypocrite. He can excuse a lot of things about himself, but he draws the line at hypocrisy.

"I just think it goes to show that Deleuze and Guattari were right," the boy says. "We're desiring machines – automatons. We don't mean to want Oedipus. We just do. It's in our programming."

"But that's a very reductive understanding of Deleuze and Guattari," Veronica counters immediately. Pony only recognizes those names because of Carrie. He couldn't contribute to the conversation.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes, of course. Deleuze and Guattari don't think we're born into being desiring machines. They think the synthesis of psychoanalysis and capitalism makes us that way. Besides, the book you're referring to is called Anti-Oedipus, and if we really want to move away from Oedipal structures in theory and criticism, we'll refrain from using a prefix such as anti."

"And why is that?"

"Well, to be anti suggests that there ought to be a pro."

"Don't tell me you're a Derridean."

"Not precisely, but I did grow up around his influence. My grandmother teaches and studies deconstruction and psychoanalysis at NYU. She's fairly well known in her field. Lucy Bennet."

"Oh, no way! I use her first book as a reference in my thesis!"

"Well, I'll be sure to tell her when I get home. She'll be horrified to know that there's a young man out there sullying the name of her work with a poor understanding of Deleuze and Guattari."

"You would never."

"You don't know me."

"Maybe not, but I'm up for the challenge. Are you an English major?"

Pony sees Veronica start to struggle (The girl cannot lie. He's not sure where she gets it from, but it's not him, nor is it Dally.). That's when he jumps in the middle, for better or worse.

"She's undecided," Pony says hurriedly.

Veronica looks up at him with pink cheeks. She's the sweetest thing.

"That's right," she says. "When you're … things can be tough in your first year. So much to learn – never sure what you like best."

The boy immediately jumps up from his seat and holds his distance from Veronica like she's suddenly radioactive. Pony smirks, feeling a little smug (but knowing he doesn't have the right). Veronica just looks confused. She's too much like her father.

"Right," the boy says. "Well, uh, it was … it was good to meet you."

"You, too," Veronica says. "Are you leaving?"

"Uh, yeah, I gotta … I gotta."

He disappears down the hallway and out of the building, not unlike the Road Runner. Pony's just happy to be Wile E. Coyote.

Veronica turns to him with beautiful excitement in her beautiful eyes.

"Did you see that?" she asks. She's joyful and completely unaware of what just happened. "I held my own … with a Princeton student! He thought I was one of them!"

"Yeah," Pony says. "He was also flirtin' with ya."

Veronica looks mortified. She tucks her hair behind her right ear and sputters before she form words. She's so much like Ponyboy, and it scares him.

"Oh," she finally manages. "Well, I … I'm not the kind of girl who … nobody would flirt with me."

She stands up, and they make their way out of the building.

"Somebody just did," Pony says. "He was way too old for ya, but he did."

"Mom always said I might run into that," Veronica says. "When I was twelve or so, she pulled me aside and said, 'Veronica, with your old-soul-ish-ness, you'll struggle to find boys your age to date. That doesn't mean you can go out with old men.'"

Pony laughs, but it burns the inside of his throat. He wonders if Lucy ever said the same thing to Elenore when she was growing up. He knows she probably did. It doesn't matter. Elenore was never one to listen to authority. She's like her dad in that way.

"I never thought I'd date, anyway, so I didn't take her seriously," Veronica says.

"You don't wanna date?" Pony asks (and immediately regrets it. He's not her daddy. If he takes interest in her blooming, then it's weird. It's only not weird if he's her daddy, and he is not.)

Veronica shrugs and takes a deep breath. The air is cold, even for April on the East Coast. It feels about right. There's some poetry in Ponyboy taking his secret daughter on a college visit when the clouds are at their heaviest. Then again, he's not a poet, and when he tries, he just sputters up.

He never tries very hard at very much. Things often come easily for him, and he got used to it when he was far too young. Couple that with his general obliviousness, and it's disaster. When he has to try, it feels foreign and exhausting – so much so that he usually gives up (and lets Carrie pick up the slack, whether he asks her to or not). He likes to pretend like he knows what good effort is, but he doesn't. He's used to accidents and incidents.

Veronica is the one accident and incident he has to try to figure out, and it bowls him over every time.

"It's not that I don't want to, ever," Veronica says (and Pony nearly forgets the question he asked her before). "It's that … well, I don't really understand why anybody would want to date me. I'm not … well, I'm sort of boring, aren't I?"

"You ain't boring," Pony says. "You're just focused. That kinda focus scares the hell outta men."

He knows because it scared the hell out of him in Carrie. When they were kids, he preferred to act like he didn't care that they put him in honors courses. He always said he was supposed to be smart, but he didn't care one way or the other. That was mostly true, at least as far as he can remember today. There was still a part of him that couldn't stand the way Carrie was always half a step ahead of him – that she was always smarter, that she always had slightly better insights, that she just seemed to sing in a way he couldn't. He never put that into words until they were almost (but certainly not) getting divorced. When they were kids, he couldn't hold her hand because he was jealous of her. She was more gold.

(Veronica is more gold than they've ever been, but damned if he'll ever tell her. He still wants it all to himself.)

"Well, I don't think I'm quite ready for men," Veronica says. "I mean … I wish I were, really, but …"

"You're seventeen, and you gotta get in here first," Pony says. "Don't worry. I know."

(He knows her well – just not nearly well enough.)

"Yeah," Veronica says. "When I meet a man, I'll be a woman. He'll be a little older, but I'll be old enough."

"Good to know you already got it figured out."

"I'll take your sarcasm with two grains of salt."

"Good. One grain of salt, and it's still too bitter."

Veronica chuckles a little. They walk in silence for a moment before he notices her put her hands in her pockets and twist like she's uncomfortable. He's about to ask her what's wrong, but then, of course, she volunteers.

"You know, I wonder why the same thing wasn't true for my mom."

"Huh?" Pony asks.

"Well, she was an only child – the same as me. She had what they call an old soul – the same as me. But she's like Grandma. She ended up with a guy who's two weeks younger than she is. I just … I wonder why that is."

Pony knows better than to say anything. He knows that if he opens his mouth too soon, it'll be something he regrets. He's always saying something he'll regret. He's always doing something he'll regret.

(He has never been able to decide how much he regrets Elenore.)

"You want me to take you to a library right about now?" he asks.

"I think you'd be a fool not to," Veronica says.

He wants to wrap an arm around her and love her like a daddy would. But he is not her daddy, and there is no point in trying.

Besides, he doesn't like to try. He likes to breathe.

Veronica stands in front of the Firestone Library like it's going to swallow her whole. Pony feels the same way, but he's just wondering if Princeton shelves any of his books.

(They've got all of Carrie's.)

He steps outside of himself for a moment to notice Veronica.

"What's the matter?" he asks.

"What? Oh, nothing."

"If nothing looks like ya just swallowed a bug, I don't wanna see what something looks like."

He expects it to get a small smile out of her, as his silliness usually does. But it doesn't. She just balls her hands into fists like Lucy used to do and shoves them deep into her pockets.

(How is it she is so much like Lucy and Dally at the same time?)

"I'm standing here, in front of the Firestone Library, and I am horrified by my first thought," she says.

"What was your first thought?" Pony asks. "That with a name like Firestone, you oughta burn it to the ground?"

Veronica looks at him with incredulous eyes. She's adorable. He rejected her.

"No!" she shrieks. "I'm not that Winston. No, I … I'm standing here, in front of the Firestone Library, at Princeton University, and I think to myself, 'I wonder if they have those scholarly books about Buffy the Vampire Slayer I heard about.'"

"They could! It's a library for scholars, ain't it?"

"That is remarkably not the point. This is Princeton, and I am supposedly a contender to get a degree from here! I'm supposed to stand outside this library and want to check out … Speculum of the Other Woman or Powers of Horror! Not books about whether or not Buffy Summers is a good feminist!"

Her face is bright red with worry that is all her own. The way she gets stressed about not being enough feels like it's unique to her – like there's no Bennet, Winston, or Curtis who worries about it quite in the same way.

(He knows he's lying, and he still doesn't believe him.)

"Hey, relax, would ya?" Pony says. "I heard you in there talkin' to that guy, sayin' a bunch of French names I wouldn't know 'f I weren't married to a philosopher of my own. And the fact that you even know the names of two fancy books – that's more than a lotta folks can say at your age."

"Not the kind of people who are also applying to Princeton," Veronica says. "They know this stuff, too. I'm average. I'm an A minus."

"I thought a C was supposed to be average."

"Well, at my school, it's an A minus."

He sighs and puts his arm around Veronica against his better judgment. She doesn't move, and he takes it for a good sign. She's tense. He doesn't blame her.

"C'mon," he says. "Let's go in before you start to convince yourself you don't know how to read."

They walk toward the door, but Veronica's nerves are not settled.

"What if I don't know how to read?" she asks. "What if I just … memorized some letters?"

"That's what readin' is."

"Or what if that's what they want you to think? What if, when I take the ACT again, I find out that I'm actually illiterate?"

(It's a horrible thought, but he has it anyway: Even though Veronica smiles just like Soda, sometimes, it's like she's too smart to be his niece.)

"Let's get'cha in front of a book," Pony says. "Change your mind."

And as they walk through the door, he really thinks that's what's going to happen. He really thinks this trip to the library will be about Veronica.

But then, of course it's not. Nothing in Ponyboy's life is ever about anybody but Ponyboy.

They spot him in the gender studies section, where Veronica wants to go first. While she marvels at a first edition copy of her grandmother's first book, Pony can't stop hearing the high-pitched giggles. He looks around for awhile, and then, he sees them: two young women, maybe two or three years older than Veronica, staring at him, giggling like he belongs on the cover of Tiger Beat.

At first, he really doesn't get it. He knows he used to be handsome, but he's sixty years old now. Sixty doesn't look good unless you've got enough money for a personal cook and somebody to cut your hair every week. Maybe the scar on his lip gives him some sort of devil-may-care charm that he never had when he was a teenager and, reasonably, could have. The giggling gets louder.

He's not sure whether he dislikes it.

"Go talk to him," one of the girls hisses.

"No, you!" the other girl hisses back.

"You're taller."

"You're older."

"You're … oh, all right. But just because I can't stand not being first."

Pony almost has time to think that the exchange between the two girls sounds awfully familiar to him – almost like he heard it time and again from two girls in his own life when he was growing up – the girls approach him and ask him if he's Ponyboy Curtis. He turns bright red and says he is, forgetting for a moment why they might know him by sight.

"Oh, I knew it!" the older girl says. "I thought I recognized you from your book jacket – from the anniversary edition of your first book, that is."

"Ah, yeah," Pony says. "I don't look like I did back in the first edition days, do I?"

The girls laugh in unison, and he decides he does like it. His eyes drift over to Veronica, who has her nose buried so deeply in Lucy's book that she doesn't seem to notice what's going on. She is too much like Ponyboy.

"I hope we're not bothering you," the taller girl says. "It's just … well, we both read your first book when we were in the seventh grade, and we just …"

"We never got over it," the older girl says. "When they made us roommates last year, we both found that out about each other pretty early on. So, I guess you could say your book made us friends, even now that we're kind of adults."

Pony grins from ear to ear. He doesn't even feel himself doing it. He can't help it. He loves this. It's not clear why, but he'll eat praise like it's about to be discontinued.

(He's had therapists in the past who say it's because he never got enough time with his father. He knows that might be true, but it doesn't change his mind about Veronica.)

"We're English majors," the taller girl says. "Both of us."

"Are there only English majors on this campus?" Pony asks. "You're the second ones I've met."

"You probably just attract a type," the older girl says. "We actually know you do. We had this contemporary American literature class last semester, see, and most of us thought that your first book should be on the syllabus."

"Oh?" Pony asks. "Did ya get it there?"

"No, which sucked," the taller girl says. "Our professor said there wasn't any place for … popular fiction … in his class."

His heart sinks. He knows it shouldn't. It's good to be popular. Being popular means he gets to eat and take trips with Carrie and buy nice things for Cal and Veronica. But he knows what else it means. It means they'll never talk about him for serious at Princeton – not like they talk about Carrie.

The Shepards always did make a bigger splash.

"But the canon sucks, anyway," the older girl says. "We're only here studying it so that we can get good jobs at other schools and rip it to shreds. Just know – there are a lot of kids here that love your work."

"Ah, well," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "Thanks a lot."

The girls' eyes flicker over to Veronica, who still seems oblivious to the fact that there are people there. The older girl wrinkles her nose.

"Who's this?" she asks.

Veronica finally gets the memo and puts the book down. She looks at the girls with terror in her eyes. Pony should have known. She hates meeting people without structure.

"This is Veronica," Pony says. "She's a friend of mine – Class of '17, if Princeton's lucky."

Veronica shyly waves. She's adorable.

"We'll look out for you," the taller girl says. "Do you write, too?"

"My name on top of my Scantron tests," Veronica says. "Sometimes at the bottom of a receipt, but my credit card is for clichéd emergencies only."

The girls laugh, and so does Pony. When he does, his ribs hurt a second time. It's always a little horrifying when Veronica reminds him too much of Elenore (and all the reasons he kissed Elenore for the first time).

"Well, we'll look for you, anyway," the older girl says. Her eyes look back up at Pony, and he wishes he didn't like it so much.

"Sorry if we bothered," she says. "We just … we thought we ought to tell you that you … your work … well, it still means a lot to us. And it's not just us."

He smiles, and somewhere in between the smiles and the almost tears because he's still worthy of praise and thanks, the girls go off and away. Veronica nudges him.

"Well," she says. "Looks like I'm not the only one getting flirted with by Princeton students today."

Pony doesn't say anything. He can't, as whatever he says will be wrong. It doesn't change the fact that he's thinking it – and loudly.

He wishes they'd come back.

A little while later, Pony buys Veronica a bottle of Diet Coke from a nearby drugstore. They sit on a bench outside while she drinks it and chatters aimlessly about anything and everything that's on her mind.

"I know I talked a big game about wanting to go here so that I could be different from my mom," Veronica says. "And I do still want to go here. And I want to apply to at least one other Ivy because if I don't, my school will judge me."

"Where are you thinkin'?" Pony asks.

"Columbia."

He looks at her with arched brows. She bites her lip, shy and adorable as ever – reminding him again, and painfully, that she is not his for the keeping (because he rejected her, and it's too late to change his mind).

"I know," she says. "It's home. But I never said I wanted to move that far from home. I just said I wanted to go to a different school than my family's school."

"I get'cha," Pony says. "I always wanted to be real different than the rest of my family, too."

"Were you successful?"

"Depends on which one of 'em you ask."

Veronica grins and takes a long sip from her bottle. He can't help but notice how Bennet red her lips are these days and how we pick and choose the parts of our parents that we want to be. At least, that's what he assumes. He still doesn't know if he's a damn thing like his folks, and he's still too afraid to ask Darry. It feels too late now, anyway. Everything feels too late.

"Ponyboy," she says.

"Yeah?"

"No, not like … I wasn't calling you. I guess I was thinking about your name out loud."

"Hmm. My dad gave it to me, ya know."

"I did know. What did your mom say about it?"

"Well, I dunno, since I wasn't born, ya see. But I think she liked it just 's much 's he did. She wanted all of us to be real original people, too. At least, that's how I remember it."

Veronica nods.

"My mom got my name from an Elvis Costello song," she says. "And it's funny, too, because she doesn't like Elvis Costello very much at all, except for two of his songs – 'Veronica' and 'So Like Candy.' Both of them were written by Paul McCartney, which explains … a lot."

"Hmm."

Pony still doesn't give a shit about The Beatles. He's the same as he ever was, only he's worse because he's sixty, and when you're sixty, you're not supposed to be the same person you were when you were fourteen. You're not still supposed to be too stupid to wear a coat when the sun goes down. Veronica would be the same way if not for Elenore (and Lucy and Dally). He wonders if it's really his fault.

"It's a good song," Veronica says. "I like it. But I always wondered what could have been if I'd been named … something along the lines of you."

He laughs a little. It still burns.

"Trust me, sweetie," Pony says. "You're lucky to be Veronica. Ya don't get funny looks when ya go to the DMV, and you can almost always find your name on one of them gift shop keychains. Can't tell ya how many times I've had to settle for Michael."

Veronica smiles.

"I know," she says. "I just feel like it would be really something to have a brand – something that stands out more than Veronica. John says if I'd been his kid, he would have convinced my mom to name me Alice Blue, but Mom wouldn't hear it when he said it."

Pony knows exactly why, and it's not just because they all held out that sliver of hope that John was Veronica's father, after all. It's that the name Alice Blue is taken.

"How do ya feel about livin' with John?" he asks.

The frankness of his question surprises even him. Veronica shrugs very casually, and he's thankful.

"It's nice," she says. "I love John. I always have. I even … when I was five years old, I remember I wished for him to be my father on my birthday candles."

Pony's heart sinks. He almost says something, but then, he doesn't. Sometimes he knows what to do – but only sometimes.

"I guess I didn't really know how biology worked back then," she laughs lightly. "Anyway … I like living with John – and Riley, on the weekends. She's the cutest thing and really not annoying, especially for a six-year-old. And I like how happy my mom is that she gets to hang out with John everyday. It must be something to fall in love with your best friend like that."

Pony nods. He used to think he and Carrie were that way. Maybe they were, for a while. All he knows now is that he loves her, and it has to be enough. It has to feel like enough.

"Your mom ain't smiled like this in a long time," he agrees. "Since she married John, I don't think I've seen her look sad."

"They're definitely still honeymooning it," Veronica says. "I don't blame them. If I loved somebody with all my heart for thirty years and finally got the timing right, I think I'd be on cloud nine for the better part of a year, too."

Pony feels his own heart clench. His jealousy of John Webber is the strangest thing. He doesn't want Elenore back. He was never in love with Elenore. He just sickly and terribly loved the idea that a piece of her heart would always belong to him. There, he would always have a place. He would always matter.

(Veronica is a piece of both their hearts, and she sits in front of him today. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference.)

"But it didn't fix everything," Veronica says.

Pony furrows his brow and asks her what she means. She takes a deep breath before she says anything again.

"I guess I thought that maybe, once John moved in – became my stepfather – I might stop being curious about my 'real' father. I know that I don't need a father to be complete or anything. But it's still the strangest thing."

"What is?"

"To have a stepfather without ever knowing what it's like to have a father. And you know me, Pony. You know I like to know as much as I can. The fact that this seems so impossible to figure out … it doesn't sit well. No matter what happens, and no matter the man my mom brings home, I'm always going to be curious. Not broken. Not sad. Just … curious."

She exhales quietly into her bottle.

"You're right, ya know," Pony says.

"About what?" Veronica asks.

"Between us, I'm the lucky one. I knew who my dad was – a part of him, anyway. And I knew he loved me and that he would have kept on lovin' me if he'd … the point is I knew him, even if it was just the littlest piece of him that made him my dad. I wonder about him, too, but it's different."

Veronica nods.

"You're right," she says. "You have to wonder about some things, but I have to wonder about everything."

He can feel how low her stomach must sink when she says that because his sinks just as low. What would his father think of him now that he's the kind of man who turns his back on his own baby? Pony would say that's not the man his father would have raised him to become, but he doesn't actually know that. He can't pretend to know that. He died before he had time to learn.

Why should Ponyboy play dead for Veronica when he is very much alive?

(Playing dead is easier than getting mauled by your daughter's grandfather.)

"Do you ever hate him?"

"What?"

Pony inhales sharply without even realizing he's doing it. He hadn't meant to ask it out loud, but if there's one thing he knows, it's that you can't take things back once they're out. He tenses up and starts to reframe.

"Your dad," he says. "Do you ever hate him for … not being your dad?"

To his surprise, Veronica shakes her head. He's almost relieved, too. Then again, he should have known.

"No," she says. "No, I don't hate him. I don't think … I don't think you can hate somebody who's never tried. So, I don't hate him. I don't … except for being curious about his name, I guess I don't feel anything about him. I don't hate him. I just don't feel anything."

Apathy, he thinks. It's worse than hatred, and it's worse than pity.

"Yeah," Pony mutters. "I guess I don't blame ya."

A kid on a skateboard zooms right in front of them. He's gone in a flash, but they still have time to figure out the song blasting from his oversized headphones.

"I loved it when you held me high / I loved to hear you talk."

A pall is cast between them, but neither of them acknowledges it. Veronica clutches her Diet Coke bottle between her hands, and Pony notices that her nails are dark purple, too. Elenore's nails were always dark purple.

Veronica is their daughter, and it's clearer everyday.

"You wanna get goin'?" Pony asks. He does not look her in the eye.

"Yeah," Veronica says. She doesn't look him in the eye, either.

"Me too."

Chapter title is a quote from "Father of Mine" by Everclear, which is the song that the kid on the skateboard is listening to. We'll pretend like 1997 is always relevant.

As for the more obscure references: The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa is a famous sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Ben Bernanke was the Chair of the Federal Reserve at the time this story takes place. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet in the nineteenth century. The song from the movie Bells Are Ringing that Veronica references is "It's a Perfect Relationship," a song that Elenore, too, references in a flashback to her affair during 'Look What You've Done.' The book with characters Maggie and Tom that Veronica discusses with this nameless boy is The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are a French philosopher and a French psychoanalyst, respectively; together they wrote Anti-Oedipus, a book that discusses capitalism through the lens of psychoanalytical ideas of desire (I hate it.). When this boy asks Veronica if she's a Derridean, he's referring to Jacques Derrida, the founder of deconstruction, a form of language analysis. Speculum of the Other Woman is a feminist theoretical text by Luce Irigaray; Powers of Horror is a feminist theoretical text by Julia Kristeva. This chapter leans heavily into academic references, but that's because Veronica is very much performing the role of "Ivy League student." The performances we try on and take off!

Hinton owns The Outsiders. I own many purple blankets.