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By the time JD ended up in West-whatever, he didn’t think that anything about the new school experience could surprise him. He sent a brief offering of thanks to whatever deity liked screwing with his life that at least this time they had arrived the month before school started instead of the month after. He could at least blend in with the other new Freshmen slightly.
After a thoroughly predictable first day and second morning, JD actually found himself surprised at lunch. “New kid, over here!” a brunette girl called, waving him over from a corner table and even making eye contact. This didn’t seem to be a mistake, but still, JD hesitated.
“Come on, I know Heather declared you persona non grata after second period,” the girl continued. “Your social standing can’t fall any lower by sitting with us now.” She gestured at herself and her companion, a bigger girl dressed head-to-toe in pink.
JD slowly walked towards them, thinking back to second period. “Which one was Heather; red, yellow, or green?” he asked.
His host snorted. “All three, actually, but Queen Heather of the Iron Fist is red. Which one did you actually piss off and how? Was it as glorious as the rumor mill made it sound?”
JD slid into the seat beside her friend, across from her, where he wouldn’t have to see as much nauseating pink. “Well I apparently sat in the green Heather’s seat, which started it, and they didn’t like my observation that the teacher hadn’t mentioned assigned seats.”
Both girls laughed, and JD found himself enjoying the art of storytelling for an actual audience. “That set all three off, which wasn’t worth the hassle, so I moved over one.”
“Oh no, that would’ve been Ram’s seat,” Pinky moaned.
“Some football jock,” JD agreed. “He thought he could take a swing at me, but I know a few things, and I overbalanced him; sent him right into his friend.”
“You got Ram and Kurt” Brunette asked.
JD shrugged.
“You hurt Ram?” Pinky was quite upset, but Brunette shushed her.
“That’s awesome!” Brunette whistled appreciatively. “No wonder Heather didn’t wait until study hall to ruin you; you pissed off her and her jock toys!”
“I suppose that’s impressive for this town?” JD asked. People had mostly left him alone in Kentucky — out of sight, out of mind.
“It’s epic,” Brunette assured him seriously.
“Is it epic enough to warrant an introduction?” he teased.
She blushed, in a way that JD suddenly found himself considering cute. “Veronica, Veronica Sawyer. This is Martha Dunstock. And you?”
“Jason Dean, but please call me JD,” she held out her hand and JD officially shook it. Her hand was stronger than he expected.
“Well JD, welcome to the outcast table,” Brunette — Veronica said warmly.
They had almost made it the entire school year, which had to be something of a record, and JD found himself rooting for whatever group it was that had dragged his dad to court over this case. But they lost, and the building was demolished, and now Big Bud was off to a job in Kansas. Veronica promised that she’d write him and call, but JD had heard that before and knew better than to believe it.
To his surprise, she actually called their first night in Lawrence. “You’ll never believe who Ram punched today,” were the first words out of her mouth, and JD found himself easily falling into the soap opera drama of Westerburg; something he had been avoiding his entire life. Though that might have been the mental image of Ram and Kurt actually fighting each other.
JD had assumed that eventually Veronica would forget him and stop calling, but for some reason she never did. She even called Big Bud’s work line from the commercials when they didn’t have a house line connected, and the one time he “forgot” to tell her they were moving to Boston. She tracked him down like some kind of bloodhound, and soon JD found himself not wanting her to give up on him.
Instead of assuming that she would inevitably leave him, and wanting to spare himself that pain, JD found himself hoping that this girl wouldn’t let him escape.
He shared with her when he discovered Baudelaire’s poetry, and he immediately went to the library and checked out Schopenhauer when she gushed over her first reading of him. After all, he couldn’t properly defend Kant without reading Schopenhauer’s critique. It had nothing to do with wanting to read something she thought highly of. Nothing at all.
Kerouac, Kesey, Rumi, Orwell, Aristotle, Sun Tzu, Vonnegut, Salinger, Bradbury, Lao Tzu… the list went on. As soon as one of them mentioned some life changing reading, the other seemed to rush to the library and immediately had their own opinion by the next call. Veronica always pushed him beyond his usual interests, and JD found himself re-evaluating his well-established pessimistic outlook more than once.
Instead of hanging out at 7-11s chowing down on junk food and seeing how long he could make a brain freeze last, JD found himself hovering near the phone, planning the next round of witty repartee with Veronica. As soon as Big Bud got a new gig, JD was researching the phone companies and making arrangements to have their landline hooked up; he was arranging for a library card and figuring out how best to get there from whatever temporary housing Bud found.
Once upon a time he had just cared about preventing eviction, having something sarcastic to say, and his jones for slurpees, but thanks to Veronica, JD now had higher priorities.
“Where do you want to go to college?”
It was a simple question, but JD had largely ignored it. He’d assumed he would get into whatever community college was closest at the time and then wing it from there. Of course, as one approached the start of Senior year, everyone and their grandmother felt the need to ask the question, and JD had an assortment of witty barbs to hit back with.
But this was Veronica asking. He couldn’t blow her off, and suddenly he didn’t want to tell her his actual pathetic plan.
“Dunno. What’s your plan?”
“Well I always wanted to go abroad; you know, study in Paris or Oxford, but that’s not exactly a likely destination from Sherwood, Ohio.” She said a little bitterly. “But I’m sure I can do a year thing if I get into an Ivy League. Harvard, Duke, Brown; that kind of place.”
Those weren’t the kinds of places that would jump to accept someone with twelve different high school transcripts. But suddenly JD couldn’t stand the thought of spending four more years only hearing Veronica on the phone. She had become the most important person in his life; the magnetic north he flocked to; the spring thaw of his nuclear winter.
“Where are all those?”
“Uh, Boston, North Carolina, and Providence.” Veronica replied after a second.
JD prided himself on knowing the least possible about US geography considering how much of it he had physically seen. “So mostly New England then,” he mused. Maybe he could get into a community college close to her and then transfer in. They could still see each other on weekends and things until then. “I can work with that.”
“Well yeah, but where do you want to go?” Veronica persisted.
And for the first time since he was ten and his answer had been summarily ignored, JD actually considered his response to this question. Wherever you are was far too corny, but it was the first thing that popped into his head. Wherever I can find a good 7-11 was what he often told nosy biddies, but that wouldn’t work for Veronica either. Harvard, Duke, Brown.
His silence must have said enough, because Veronica, not for the first time, read his mind. “Not the kind of thing Big Bud often asked you, huh?”
“You have no idea,” came out automatically.
“Well you’ve got a few months,” she said optimistically. “Think about it and get back to me.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
The conversation moved on, but in the back of his mind, JD kept thinking. Harvard, Duke, Brown. All he had to do was get into those three schools and he could be with Veronica again.
“JD! JD! Did you get your acceptance letters?” Her adorably dorky voice had suddenly turned as shrill and childish as her best friend, whom he still insisted on calling Pinky.
“I take it you did?” JD tried to play it cool.
“Yes! Two of them came yesterday, but I wasn’t able to call. The other came today.” She sounded nervous, which wasn’t like his Veronica. She was the strongest person he had ever met.
“So, I assume you got into every school you applied to. Which ones were they again?” Harvard, Duke, Brown.
“Oh, uh, Harvard, Duke, and Brown. And I don’t know if I got into them yet.”
“Of course you did. Wait, you haven’t opened them yet?” That wasn’t like her.
“Of course not!” Veronica replied. “I had to wait till you were here, didn’t I?”
But he wasn’t there, not really. Not yet. JD eyed the envelopes that had congregated on his own table. A day ahead of hers, as he was currently in Jersey. “Well the suspense is killing me, so you’d better get a move on,” he drawled.
“Oh you,” Veronica huffed, but he could hear her ripping open the envelopes. “Duke accepted me!” she shouted a moment later.
“Of course they did.” His reply was largely ignored.
“Ooh, I got into Harvard too!” She cheered. The ripping was more frantic this time. “And Brown! I got in all three!”
“I distinctly recall predicting that several states ago,” JD snarked, knowing it would have no effect on her glee. Veronica was like a supernova sun, burning so brightly that even his most torrentially sarcastic rain storms couldn’t dim her for long.
“Okay, I’ve waited long enough! Now you have to tell me where you got accepted!” Veronica indeed ignored his sarcasm.
He eyed the envelopes - Harvard, Duke, Brown. - already open because he had to know so he could steel himself for this conversation if the worst happened.
“Well you were right, I did my essay on all that ‘overcoming adversity’ shit with my folks and it apparently went over really well.” He idly nudged the pile, wondering how long she would let him prevaricate. If they were in the same state she would have smacked his arm by now, or just grabbed the envelopes herself.
“I told you so.” Somehow smugness on her was sexy, instead of irritating as he found it on just about every other human. “Now gimme the details! I know you said Colorado and Penn...”
“Yeah, I changed my mind a few times.” Never.
“So help me I will teleport to your side and strangle you with the phone cord if you don’t tell me already,” she swore the familiar complaint.
“Promises, promises,” JD teased. Finally deciding to come clean, he picked up the envelopes, making sure to rustle them enough for the phone to pick up. “Okay, it looks like I got in to the first one…”
“I knew you would!”
“And… yeah… yeah, I got in to all three.”
“Ooh! Which ones?”
Couldn’t put it off any longer. “Hmm… Harvard, Duke, and Brown.”
And there it was, the rare, treasured moment when he actually stunned Veronica into silence. It was a glorious thing to savor. And then his stomach dropped as JD realized that this might not be a good silence. Was she mad at him? There were three options, so she didn’t have to go where he did. She could still keep them apart if she chose. Was that what she wanted?
“Veronica?”
“You- you applied to the same schools as me?”
“Uh, yeah.” Eloquent, that was not.
“You’d do that for me?”
It took everything JD had not to sigh in relief. She wasn’t mad; he could handle anything else, as long as they could be together. “Of course I would.” He bit his lip before he could blurt out anything worse, like I’d do anything for you or I worship you.
“You’d really fight for me like that?”
“I’d always fight for you.” And there was the stupid sentimentality coming through. She brought that out in him.
The last thing he expected was to hear Veronica — his strong Veronica — burst into tears. Before he could freak out again, he heard her distinctive chuckle. He loved that laugh. He couldn’t have screwed up too badly if she was laughing, despite her tears.
“Sorry about the waterworks. I just— I just— wow.”
JD let out his own laugh, and decided he could risk a joke. “So, where are we going? Harvard, Duke, or Brown?”
“Oh it doesn’t matter which one!” Veronica yelled “We get to go together! I actually applied to Colorado for you and you pulled this!” More laughter mixed with sniffles. “I’m going to kill you and then kiss you when I get my hands on you!”
“In that order? Never pegged you for necrophilia,” JD couldn’t help the automatic response.
Just chuckles this time. “The things you drive me to,” she murmured.
No, the things you drive me to, he didn’t reply. Didn’t have to. He had done it, and if their love could conquer three years apart and college apps, it could conquer anything. For once in his life, a Dean was going to build something instead of blowing it up; a life with his goddess Veronica.
We’ll build the world together.