CHARACTER
Penpalby Dathan Auerbach

Veronica

Veronica

Quick Facts

  • Role: Older sister, childhood acquaintance turned teenage love interest; a symbol of what a normal future could be for the narrator
  • First appearance: Briefly in childhood school memories; reemerges as a teen during the “Screens” chapter at the Dirt Theatre
  • Fate: Fatally struck by a car in a targeted attack shortly after her first date with the narrator
  • Major themes: Loss of Innocence, Stalking and Obsession
  • Key relationships: Her younger brother; the narrator; the man who targets and kills her

Who They Are

At first, Veronica exists on the periphery—a pretty older girl from childhood whose presence is more felt than detailed. When she reappears in adolescence, she becomes a possibility: someone who coaxes the narrator out of isolation and into an ordinary life of movies, jokes, and first dates. Her warmth and directness make her feel real and achievable, yet that same vivid normalcy is exactly what the story’s darkness seeks to annihilate. Veronica is both a person and a promise—and the plot’s cruelty is measured by how completely that promise is taken away.

Personality & Traits

Veronica’s personality shines through casual moments: playful teasing that disarms awkwardness, confident flirtation that sets the tone for their reunion, and a startling resilience after the attack. Even when broken and in pain, her thoughts are for others. The text gives few physical details, emphasizing instead her effect on people—how she lights up the narrator’s memory and attention.

  • Kind, teasing warmth: She gently ribs the narrator about childhood games (“Do you still play Ninja Turtles with your friends?”), turning nostalgia into connection rather than embarrassment.
  • Confident and direct: At the theater, she admits she’s newly single and wants to come more often, signaling agency and interest without coyness.
  • Resilient and hopeful: After the accident, she asks to “redo our date,” asserting a future she believes they still can have.
  • Family-minded: In her last coherent moments, she warns about her brother’s disappearance—prioritizing protection over self.
  • Beauty as presence, not detail: As a child she was “probably the prettiest girl in the school”; as a teen, her “dirty blonde hair” and the narrator’s awe underline how her influence is felt more than cataloged.

Character Journey

Veronica’s arc is devastatingly brief. She shifts from a hazy childhood memory to a vibrant teenage crush at the Dirt Theatre, where easy banter and shared taste promise a normal romance. That promise is shattered in the parking lot when a car deliberately runs her down, transforming flirtation into horror. In the hospital, with her jaw wired shut, she delivers two clues—someone “took my picture,” and her brother had “run away”—that connect the present attack to long-brewing dangers from the narrator’s past. After her death, messages sent from her phone simulate recovery and affection, prolonging hope only to twist it into a deeper grief. Her journey compresses the story’s emotional trajectory: from tentative innocence to violated intimacy, revealing how obsession methodically crushes the ordinary happiness she represents.

Key Relationships

  • The Narrator: With him, Veronica models a life unshadowed by fear—buying tickets, trading jokes, making plans. Their chemistry is uncomplicated, which is precisely the point: she offers the narrator a vision of who he could be without the past. Her murder doesn’t just wound him; it rewrites his present as a continuation of earlier trauma and compels the search for the truth behind both.
  • Josh: As an older sister, she’s both admired and resented in the background—he once calls her an “ugly crow,” a kid’s defensive jab at someone others admire. In the end, her urgent mention that he “ran away” reframes childhood bickering as the facade over a family crisis, showing her instinct to protect him even as she’s dying.
  • The Stalker / Penpal: He doesn’t just kill Veronica; he weaponizes her presence—first by destroying the narrator’s happiness, then by stealing her voice via posthumous texts. The attack is a jealous erasure, turning her into an instrument of terror and making clear that his goal is dominance over the narrator’s life and loves.

Defining Moments

Even brief, Veronica’s scenes carry outsized weight, marking the pivot points of hope, horror, and revelation.

  • Reunion at the Dirt Theatre (Screens)

    • What happens: She and the narrator reconnect as teens, flirt, and make plans.
    • Why it matters: Establishes the story’s brightest thread of normalcy, making the later violence maximally cruel.

  • The Car Attack

    • What happens: After their date, a car deliberately runs her down.
    • Why it matters: The private romance becomes public, premeditated violence, proving the antagonist will annihilate joy to control the narrator.

  • Hospital Confessions

    • What happens: With her jaw wired shut, she forces out that someone “took my picture” and that her brother had “run away.”
    • Why it matters: These details fuse past and present, providing the key that unlocks the broader pattern of surveillance and danger.

  • Posthumous Texts

    • What happens: “Her” messages claim recovery and love, sent from her phone after she dies.
    • Why it matters: The deception enacts psychological torture, turning comfort into evidence of manipulation and deepening the narrator’s loss.

Essential Quotes

Hhh … he … p … pi … picture. M … my pictu … he took it.
This halting confession, forced through pain and restraint, compresses the crime’s essence: possession. The focus on the stolen image links the intimate date to a long-running pattern of surveillance, recasting Veronica’s attack as part of a sustained campaign rather than a random act.

No … Josh … he ran away … I should’ve told you.
Her concern is outward even at the edge of death. The line collapses family dynamics, guilt, and urgency into a single breath, turning a sibling aside into a revelation that the past’s dangers were already in motion.

I love you.
Appearing in texts after her death, these words are both tender and monstrous. They show how the antagonist hijacks Veronica’s voice to prolong hope, then weaponizes that stolen intimacy to deepen the narrator’s trauma.

My boyfriend didn’t like these movies, but we just broke up, so I plan on coming more often.
Casual and bold, this line signals Veronica’s agency and interest without game-playing. It frames the theater as a space of freedom and choice—subsequently violated by the attack that tries to take those choices away.