Veronica Walsh is in the middle of painting her toenails black when her mom
knocks on the door and asks, "What did you do with that 2-liter bottle of
Mountain Dew?" Before Veronica can say, her mother starts riffing
on Veronica's latest infractions, the most severe of which include
polishing off three bottles of Mountain Dew in under a week, refusing to return
her Blockbuster movie rentals on time, and putting out her clove cigarette
in the shag carpet in the den. Veronica, in boxers and a Marilyn Manson
T-shirt, rolls her eyes on cue and pipes up with smart-mouthed retorts.


This is business as usual at Veronica's split-level ranch in Springfield,
Ohio, where her mother picks out her worst faults with stunning persistence
- exactly the kind of harassment Veronica's been trying to avoid since her
parents bought this spacious ranch-style family home five years ago. "It's
like going through hell every day," Veronica says. "My mom is such a bitch
sometimes, she just won't leave me alone. It's like she just has nothing
better to do than to bug me. She's such a loser!"







 





Veronica pads barefoot across the wall-to-wall olive green carpet she
refers to as "Brady Bunch vomit green," trailing occasional blobs of black
toenail polish, and gestures out back to the quarter-acre fenced-in
lot. "She can't even get rid of that stupid old swing set. It's like totally
rusty. Some kid's gonna scrape his knee on that thing and get gangrene or
something, and we'll get sued, and things'll suck even worse than they do
now, which is totally impossible to imagine."
























 


Next ... Veronica gets real! 


 









        
 

        
 

        
 
 

        
 














 






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