Chapter 11 The Final Freakout “There are only two pages left to go, Dirk,” Jeanne Betancourt said to the book in her lap. “Not much space for a full-scale freakout.” [“I can make more space.”] “And I assume you’ll be the one doing the freaking out?” [“Oh, you’d better believe it. This book needs to be thrown into the river, and I’m going to impotently raise hell in here with my little words until you agree to do it for me.”] “And I refuse to souse any but the last page, so that Anna and her friends can choose their fates for themselves.” [“‘Souse’ is a good word.”] “Yes.” There was a brief moment of calm. Even the Lethe quieted its babble. Betancourt thought that maybe she could hear the pounding of Acorn’s mighty hooves in the distance, but soon that was gone too. “This is it, isn’t it? It’s almost over.” [“It’s almost over.”] “Endings are never easy, are they?” [“Nope. Which is exactly why I think we should bail right now. Follow my advice, erase the whole book, and it’ll all be over here and now, no waiting around for the end.”] “Your ‘advice’?” [“Yeah.”] “Okay, Dirk, you want to convince me? Go for it. But you have to let me choose where the conversation starts, okay?” [“Fair enough. You know I like a good back-and-forth.”] “Good, because It’s about to get straight-up dialogic in this bitch.” [“Yessss.”] You were talking about violence earlier. And that’s where I want to start. [All right. And hey, thanks for ditching the quotation marks. This is nice.] You’re welcome. Now, here’s the thing: I think you’re conflating violence with power, and power with control. You’re asking yourself a question, but it isn’t whether you’ve been violent to the book. It’s whether you have control over it. [Control.] Yes. [Control over the book.] …Right. [In other words, it’s a matter of—] —Dirk, no. [—authority.] Come on. [You have to admit, that was pretty good.] …Yes, it was. [Thank you. Now, I don’t know if I agree with your premise. About me conflating those terms. Okay, sure, violence doesn’t equal power, although it certainly is the easiest way to assert it. And yes, I may have been using “do violence to” as shorthand for “claim power over.” But how is power different from control?] One can have power without using it. And one can use power to follow, not just to lead. [But isn’t that just leading from behind, then? Or, at the least, loaning your power to the leader, the person who is in control?] That’s— [Hang on, I’m gonna add in some extra pages so we can keep this going.] Fine, but you can’t delay the end of the book forever. [Here we go. Hang on.] #DetectivePony