You Could Be Mine

You Could Be Mine appears as a section heading in the novel’s 1994 sequence, where its pop-cultural charge meets two contrasting forms of adolescence: Sonia’s withdrawal into headphones and Anthony Casati and Romain Rotier’s noisy confidence as they drive around town. The title gives this passage a frame of youthful swagger, but the text does not say that the song itself is played or heard.

Appearance and Context

The heading is set between the markers for the book’s second part and the year 1994, immediately before a numbered chapter opens with Anthony finding Sonia alone in a storeroom. She is absorbed in rock ’n’ roll through her headphones, staring at her chewed fingernails and failing to hear him enter. The scene places music beside solitude: for Sonia, it forms a private bubble, not a shared performance.

The Title and the Boys’ Swagger

Later in the same sequence, Anthony remembers how unexpectedly well he and Romain have come to get along. He had once thought Romain arrogant and menacing; now he sees him as generous, funny, and capable, recalling how Romain hauled six-hundred-pound boats up the slope to the boathouse by himself. Their friendship takes on a more performative edge when they drive around in Anthony’s father’s Audi Quattro, showing off with the windows open. The narration likens their feeling of being kings to the attitude of Guns N’ Roses, making the section title’s association with youthful bravado apt without establishing it as a song in the scene.

Narrative Significance

The heading gathers together details that the prose keeps distinct: Sonia’s solitary listening, the boys’ easy companionship, and their borrowed sense of command on the road. Its promise of belonging sits beside the chapter’s uneven social encounters—Sonia is withdrawn, while Anthony and Romain move through work and leisure together. The title therefore works as a cultural signal for the period’s adolescent posture and longing, rather than as evidence of a literal performance or a particular song choice.