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Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I’d rather have cancer than a dishonest heart.

Holly makes this declaration during a conversation with the narrator about her relationship with José Ybarra-Jaegar. While she is occasionally dishonest, Holly clearly draws a line between being dishonest and having a dishonest heart. To her, dishonestly can be fun and convenient, but having a dishonest heart is dangerous and self-destructive. This moral code provides a contrast to the world of the wealthy and those aspiring to travel among the elite, where cynicism and dishonesty are routine. As a character who is simultaneously deeply concerned with authenticity and full of contradictions, Holly has a unique moral compass and a sense of self that invite the reader to draw their own conclusions about her authenticity.

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