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cartoons, like with a banana peel.”
    Suddenly I didn’t feel like crying anymore. “Are you calling me an animal?” I demanded, turning my head to look at him. He was trying to keep a straight face, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up. Then he turned his head to look at me, and we both started laughing. I laughed so hard my back hurt worse.
    Mid-laugh, I stopped and said, “Ow.”
    He sat up and said, “I’m gonna pick you up and bring you over to the couch.”
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    “No,” I protested weakly. “I’m too heavy for you. I’ll get up in a minute, just leave me here for now.”
    Conrad frowned, and I could tell he was offended. “I know I can’t bench-press my body weight like Jere, but I can pick up a girl, Belly.”
    I blinked. “It’s not that. I’m heavier than you think.
    You know, freshman fifteen or whatever.” My face got hot, and I momentarily forgot about how badly my back hurt or how weird it was that he’d brought up Jere. I just felt embarrassed.
    In a quiet voice, he said, “Well, you look the same to me.” Then, very gently, he scooped me off the floor and into his arms. I held on with one arm around his neck, and said, “It was more like ten. Freshman ten.”
    He said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
    He carried me over to the couch and set me down.
    “I’m gonna get you some Advil. That should help a little.”
    Looking up at him, I had this sudden thought.
    Oh my God. I still love you.
    I’d thought my feelings for Conrad were safely tucked away, like my old Rollerblades and the little gold watch my dad bought me when I first learned how to tell time.
    But just because you bury something, that doesn’t mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they’d been there all along. All that time. I had to just face it. He was a part of my DNA. I had brown hair and I had freckles and I would always have Conrad in my heart. He would 44 · jenny han
    inhabit just that tiny piece of it, the little-girl part that still believed in musicals, but that was it. That was all he got. Jeremiah would have everything else—the present me and the future me. That was what was important. Not the past.
    Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always. Conrad at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen years old. For the rest of my life, I would think of him fondly, the way you do your first pet, the first car you drove. Firsts were important. But I was pretty sure lasts were even more important. And Jeremiah, he was going to be my last and my every and my always.
    Conrad and I spent the rest of that day together but not together. He started a fire, and then he read at the kitchen table while I watched It’s a Wonderful Life. For lunch, we had canned tomato soup and the rest of my chocolate-covered pretzels. Then he went for a run on the beach and I settled in for Casablanca. I was wiping tears from the corners of my eyes with my T-shirt sleeve when he came back. “This movie makes my heart hurt,” I croaked.
    Taking off his fleece, Conrad said, “Why? It had a happy ending. She was better off with Laszlo.”
    I looked at him in surprise. “You’ve seen Casablanca?”
    “Of course. It’s a classic.”
    “Well, obviously you weren’t paying that close of we’ll always have summer · 45
    attention, because Rick and Ilsa are meant for each other.”
    Conrad snorted. “Their little love story is nothing compared to the work Laszlo is doing for the Resistance.”
    Blowing my nose with a napkin, I said, “For a young guy, you’re way too cynical.”
    He rolled his eyes. “And for a supposedly grown girl, you’re way too emotional.” He headed for the stairs.
    “Robot!” I yelled at his back. “Tin man!”
    I heard him laughing as he closed the bathroom door.
    The next morning, Conrad was gone. He left just like I thought he’d leave. No good-bye, no nothing. Just gone, like a ghost. Conrad,