I changed the subject. Abruptly, I asked, “Are you going to stay in California after you graduate?”
“It depends on med school,” he said.
“Are you… do you have a girlfriend?”
I saw him start. I saw him hesitate.
“No,” he said.
chapterthirty-two
CONRAD
Her name was Agnes. A lot of people called her Aggie, but I stuck with Agnes. She was in my chem class. On any other girl, a name like Agnes wouldn’t have worked. It was an old-lady name. Agnes had short dirty-blond hair, it was wavy, and she had it cut at her chin. Sometimes she wore glasses, and her skin was as pale as milk. When we were waiting for the lab to open up one day, she asked me out. I was so surprised, I said yes.
We started hanging out a lot. I liked being around her. She was smart, and her hair carried the smell of her shampoo not just fresh out of the shower but for a whole day. We spent most of our time together studying. Sometimes we’d go get pancakes or burgers after, sometimes we’d hook up in her room during a study break when her roommate wasn’t around. But it was allcentered around both of us being pre-med. It wasn’t like I spent the night in her room or invited her to stay over in mine. I didn’t hang out with her and her friends or meet her parents, even though they lived nearby.
One day we were studying in the library. The semester was almost over. We’d been dating two, almost three, months.
Out of nowhere, she asked me, “Have you ever been in love?”
Not only was Agnes good at chem, she was really good at catching me off guard. I looked around to see if anyone was listening. “Have you?”
“I asked you first,” she said.
“Then yes.”
“How many times?”
“Once.”
Agnes absorbed my answer as she chewed on her pencil. “On a scale of one to ten, how in love were you?”
“You can’t put being in love on a scale,” I said. “Either you are or you aren’t.”
“But if you had to say.”
I started flipping through my notes. I didn’t look at her when I said, “Ten.”
“Wow. What was her name?”
“Agnes, come on. We have an exam on Friday.”
Agnes made a pouty face and kicked my leg under thetable. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t be able to concentrate. Please? Just humor me.”
I let out a short breath. “Belly. I mean, Isabel. Satisfied?”
Shaking her head, she said, “Uh-uh. Now tell me how you met.”
“Agnes—”
“I swear I’ll stop if you just answer”—I watched her count in her head—“three more questions. Three and that’s it.”
I didn’t say yes or no, I just looked at her, waiting.
“So, how did you meet?”
“We never really met. I just always knew her.”
