“Is it so impossible that Conrad Fisher would like me?”

“And after, when it was bedtime, I would sing, “We love you, Conrad, oh yes we do. We love you, Conrad, and we’ll be true” into the bathroom mirror with a mouthful of toothpaste. I would sing my eight-nine-ten-year-old heart out. But I wasn’t singing to Conrad Birdie. I was singing to my Conrad. Conrad Beck Fisher, the boy of my preteen dreams.”

“I punched my hand through the water. I wanted to kick his ass. 'This is between me and Belly.' Smug piece of shit." - Conrad Fisher”

“I never once cheated on you. I never even looked at another girl when we were together.”Conrad Fisher”

“When Conrad Fisher told a girl he loved her, he meant it. A girl could believe in that. A girl could maybe even bet her whole life on it.”

“Taylor wanted me to forget about Conrad, to just erase him from my mind and memory. She kept saying things like, “everybody has to get over a first love, it’s a rite of passage.” But Conrad wasn’t just my first love. He wasn’t some rite of passage. He was so much more than that. He and Jeremiah and Susannah were my family. In my memory, the three of them would always be entwined, forever linked. There couldn’t be one without the others. If I forgot Conrad, if I evicted him from my heart, pretended like he was never there, it would be like doing those tings to Susannah. And that, I couldn’t do.”

“Conrad calling me again—that was enough to make me forget how to breathe.”