Forever...

“As I opened the car door all I could think of to say was, ‘See you…’ but that wasn’t at all what I meant.” 

After their first car ride, Katherine finds herself attracted to Michael but still unable to articulate her feelings to him. She struggles to say what she really means, which is that she wants to see him again, but instead is vague and noncommittal. As her relationship with Michael grows, Katherine learns how to articulate how she really feels and becomes comfortable expressing her true feelings to Michael.

“In many ways Jamie is still a little girl. She looks up to me—at least that’s what my parents say. And I think they might be right. It took a long time for me to realize that, but when I did it helped me get over being jealous of all her talents.”

Katherine sometimes struggles with jealousy over her younger sister’s artistic talents. As Katherine grows throughout the text, Jamie increasingly desires to be like her and to follow in her sister’s footsteps. Katherine realizes that Jamie does look up to her and strives to emulate her, which encourages Katherine to act in a way that lives up to her values so as to be a good role model for her younger sister.

“It occurred to me in the middle of the night that Michael asked if I was a virgin to find out what I expected of him. If I hadn’t been one then he probably would have made love to me. What scares me is I’m not sure how I feel about that.” 

After a conversation with Michael, Katherine struggles to decipher how she feels. She understands it would have been easier to have sex with Michael that night if she were not a virgin because the weight of it being her first time would not have been a factor. Despite her growing attraction to Michael, Katherine is still unsure about sex, how she wants to proceed, and whether she is ready to take that next step into adulthood.

“I wasn’t going to say I loved Michael yet. I was too quick to think I’d loved Tommy Aronson and he and I never even got to be friends.” 

In this quote, Katherine illustrates her growth and naturally reflective nature. While she dated Tommy Aronson the year before, they broke up due to her disinterest in having sex with him. In her new relationship, Katherine can look back on her relationship with Tommy and see it for what it was: a youthful dalliance that did not mean anything in the long run. She reflects on how she wants this relationship to be different: She does not want to rush into anything she is not truly ready for with Michael and understands the importance of having a basis of friendship with her partner, something she never achieved with Tommy.

“‘You don’t need to love to have sex.’ ‘But it means more that way.’ [...] ‘We look at sex differently…I see it as a physical thing and you see it as a way of expressing love.’”

Erica and Katherine differ in their perspectives on sex, but importantly, the friends respect each other’s opinions. As Katherine begins her relationship with Michael, she feels herself falling in love with him, and therefore sex takes on greater significance and meaning in her life as a symbol of her love for Michael. For Erica, she wants to explore sex as another aspect and extension of her identity: The person she has sex with is not as important as her ability to discover something about herself and her likes and dislikes. Each girls’ opinion has value given their individual situations, and they understand where each other is coming from, illustrating to the reader that there is more than one healthy way to view sex and intimacy.

“I’ve heard that people who come from happy homes, with parents who really care about each other, like my grandparents, tend to have good marriages themselves.”

Katherine attributes immense importance to her grandparents’ and her parents’ relationships. Although she does not always agree with their perspectives, especially as she feels her parents try to encourage her to view Michael as a short-term relationship, Katherine values that her parents love one another and model a healthy romantic partnership. Seeing these examples of healthy love in her life encourages Katherine to establish healthy boundaries for herself in her own relationship and to have something to strive for.

“When he got sick last year and I went to the hospital to visit him I realized he was old too…but I wasn’t afraid of him…because I loved him.”

Michael picks Katherine up from her job as a candy striper at the hospital’s geriatric unit, and Katherine explains why she chose to work with geriatric patients. She explains that while, as a young girl, she was afraid of the elderly and the ill, her perspective changed when her own grandfather had a stroke. Suddenly, someone she loved was old and ill, and her love for her grandfather outweighed her fear. Katherine illustrates here how love can radically alter one’s perspective and how it can make one more empathetic and understanding.

“In the old days girls were divided into two groups—those who did and those who didn’t. My mother told me that. Nice girls didn’t, naturally. They were the ones boys wanted to marry. I’m glad those days are over but I still get angry when older people assume that everyone in my generation screws around.”

Katherine expresses her frustration with the way different generations view love and sex. Katherine, a child of the 1970s, enjoys the benefits of the free love and loosening sexual mores of American culture that emerged in the 1960s. She expresses disgust with the way older generations viewed sex, particularly the onus of responsibility placed on young girls to remain virgins while boys could explore their sexuality freely. While she is glad that those double standards have diminished, she remains annoyed with older generations that assume her generation is sexually promiscuous.

“‘Oh wow…’ she said, clucking her tongue, ‘your generation is so hung up about sex.’”

When Jamie asks if Katherine and Michael have had sex, using an expletive to describe the act of sex, Katherine is aghast and surprised at her sister’s brazen attitude toward sex. Jamie, a few years younger than Katherine, symbolizes that successive generations’ attitudes toward sex will continue to shift and change and that even Katherine and her cohort of 18-year olds’ sexual attitudes will seem outdated and rigid compared to younger generations.

“Even though I know it’s natural and I’m glad my parents love each other I can’t help feeling embarrassed. What would it be like to be in bed with Michael? Sometimes I want to so much—but other times I’m afraid.”

As Katherine and Michael’s relationship becomes more serious, it becomes harder for her to resist her desire to have sex with him. She wonders what it will be like and thinks about her parents’ own sexual habits, one of her limited frames of reference, and wonders whether sex with Michael will be similar. Katherine expresses a healthy attitude here of acknowledging that her parents are inherently sexual beings, while still expressing discomfort with the fact that her parents have a healthy sex life.

“You have a lot of common sense, Kath. You’ve always made intelligent decisions…still, you and Michael are very young. [...] I’m not worried. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Katherine’s father, more so than her mother, expresses anxiety about Katherine’s burgeoning sexuality. Although they speak around the topic of sex rather than confronting it, her father nonetheless expresses his concern for Katherine, while communicating that he does trust her. Katherine’s father represents the parental figure’s discomfort when they see their children growing up and facing more complex problems like love and sex. Her father trusts Katherine’s judgment and does not forbid her from having sex or shame her for wanting to but remains concerned for his daughter’s emotional well-being.

“I could have said it back to him right away. I was thinking it all along. I was thinking, I love you, Michael. But can you really love someone you’ve seen just nineteen times in your life?” 

During their ski trip to Vermont, Michael tells Katherine that he loves her for the first time. Katherine does not say it back right away and questions whether she can really love Michael after only knowing him a few short months. Katherine suggests here that while her feelings for Michael are strong, she does not yet entirely trust her own feelings and instead relies on arbitrary markers of time to determine whether she and Michael are really in love.

“I know…because I love you too,’ I whispered into his chest. Saying it the first time was the hardest. There’s something so final about it. The second time I sat up and said it right to him. ‘I love you, Michael Wagner.’ ‘Forever?’ he asked. ‘Forever,’ I said.” 

In an important moment in the text, Katherine tells Michael she loves him for the first time. She says it twice, with increasing certainty and confidence each time. This is a threshold moment for Katherine as she expresses her love for Michael, describing it as feeling “final” and then promising Michael “forever.” This solidifies their connection and their belief that because they love each other now, it means that they always will.

“It’s up to you to decide what’s right and what’s wrong…I’m not going to tell you to go ahead but I’m not going to forbid it either. It’s too late for any of that. I expect you to handle it with a sense of responsibility though…either way.”

Katherine’s mother outlines her expectations for Katherine now that she assumes she is having sex. Like Katherine’s father, her mother does not shame her or try to convince her that having sex is morally corrupt or wrong. Instead, she communicates a healthy belief that if Katherine is ready to decide to have sex, she should be ready to do so responsibly and determine what that looks like for her based on her values and morals. This is a powerful moment for Katherine, as her mother does not exactly endorse her sexual activity but acknowledges Katherine’s agency and empowerment in making the choice for herself.

“I watched him, thinking the better you know a person the more you can love him. Do two people ever reach the point where they know absolutely everything there is to know about each other?”

Now that she has experienced love, Katherine wonders about its longevity and how love changes and shapes over time. Although she does not explicitly say so, she implies here that she envisions a future with Michael beyond senior year, a future in which their love continues to grow as they age and change, wondering if she will ever reach a point with him in which she knows everything about him.

“Like my mother said, you can’t go back to holding hands and anyway, I don’t want to.”

After having sex for the first time, Michael and Katherine’s desire for one another only increases. As Katherine becomes more comfortable in herself as a sexual being, she recalls her mother’s warning that sex does change a relationship, but it is a welcome one for Katherine. Now that she has had sex, she finds it harder to abstain or merely hold hands with Michael. Katherine feels comfortable with this change, deciding that she does not want to return to the way her relationship with Michael was before they had sex.

“Sometimes it’s hard for parents to accept the facts…so let’s keep it between the two of us, okay?”

Katherine receives a series of informational pamphlets about sex and pregnancy from her grandmother, a fervent supporter of Planned Parenthood. Forever… was written in a post-Roe v. Wade world, and Katherine’s grandmother is a representation of the idea that a woman should be empowered with knowledge to make informed decisions about her body. Katherine’s grandmother is more overtly sex-positive than Katherine’s parents and illustrates this in showing her understanding that Katherine wants to and will have sex and, therefore, should have access to information necessary to make the experience a safe and fun one for her.

“When we were inside he fastened the chain around my neck and kissed me. I looked down at the silver disk, touched it and said, ‘In my whole life nothing will ever mean more to me.’”

Although their relationship does not stand the test of time, when Katherine and Michael are in the throes of their relationship, Katherine does feel a sense of finality and longevity with Michael. Her reaction to Michael’s necklace, with the inscription “forever” written on one side, indicates Katherine’s fervent belief that she and Michael will be together forever. In this moment, she cannot picture a future in which the gift he gave her on her 18th birthday is not the most important one she will ever receive. Katherine’s musing here captures the essence of first love’s power, and how even after their breakup, this relationship will always carry significance for her.

“June—the month most seniors live for—the end of one life and the beginning of another. I read that once, on the cover of a paperback. And in a way it’s true. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t caught up in the mood myself.”

Katherine and Michael date for the latter half of their senior year of high school. By June, both have secured summer jobs miles away from one another. This quote indicates the weight Katherine feels as she stands on the cusp of adulthood. While at this point in the text she and Michael are still together and still very much in love, all that awaits Katherine that summer (and for the rest of her life) draws closer. Michael is soon to be a part of her past, that past life that informs her future decisions, but one that does not follow her.

“‘I hope she has a good life. [...] I figure two people who really want a kid will take good care of her…don’t you think? [...] It’s not like I could keep her…that wouldn’t be fair…’”

Sybil shares her feelings about placing her newborn daughter with adoptive parents. Sybil’s character within the text is a cautionary tale of teen pregnancy but not one in which Sybil is demonized or shamed for having sex and falling pregnant. Instead, the text treats Sybil with great care: She goes onto an excellent college, and here she garners sympathy as she reflects on her decision to place her baby with an adoptive family. Sybil has real love for the child she carried in secret for many months, but she also knows that she is not ready to be a mother. Sybil sacrifices something important to her to give her daughter a better life and in turn, is rewarded with the opportunity to continue growing, learning, and experiencing life as a young adult without the burden of parenthood.

“After, we lay in each other’s arms and I thought, there are so many ways to love a person. This is how it should be—forever.”

Just having had sex with Michael, Katherine reflects on a fundamental human truth in this quote: Love is multifaceted and complex, and there is no single definition of love or way to love another person. This quote is premonitory: Katherine loves Michael in this moment, but soon her love for him will change as they go their separate ways for the summer, and she meets Theo. She will always love him, but the way she loves him will not always be the way she loves him in this moment.

“We didn’t talk or look at each other but there was a lot going on between us. When the record ended I broke away from him and ran out of the canteen. I went down to the lake where it’s cool and dark and I sat on a rock and I cried. How can you love one person and still be attracted to another?”

Katherine can feel an undeniable connection between her and Theo, which grows throughout the time they spend together at camp. As attracted as she feels to Theo, and as difficult as it is to deny, their chemistry deeply upsets Katherine, as she feels unfaithful to Michael. She cries in response to this confusion, worried that her attraction to Theo jeopardizes her love for Michael, when she is experiencing a normal part of growing up and letting go of first love.

“‘Then it’s really over, isn’t it?’ Suddenly question number four popped into my mind. Have you thought about how this relationship will end?” 

As she and Michael break up, Katherine recalls the article her mother gave her about youth sexual habits. At the time, the pamphlet’s question angered Katherine, because she was unwilling and unable to envision a future in which her relationship with Michael ended. Here, on the cusp of their relationship’s end, Katherine realizes that she did to allow herself to picture her and Michael’s breakup and realizes that if she had done so she may have avoided the pain she experiences now.