I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stagecoach. I remember the night we camped out and I heard her whisper "think of me as a place" from her sleeping bag with the centaur print. I remember being in her father's basement workshop when we picked up an unknown man sobbing over the shortwave radio and the night we got so high we convinced ourselves that the road was a hologram projected by the headlight beams. I remember how she would always get everyone to vote on what we should do next and the time she said "all water is cla**ic water" and shyly turned her face away. At volleyball games her parents sat in the bleachers like amba**adors from Indiana in all their midwestern schmaltz.
She was destroyed when they were busted for operating a private judicial system within U.S. borders. Sometimes I'm awakened in the middle of the night by the clatter of a room service cart and I think back on Kitty. Those summer evenings by the government lake, talking about the paradox of multiple Santas or how it felt to have your heart broken. I still get a hollow feeling on Labor Day when the summer ends and I remember how I would always refer to her boyfriends as what's-his-face, which was wrong of me and I'd like to apologize to those guys right now, wherever they are: No one deserves to be called what's-his-face.