- When Colin and Hassan get home to the pink mansion, Lindsey is not there. Hollis says she's gone to stay at her friend Janet's house, which Colin thinks is a secret message for him.
- He tells everyone he's going camping and heads out before anyone can object.
- Colin gets to Lindsey's secret hiding place in the woods, and luckily, she's there. Phew—she's not actually at someone's house.
- She welcomes him and they talk about TOC and the breakup. Lindsey figures TOC isn't even real, but just some boring dupe, so she's decided not to care about him.
- Colin envies that. He wishes he could get over stuff so easily, but he's really self-centered. They have a contest over who is more self-centered and joke around.
- Then Colin announces he's figured out who's actually buried in the Archduke's tomb: her great-grandpa, Fred N. Dinzanfar.
- Yep, he's right. Lindsey likes the fact that not everyone knows it though, so it's as if it's become true that it's the Archduke.
- Colin fills her in on the fact that he dumped one of the Katherines. So you are a storyteller then, Lindsey counters, and asks for a good-old-fashioned story with romance and a touch of adventure.
- He tells her about the Katherines, 1-19, rattling through them really quickly. The highlights? He dated K-1 for about two-and-a-half minutes when they were young and she dumped him just as fast. Then came along K-2, through a girl named Amy who set them up and then dumped Colin on K-2's behalf—in fairness, they were only eight at the time.
- Next came K-3, and we already know that story. K-4 was a violin-playing redhead who dumped him for a piano-playing prodigy, and K-5 was a nasty girl who kissed him—on the lips—on the playground while he was reading. The next day she dumped him though.
- Colin met K-6 at smart-kid camp and was with her for seventeen days (a record in his book), but she dumped him because he wasn't good at pottery and push-ups, even though she was.
- When he was in middle school, he caught the attention (or pity) of K-7, a.k.a. pizza face as she was known. After a month, she broke it off because Colin was ruining her reputation (which is saying something since it wasn't all that hot to begin with).
- K-8 was a heartbreaker who asked him out and dumped him just as fast, and K-9 was a really pretty sixth grader who dated Colin while he was in seventh. She wanted to climb the social ladder by dating an older guy—too bad no one thought Colin was cool.
- By the time K-10 rolled around, Colin was dedicated to only pursuing Katherines. He ran in front of K-10's arrow at an archery course and said Cupid had shot him.
- Colin admits K-11 wasn't much of a girlfriend, and K-12 thought Colin was similar to Holden in The Catcher in the Rye and dated him for twenty-five days. She broke it off because she wanted a guy who wasn't so interested in languages and reading.
- In tenth grade Colin wooed and scored with K-13, whom he loved and who loved him back. She eventually broke up with him because he was too smart and too dumb for her, which kind of makes sense when you think about how socially awkward Colin is.
- Then came K-14—they met at a coffee shop and went walking along the lake together—and then K-15, a feminist who liked Colin's mind.
- K-16 and Colin met at the Academic Decathlon, where she broke up with him because she didn't want to breakup with her boyfriend back home. Next came K-17, who Colin met on the internet and who broke up with him because he wasn't emo enough; K-18 met him at a concert and broke up with him in an email after two dates.
- And that brings us to K-19, who was actually K-1. The pair dated for three hundred and forty-three days, until she broke up with him randomly.
- Once Colin's finished running through his dating history, he says that it's more about what you remember happening, rather than what actually happened—after a while, your memories become all you have.
- Lindsey thinks about how he's grown in telling stories, that he's so much better at it now.
- Then they kiss… and again in the driveway when they get home.