Denver (Katherine's college choice)
Forever...Denver (Katherine's college choice) is the destination Katherine Danziger selects as she and Michael Wagner approach the end of high school. It matters less as a depicted city than as a decision: Denver is far enough away to trouble her parents and to make the couple’s promised future feel less certain, even as Katherine commits to going there.
The college decision
Earlier, Katherine lists Michigan and Denver among the schools she is waiting to hear from. Michael, by contrast, hopes to attend the University of Vermont or Middlebury College. Their conversation about applications already places Denver within a shared but unsettled future: neither knows yet where they will be accepted, and their possible destinations do not match.
The results arrive two days after Career Day. Katherine is rejected by Michigan and accepted by Penn State and Denver; Michael is accepted by the University of Vermont but not Middlebury College. A week after the pair hear from their schools, Erica Small is accepted at Radcliffe College, setting Katherine’s choice within a wider moment of departures and new plans among their friends.
Katherine writes to Denver immediately to accept. Her parents would rather she wait a few weeks and think it over, particularly because Denver is so far away. She explains her decision by telling them about Michael’s plan, and they are not pleased. The choice is therefore both practical and relational: it names where Katherine intends to go, while exposing how much she has tied that decision to a future she hopes to share with Michael.
Distance and the relationship
The prospect of being apart is already present before the acceptances arrive. When Katherine’s mother asks what will happen next year, when Katherine and Michael will be separated, the question sends Katherine to her guidance counselor first thing. The narrative does not provide the counselor’s advice in this evidence, but the immediate response shows how sharply the future separation unsettles her.
The contrast between Denver and the University of Vermont makes that concern concrete without resolving it. Katherine has chosen a distant destination, while Michael’s accepted place is elsewhere; the book does not establish that either school will change its decision or that the couple will attend together. Denver thus marks a commitment made under uncertainty, not a guarantee that their plans will coincide.
A threshold at the end of high school
Denver enters the story during a wider transition. Katherine describes June as the end of one life and the beginning of another, and her graduation is moved indoors at the last minute when a thunderstorm begins at 4:30 and continues intermittently for hours. Because each senior is allowed only two tickets for the indoor ceremony, Michael waits at home with Jamie Danziger and Katherine’s grandparents and does not see Katherine in her cap and gown.
The following morning, Katherine and Michael leave for Long Beach Island, taking turns driving to Erica’s house at Loveladies Harbor. Four days later, Katherine and Jamie leave for camp. These immediate departures do not establish that Katherine has yet gone to Denver; instead, they place her college decision at the edge of a summer already dividing familiar attachments from what comes next.
Meaning and limits of the choice
The emotional question attached to Denver persists beyond the moment Katherine accepts. At the relationship’s closing exchange, Katherine thinks that she will never regret loving Michael or what they shared, but also that she may not be ready for forever. That ending complicates the earlier image of a college choice made in connection with Michael’s plans: devotion remains, yet it does not settle Katherine’s future for her.
Denver consequently functions as a marker of possibility and distance rather than as a fully described setting. The evidence identifies Katherine’s acceptances, her immediate decision, her parents’ concern, and the mismatch between her destination and Michael’s. It does not say that Denver alone causes the relationship’s end or establish what Katherine’s life there becomes. Its significance lies in the pressure the choice gives to a larger transition: the future can be chosen before its consequences, or the shape of love, is known.
