An Abundance of Katherines: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Lindsey, Colin, and Hassan have continued walking through the field, which turns abruptly into a graveyard. A six-foot obelisk marks the grave of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Lindsey says that Colin probably knows the story already, but she describes the life of Franz Ferdinand anyway. Lindsey says Franz was lonely because he was “a total nerd,” who his family thought was a “liberal wuss.” He married an unsuitable match for love. It was a cute story, Lindsey remarks, until they were both shot dead in Sarajevo in 1914. The emperor, Franz’s uncle, had them buried outside Vienna and didn’t even attend the funeral. He did, however, use the assassination as justification to start World War I.

Colin looks at the obelisk and reflects on what might have been for the Archduke if he hadn’t been so much like Colin. “In the end,” Colin reflects, “the Archduke had two problems: no one gave a shit about him (at least not till his corpse started a war), and one day he got a piece taken out of his middle.” Colin determines that he will fill his own hole and do something to remain special, making people care about him. He will do so by using his past to inform the future, impress Katherine XIX, and “make the world safer for Dumpees everywhere.”

Hassan asks how this rural town in Tennessee got the Archduke. Lindsey says the town bought him around 1921 for thirty-five hundred dollars. Colin mentions that thirty-five hundred dollars in 1921 amounts to far more in modern currency and would require a lot of eleven-dollar tours to turn a profit. Lindsey rolls her eyes and says that the town can figure these things out well enough with calculators, but Colin insists that he was not trying to impress anyone.

Lindsey suddenly notices some of her friends from school trudging over the slope. When the newcomers introduce themselves, Colin speaks bad fake French while Hassan pretends to translate for him. A muscular boy Lindsey stares at turns out to be Colin as well, and Hassan whispers to Colin Singleton that this new Colin’s name is “The Other Colin.” In Hassan’s introductions, Chase becomes “Jeans Are Too Tight,” and Fulton becomes “Short One Chewing Tobacco.” The girl, Katrina, is “incredibly hot—in that popular-girl-with-bleached-teeth-and-anorexia kind of way, which was Colin’s least favorite way of being hot.” Upon learning her name, Colin thinks, “close, but no cigar.”

When Colin says the word “hemorrhoid” in French, Hassan cannot resist telling Katrina that he said her face was beautiful like a hemorrhoid. Lindsey bursts out laughing and finally insists that Colin and Hassan drop the act. Everyone laughs. The Other Colin (TOC) tells Lindsey that someone named Hollis would like Colin and Hassan. Colin watches Lindsey fake pout to get TOC to kiss her on the forehead and remembers many times when he has been the fake pouter.

Colin hopes to work on the Theorem in the car. Hassan says he needs some Gatorade before he can get back on the road with Colin. Lindsey says they can all go back to the store, and her voice reminds Colin of K-19. TOC kisses Lindsey and says he can’t go back to the store because Hollis is there, and he and Chase skipped out on work.

Hollis, who is at the store when they arrive, turns out to be Lindsey’s mother. Hollis recognizes Colin as the winner of the game show KranialKidz. Colin is shocked that she watched the show because no one watched it. Hollis is star struck and insists on cooking dinner for Colin and Hassan.

On the way back to Hollis and Lindsey’s house, Hollis leads the way in a pink pickup truck with Hassan while Colin drives the Hearse with Lindsey to give him directions. Lindsey admires Colin’s skill with languages. In German, Lindsey says her mother thinks Colin is good for her. Hollis wants Lindsey to become a doctor, but Lindsey says she doesn’t need a doctor’s money. She needs her life, which she likes as-is in Gutshot. Lindsey points out the textile factory that has been the main source of jobs in Gutshot since her great grandfather started the plant in 1917.

Lindsey makes Colin swear not to laugh when she tells him what the plant makes: mainly tampons. Colin doesn’t laugh but rather reflects that tampons are “a little bit like grizzly bears: he was aware of their existence, but he’d never seen one in the wild, and didn’t really care to.” Colin follows Hollis’s pink truck up a hill to a huge, pink house. Inside, Hollis tells Colin and Hassan to make themselves at home while she and Lindsey fix dinner. Colin notices a photo of Hollis with a girl who looks like Lindsey, except that she looks more goth. When Lindsey comes to ask if he and Hassan like green beans, Colin asks if the photo is of her sister. Lindsey tells him that it’s her in eighth grade. Hassan tries to change the subject back to green beans, and Lindsey disappears back into the kitchen.

Colin wanders around until he finds a room with an imposing desk that looks like “the kind of place where a president might sign a bill into law.” Colin begins writing notes about the Theorem and devises a bell curve to represent the distribution of people along the scale from Dumper to Dumpee. He places himself at the left end of the bell curve, as an extreme Dumpee. As he tries to find an equation to represent his simplest romance with the Katherine I, he begins to sweat with exertion but feels even more confident that he can use his extensive dumping experience to come up with the formula he seeks. Once he does, “she” will see him again as a genius.

After an hour, Colin returns to the dining room, where everyone is seated for dinner. He notices that the Wells family already seems to love Hassan. Hassan, Colin reflects, is amazingly gifted with the ability to make people like him. At Hollis’s invitation, Hassan says grace. All he says is “Bismillah” because, as he says, “We are a terse people. Terse, and also hungry.” Everyone begins eating and is silent for a while. The narrator speculates that the Arabic made everyone uncomfortable. Only Hassan speaks, complimenting the food, until Colin finds something in his food that Lindsey and Hollis tell him is birdshot. Colin decides to mostly eat his green beans and rice.

After dinner, Hollis asks Colin how it felt to win KranialKidz because she recalls that he did not seem very excited. Colin says he felt bad for the kid who lost. Hassan chimes in that he was excited enough for the both of them. Colin grows quiet because KranialKidz reminds him of Katherine XIX. After a silence, Hollis speaks to say Colin and Hassan should work for her this summer in Gutshot on a project she’s starting.

Colin tells Hollis that he’s not qualified to do any work because he always spends his summers at smart-kid camp and has developed no marketable skills. She says he just needs to be reasonably smart and not from Gutshot, and she will pay five hundred dollars a week in addition to providing free room and board. Colin silently consults with Hassan and then answers “okay” for them both. After all, he thinks, road trips have destinations, and Gutshot is as good a one as any. After all, it is the home of his first “Eureka” moment, Hollis makes him feel a little famous, Hassan could use the money, and it will be good work experience for them both.

Colin consults Hassan in Arabic about his worry that the job will take up his time for working on the Theorem. Hassan asks in English if they can make sure Colin has time to doodle. Colin is affronted that Hassan calls his work “doodling,” and Hassan is offended when Lindsey says the Arabic exchange sounded like gibberish. He tells her, “We’re speaking the sacred language of the Qur’an, the language of the great calipha and Saladin, the most beautiful and intricate of all human tongues.” Lindsey says it sounds like “a raccoon clearing its throat” but also says Colin can have time to do his work as long as neither of them take her room.

A while later, Hollis decides they should all play Scrabble. Lindsey is aghast that Colin is a genius but has never played Scrabble. He insists he is not a genius, so she concedes to call him a “smartypants,” which he likes. They play Scrabble, and Colin beats everyone soundly.

In the evening, Colin calls his parents and tells them he is in Gutshot but does not tell them he is staying with the Wellses. He then stays up late working on the Theorem at the empty-drawered desk in the room he has taken as his bedroom. Colin reflects that he has always liked desks with empty drawers.

Just as Colin is wondering whether he lacks the math skills for the Theorem, Lindsey comes in wearing pajamas. She bites her thumb nervously, which Colin tells her he does also. Lindsey says she only does it in private. She then tells him she is there to tell him about the photo Colin found earlier “so you don’t think I’m an absolute asshole” because she has been lying awake worrying that he and Hassan think poorly of her for it.

Lindsey tells Colin that she used to be ugly and got picked on a lot. Colin tries to connect what Lindsey is saying to his memories of Katherine I, and she tells him that the first rule of stories is no interrupting. She goes on to tell him that in eighth grade, she had Hollis help her re-make her image to be “all alternative” and “half-emo and half-goth and half-punk and half-nerd chic.” She was different, and she and her peers hated each other for a year. Then, in high school, she decided to embody the image of a cool kid and became one. But, she clarifies, she’s “not an asshole to people,” and didn’t sell her soul to become popular.

Colin says he wouldn’t judge Lindsey if she had sold her soul because “not having friends sucks.” He wonders aloud if his desire to be famous is, as Hassan has insinuated, really a desire to be popular. He begins to tell her about a class trip to the zoo when he had to pee, but he veers off on a tangent about overhydration. Lindsey says it’s weird to watch his brain work. Colin reflects inwardly that he is not very good at telling linear stories. He recommences speaking, saying, “I came relatively close to having a lion bite off my penis. And […] shit like that never happens to popular people.” Lindsey says that would be a good story if he knew how to tell it, and that she thinks he’s cool and wants him to think she’s cool, “and that’s all popular is.”

In a section subtitled, “The End (of the Beginning),” Colin recalls how after his first kiss with Katherine I, he kept trying to translate Ovid but couldn’t focus. After three minutes, Katherine said she was breaking up with him. He went back to Ovid silently until her parents took her home. Their short relationship, Colin thinks, “was the [Katherine Phenomenon] in its most unadulterated form. It was the immutable tango between the Dumper and the Dumpee: the coming and the seeing and the conquering and the returning home.”