During the summer between ninth and tenth grade, I worked at as a counselor at a local daytime summer camp. While I was there I worked with a girl two years younger named Tegan (which means "bright beauty"). For those four weeks, we got along together like two people who had known each other forever. Then she went away to Kansas for the rest of the summer. The way high school was, and the way I was, we rarely said a word through high school. I saw her once after graduation at Circuit City, and the last I heard, she had moved to San Francisco.

Now, my recollection of those sunny summer days might have been hazy, but I sincerely believe that she might possibly be the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. I had long since forgotten about her, but then the strangest thing happened. My friend Haj said that there was a girl named Tegan working a Julie's Supper Kitchen in San Francisco. Now, even though the name Tegan is pretty rare, the chances that this was the same girl border on astronomical. And even though I hadn't really talked to her in almost ten years, I still got this strange feeling, as though I had to see her. Not a feeling like, "It would be cool to see her again," but a feeling like "I have to see her again."

Strange. People drift in and out of your life all the time. Some of them leave an impression. Some of them don't. Sometimes you don't even realize what they've done until they're long gone.

Tegan definitely left an impression....