A buzz just under my skin. “Yes, I would like that very much.” Write it down, write it down—a mantra I repeat. Write it down. Write it down. “Well, I’d better go—”

The girl gasps. “Oh yeah, you need to write it down. I see you write stuff down all the time, like even in the elevator. You’re always writing, and I think that’s because of your short memory.” Her words come out fast. I’m taken aback but also quite charmed. “You should do that now so you don’t forget and stuff.” When I don’t move right away, she sighs. “Oh, forget it.” She plops her backpack on the ground, fumbles around inside, pulls out a notebook and a purple colored pencil, checks the digital watch on her small wrist, and writes something down across the page. She tears it out of the notebook, shoves the paper into my hand, and with much effort, picks the backpack up and slides her arms into the straps.

I read, You wil teech Maree guitar lesons on Monday at 5.

“I choose Monday ’cause it’s at the beginning of the week, and it starts with an M and my name starts with an M, so that should be very helpful for you. And then I decided on five o’clock since I get really bored then ’cause it’s too early for dinner and too late to have more snacks.” She looks up at me, waiting. “So is that okay?”

I grip the paper. I have absolutely no idea, but already I know that I’m not going to tell this little sprite no. That seems about as impossible a task as remembering our conversation. In fact, I find that I would very much like to see her again. “I’ll put it into my calendar, um . . .” I scan my notebook.

“Maree,” she says. “I’m Maree, and you put my hair in this sweet beehive, and you’re also going to teach me guitar lessons on Monday.”

I smile. I appreciate her specificity.

With a flip of her beehive, she turns and walks toward the door but stops abruptly because she’s staring at a picture.

I follow her eyes. It’s a picture of me standing outside the tunnel before I went to college the first time. It’s under a framed photo of me and Dad, one taken when I was quite young, with a salmon hanging in the air between us. She looks at me and then again at the picture. “You look the same,” she says.

“Do I?” I run a hand through my hair, pull at the ends that are still short and blonde. “That wasn’t taken a long time ago, maybe five or . . .” I trail off and for a moment I’m swimming, my mind floating in a black void that turns the edges fuzzy. “That was—”

“Ten years ago,” she says.