This happened over twenty years ago, back when I was still in middle school.

It was just a few days before summer break was about to end, and my mother drove my younger brother and me to the local community pool. I don't remember the details clearly, but my brother and I had probably begged her to take us so we could squeeze every last bit of fun out of what little break we had left. Once we arrived, my mother stayed on the pool deck while my brother and I jumped in and played.

After we had been playing for a while, someone called out my name. When I turned toward the voice, I saw a girl standing there who went to the same middle school as me.

I wasn't particularly close with her—let's call her N—and we had never been in the same class. She had gone to the same elementary school as a friend of mine, so we had only chatted a handful of times.

"What a coincidence!" I said. N asked, "Can I play with you guys?" Of course, there was no reason to say no. In fact, having N there was bound to be much more fun than just playing with my brother. So the three of us hung out together for the rest of the day.

Eventually, evening approached, and it was time to go home. Since N had come to the pool alone, we decided to give her a ride in our car.

Along the way, my mother asked where N's house was, and N gave us directions, saying things like, "Turn right at this street," "Turn left here," and "Go straight down that road."

My mother followed her directions, but after a while, she noticed something strange. No matter how you looked at it, we had been driving in circles down the exact same streets. When my mother pointed this out, N spoke up.

"But I know this is the right way."

So my mother followed N's instructions again... but sure enough, we ended up on the exact same roads as before.

Finally, I snapped. "Enough already!" I raised my voice. N replied, "I'm sorry. But my mom and dad told me I'm only allowed to take this way home..." Then, almost in a whisper to my mother, she added, "You can drop me off at the tunnel up ahead."

In the end, N got out right in front of the tunnel, and that was the end of it for that day. But after N got out, my mother tilted her head in confusion and muttered, "Was there even a house past that tunnel?" That stayed on my mind.

Then summer break ended, and the new trimester began. Still somewhat curious, I brought up what happened at the pool to the friend who had gone to elementary school with N. My friend surprised me by saying that both of N's parents had died when she was little, and that she was raised by her grandmother. Even more shocking was that her grandmother had apparently passed away during summer break. When I asked for the date she died, it was a little before the day I met N at the pool...

Normally speaking, nobody goes playing at a pool right after their guardian passes away. With her grandmother gone, N never got to start the new term with us; she was taken in by other relatives. Naturally, on the day of the opening ceremony after summer break, N didn't show up to school since she had already moved away. I haven't seen N since that day at the pool.

To this day, I still have no idea what was really going on back then.

Why did she come to the pool alone when her grandmother had just died? What did she mean when she said her parents—who had passed away long ago—told her she could only take that specific road? And what was the point of driving us in circles on those same streets over and over?

Even now, I don't know if there was a connection between N's bizarre behavior and her grandmother's death. Honestly, was the person I met at the pool really even N? If you think about it, wouldn't she have already been taken in by her relatives by that point? Yet she certainly looked just like N... and she knew who I was, too.

There are so many things I don't understand, but it remains one of the strangest experiences of my life.