Dave Eggers’s college girlfriend. After several months of dating, Eggers and Kirsten still feel “tentative” about the relationship, but then Kirsten comes home with Eggers for a visit and he tells her that his mother is terminally ill. She responds by telling him that her mother has a brain tumor. Because her father hasn’t been in her life since she was fourteen, this means that Kirsten, like Eggers, is on the brink of becoming an adult orphan. This common experience endears both them to each other, and their relationship takes on a new intensity. When Eggers, Beth, and Toph move to the west coast, Kirsten comes too because she has always wanted to live in California. Living for the summer in the same sublet as Eggers, she works and refuses financial help from anyone. The stress of making enough money eventually wears on her relationship with Eggers, so when they’re all required to leave the sublet, she and Eggers decide not to live together. From then on, they have an on-again-off-again relationship until, finally, they break up a year later.