When you’re a kid, the world is pretty small. I remember having friends who I only met at school because they lived so far away: across the big road. My hood was about a block, and then the hockey rink up the hill.

Today, I jogged past a house where a good friend of mine used to live. He was one of my first friends in the city we had moved to, and thanks to his extensive network at school, and despite my shyness and reluctancy, I was voted to the school council about a month into the school year.

We shared the same interests – hockey, mainly – and the same last name.

After twenty years, I can’t even remember when or how, but they moved to a house that at the time was right at the outskirts of town. Or so it felt. I jogged there, too, today, which is proof that it wasn’t that far away. But I’ve never been to their (“new”) house, and we just drifted apart.

We had moved from Helsinki about a year earlier. Back then, on the 31st of May, I walked home from school, with my best buddy – the one I made crank calls with, and who, for years, had me believing he was born in Paris but then had to come clean when I went to the church with him to get his birth certificate for an ID – talking just like any other day, “did you see her”, “wasn’t she cool,” how were your grades,” before we came to the intersection where he always turned left, and I continued straight ahead for another 300 meters.

He said, “bye now.” I said, “see ya” and walked home where the moving van was ready and waiting for me.

I haven’t seen him since.