Jamie didn’t take the tunnel banna home like Sage, but they’d walk to the station together. It was a December evening from the seventh grade that she’d remember most clearly years later. PE had just finished and the pair were walking back to main campus. Sage had her permission slip to go home straight from the ice skating rink, but Jamie’s mom was less lenient. Jamie had to go back to class and wait for the school day to finish. So Sage did the same, hoping her mother wouldn’t press her on why she’d come home later than she was expected. Sometimes it occurred to Sage that Jamie might not have done the same for her. She wondered if Jaimie walked her to the tunnel banna station after school because it was on his way. Though there was a shorter route that he could have taken to go home.
“If you take the back door that leads to the bus stop, you’d get home faster.” Sage almost told him once. A part of her hoped he’d known about the back door, that he’d chosen to ignore it and that the nine extra minutes that it took him to go past the tunnel banna station were nine minutes he wanted to spend with her.
As the pair walked back to class from the ice rink, Sage kept asking questions, just to keep Jamie talking. He’d told her that his last name meant flat planes in Finnish.
“But you’re not Finnish.” Sage said.
Jamie only shrugged. He told her about Switzerland. He’d moved back this year after spending two years abroad there. It was the furthest he’d ever been from home, but he hoped to travel further.
“My mom wants to move to New York next year.” Jamie said, “She thinks an American education would be better. You’ve lived in America, right?”
“California,” Sage nodded, “How—”
“California!”
“Yeah—”
“You lived in California?” Jamie couldn’t believe it, “And you moved here?”
Sage nodded, “I wanted to see snow—”
Jamie wouldn’t have it. He’d said something about states with snow, but Sage was hung up on the idea of Jamie moving to another country. She didn’t want to Skype him once a month like she had with her old friends in California. Who would walk her to the tunnel banna?
“What’s it like?” Jamie asked,“America.”
Sage didn’t know what to say, “It’s—different. How long will you be there?”
“I don’t know.”
Sage was quiet for a little while. “Will you email me?”
The sound of their snow boots slushing against the gravel was a little too loud for Sage’s liking. Sage decided he might have not heard her the first time, “Jamie, will you—”
“Yeah.”
The gravel slushed for twelve more minutes. They reached campus just as the final bell rang.
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