Foreign Exchange (12 page)

I let out a long, shaky breath as soon as we’re driving,
and try to keep my tears at bay.

Eddy didn’t say goodbye. He barely
even looked at me.

Mr. and Mrs. Bishop say a quick hello, but otherwise
, thankfully, seem involved in a conversation about routes to the airport.

When we’re moving,
I feel Sawyer’s eyes on me. If he asks me if I’m okay, I’ll probably burst into tears. “Thanks so much for coming back for me. My mom…” I trail off, sensing he doesn’t need an explanation.

We’re silent for a long time after that.
The trip to Detroit Metro Airport is just over an hour. Sawyer keeps to his side of the car, and I keep to mine. We haven’t touched, brushed hands or anything, in so long that I have no clue if he even still wants to. I think part of my brain has ascribed to the notion that he’s really with Amelia now.

Eventually
, he asks if I’ve heard from Tristan lately. She’s been silent since her last angry email, but that was only yesterday, and I’ve already told him about that one.

He motions to his parents, and I get it. He wants to put on a little show before we leave.
I hesitate, not knowing exactly what kind of act we should be putting on.

“
Yesterday,” I say. I’d been hoping to get a confirmation from her that she still has my flight info and will meet me at the airport when I arrive, but at least I have her phone number, so I can track her down when I get there. “You?” I ask.

“
Same,” Sawyer lies. “But she seems like she’s really loving being in Italy.”

This garners the attention of Mrs. Bishop. She swings around in her seat to tell us she’d also just heard from Tristan
last night, by phone.

Sawyer
’s lip twitches and suddenly I get it. We’re not putting on a show for them. We’re baiting them to tell us what they know.

“What did she say?” Sawyer asks. He sounds casual, but the way his eyes stay steady on his mom
is careful. He’s obviously no longer the go-between communicator with Tristan and her parents.

Mrs. Bishop
looks at the road again. “Her classes are going well. She seems really excited every time she calls. I’m glad she’s had this opportunity.” Mrs. Bishop glances at Mr. Bishop, just for a second, because he’d been the “voice of reason” that had been hesitant about letting Tristan go. “She’d talked about doing an excursion with her host family and she seems really excited about it.”

“
Excursion?” both of us say, too quickly at once.

But then I remember—Tristan coming to meet me in Barcelona
—she must be passing that off as an excursion. “Oh, right,” I say, quickly.

Sawyer repeats my sentiment
. “Oh, right. That.”

Mrs. Bishop goes on about what a great program it is, and how much work it must be to put together extra excursions. I don’t want her to focus on the excursion that isn’t real, so I say,
“But the program directors must know what they’re doing, right? They seem on top of things to you?”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Bishop says. “Tristan tells me how thorough they are with all of their arrangements.”

Someone’s thorough with arrangements, but I don’t think it’s the fake program directors.

Mr. Bishop murmurs something about
the strangeness of them doing an excursion so early in the program, but Mrs. Bishop just talks right over him and tells us about all the sightseeing Tristan’s been doing so far.

I watch Sawyer carefully, wondering if he's taking mental notes about everywhere Tristan has been
like I am.

Sawyer's parents
pull into Departures with fifteen minutes to spare. I’m torn between racing inside to check in with Mr. Echols and staying in the car to interrogate Mrs. Bishop.

Sawyer directs them to the right airline, and
I’m glad he’s in charge, because my brain’s not fast enough to make good decisions at the moment.

Sawyer
opens the trunk, pulls out my suitcase, tugs up the handle, and passes it to me. Our fingers brush as we make the exchange and I act like I don’t notice, but it’s been a long time, and I feel like he did it on purpose. I feel like he did it to comfort me.

Today I’m not angry. Today I’m thinking that a
t least we’re in this together.

He gets his own
bag and lugs his backpack over his shoulder. With only one arm free, he gives his mom a quick side hug.  He whispers something to her, but all I can make out are the words “remember” and “surprise.” Then he gives his dad a handshake.

I wonder what
“surprise” they're supposed to remember.  But then I get it. It hadn't occurred to me before, but I guess Mr. or Mrs. Bishop could have told Tristan about Sawyer being on the trip at any time.

“I can’t believe both of our kids
will be in Europe by tomorrow,” Mrs. Bishop says, a little teary-eyed.  “Maybe one day we’ll get to go, Rob.”

Mr. Bishop makes some comment I don’t hear under his breath.

I thank them for the ride and wave as they get into their car and drive away. Sawyer stands beside me, watching, but I have the sense he has something to say.

I look up at him. He looks down at me. I
want so badly for him to comfort me more, pull me into a hug and tell me everything’s going to be okay.

H
is eyes flick back and forth like he’s choosing his words carefully. Then he says, “We should probably get inside and find our group.”

The disappointment I feel
is palpable, but I follow him through the airport’s automatic doors without another word.

The lineup for check-in
is long, and as soon as Mr. Echols ticks Sawyer and me off his list, we move in with the rest of them. I’m waiting for the moment when Sawyer abandons me for Amelia, and I don’t have to wait long. As soon as she spots him, she beckons him to the front of the line. He glances at me, but then Caleb comes up on my other side and starts babbling about taking his Ativan.

I turn to tell Caleb
to calm down, and when I glance back, Sawyer’s already walking toward Amelia. When he gets to her, he leans in to whisper something. Whatever it is, it must be steamy, because she gets this seductive look on her face when she looks at him. She leans in and whispers something back, and then grabs his hand and twines her fingers through his.

Why the hell am I watching this?
I need to stop letting them affect me. We can’t even think about anything between Sawyer and me until we find Tristan, and it’s been so long since he’s shown any interest in being anything more than a friend, I’m not sure he wants to be closer to me anymore anyway.

Anna and
Matt arrive shortly after, and no one complains when they join us in line. Matt says hi to Caleb and Anna and then reaches over to slide his arm around my shoulders. He gives me a little squeeze. It’s the first time we’ve done anything touchy and it makes me feel surprisingly better. Maybe I could put a little more effort into pretending and I’d get some comfort out of it in the process. I will need his help in less than forty-eight hours, after all.

“Hi,” he says,
and I say it back in a quieter, sultrier voice. I try to mimic the look I’d seen on Amelia’s face, but I have a feeling on me it looks more like constipation.

The four of us
chat until we make it to the counter, mostly citing information to Caleb about how he’s more likely to die getting kicked by a donkey than in a plane crash. I sense Matt’s eyes on me during our conversation. There’s one airline attendant checking in our whole group, and she doesn’t seem to mind when the four of us come up to the counter together. When the attendant takes my suitcase and puts it on the belt behind her, for some reason
that
is the moment when it all becomes real to me.

The next time I see my suitcase, I’ll be in Europe.

Europe!

Unencumbered from our suitcases, when we make our way over to where Mr. Echols has the group gathered, Matt reaches over and takes my hand
. He does it tentatively at first, like he’s accidentally knocking into my hand with his. He doesn’t look at me, and I feel like he’s giving me a chance to pull my hand away and reject him gently. I leave my hand against his, and after a few seconds, he laces his fingers through mine.

If Sawyer can do it, I can do it
, too.

And it makes me feel surprisingly better to be latched onto someone, even if it’s not the boy I’d like to be latched
onto.

When we get to security, a
bunch of students move to a different lineup, because between Sawyer’s complicated bootlaces, and having to unpack his laptop, he’s taking longer than everyone else. Matt and I happen to be right behind the group of students who move, which puts us right behind Sawyer.

“Sorry,” he mumbles,
eyeing Matt’s and my interlaced hands.

“It’s okay,” I say
, wondering what exactly he’s sorry about.

Sawyer continues working at his boot. I hold back
his bins for him on the automatic belt, and suggest to Matt that he go on ahead.

“You sure?”
Matt, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice any sparks between Sawyer and me, past or present, and slips his bins in front of Sawyer’s without a second thought. Anna and Caleb both clear Security as well by the time Sawyer is ready to go.

“Thanks,” he says to me
quietly when we’re the last of the student group on the non-secured side of the airport. I can hear Amelia’s loud voice taking attendance for the fortieth time today on the other side of the big scanners.

“
Sure. Um. I guess we’d better catch up,” I say.

During the
plane ride, most of us either sleep or watch movies. When I pass Sawyer and Amelia, she’s so close to him, she’s practically in his lap. He doesn’t pay a lick of attention to me and instead keeps offering her his sexy half-smirk.

When I get back to my seat,
I hold hands with Matt, but I don’t seem to have the ability to be nearly as sexy. We talk about all the places we’d like to see in the world. My list is much longer than his. I’ve always thought my über-interest in traveling stemmed from living in Italy, Quebec, and Michigan all before the time I was seven. I tell him all about Tristan and how she'll be meeting me on the other side, which brings me back to our plan.

Being back on schedule with things, even in such a small way, gives me a burst of confidence. Maybe Sawyer’s mistaken about Tristan being in any kind of
dangerous situation. Maybe he’s just overreacting, and Tristan will be at the airport and then help me find my dad like she said she would. Then she’ll come home safe and sound at the end of her three-month stint of trying out a bit of modeling.

The more I think about it, the more Sawyer selling his Jeep and coming all the way to Europe seems a bit
extreme.

After our
stopover in Newark, the plane to Barcelona is so full that our group is separated from one another. This is the overnight portion, and the plane is dark and quiet.

I have trouble settling myself.
I’m finally going to Europe!

The thought
pops into my head at odd intervals, hitting me anew each time. I’ve wanted to make the journey to try and find my dad since I was little, but somewhere along the line I’d convinced myself that goal was unrealistic. Mom needed my constant help. How could I possibly get away for any amount of time, and even if I could, how would I find my dad on my own? But a ten-day class trip—with my best friend’s help—was the perfect solution, and amazingly affordable.

It’s
surprising how much my whole countenance has lightened since leaving Michigan. I don’t have to worry about Don Bristolle or school stuff, and Mom’s home with Eddy. This will be the longest break I’ve had from looking after my brother for pretty much my whole life. Plus, I’ll get to see Tristan soon and get everything out in the open.

Since
I’m on the aisle, when I keep getting up to stretch my legs and go to the bathroom, it doesn’t bother anybody else. Each time I pass Matt, he’s fast asleep.

On my fourth or fifth
stroll, I run into Sawyer at the back of the hushed plane. The area by the bathrooms is cramped, and when he squeezes out of the stall, I have to back up into the flight attendant area to let him out. Except he doesn’t move down the aisle and out of the way like I expect.

“Can’t sleep either?” he asks. I notice now that we’re close that his eyes are red
again.

I
shrug. “I guess.” It comes out as a bit of a sneer. I clear my throat and try to even my voice. “First plane ride in years, finally getting back to Europe, you know…”

He
offers a small smile, looking anything but comforted. “You don’t fly often?” Sawyer flies to Vermont each year to spend the summers with his grandparents, so he’s an expert.

I shake my head. “Nope.
Not since I was six.” I shift a little, trying to give Sawyer the indication that we should end this conversation. If Matt or Amelia saw us talking in the dark like this, they might get the wrong impression.