Foreign Exchange (15 page)

It makes sense, but part of me doesn’t want to believe that she just didn’t show up, without even an email to tell me. 

“We’ll call Amelia and Matt once we’re on our way and get them to cover for us. Tell them Tristan’s in Barcelona but we had to go and get her. If they think we’re still in the city, they probably won’t tell Mr. Echols. Especially if they think we’re both on the other’s excursion tomorrow.” He motions down the hallway. “Stuff your bed and meet me at the door.”

I race for my room and shove my pillow and a few pieces of clothing under my blankets. It probably doesn't look realistic, but I don't have time to worry about it.
I scribble a note that says I’m not feeling well, and to please let me sleep in, and tuck it under Anna’s sleeping head. She’ll be leaving for the mountains tomorrow, so she’ll think I stayed behind with Amelia’s group.

When I get to the front desk, Sawyer is
handing some money to Rex.

Rex gives him a wink
, and says, “Take your girl somewhere nice,” in his thickly accented tongue. “Don’t worry. I don’t say a word.”

I grab Sawyer’s shirt to pull him along, and reach for the door, wishing I could enjoy
Rex’s comments. But until I find Tristan, I just can’t.

Chapter
Fourteen

Outside the hostel door, we practically barrel into Matt and Caleb before we see them. I'm still holding Sawyer's shirt, but I drop it quickly.

Matt's
eyebrows knit together. His neck is bright pink and he looks between Sawyer and me, then down at my hand.

My mind has been working double-time since
I found out we’re leaving tonight, so it kicks in quickly with a plan. I grab Matt's hand and pull him aside, giving Sawyer a one-second signal. Caleb starts babbling to Sawyer about how Matt wanted to come back and see me, but I can't pay attention to them and move farther away so Matt's not distracted.

Matt's still looking back at Sawyer
, and I can tell where his mind is going. If I'm going to get his help, I need to break those thoughts.

“
He's just Tristan's brother,” I tell Matt, lifting my hand and turning his chin so he faces me.

Matt laughs a little, but it sounds humorless. “I shouldn’t be surprised, should I?” His voice is a mix of angry and hurt. “I hope you’re happy,” he goes on. I can’t tell by his tone if he means it or he's being sarcastic. “Don’t be surprised if he dumps you for another guy.”

Wait. What?
He thinks Sawyer’s gay? “Are you—?”

“And why don’t you ask him why he keeps his hair so long.”

Sawyer has longish hair, but what Matt’s saying doesn’t make a shred of sense. He’s acting a little possessive, but I can’t provoke him. I need to diffuse it. And fast.

“
I like
you
, Matt.” I let that hang in the air for about three seconds before I race on with my words. “Look, I think something might have happened to Tristan. She’s lost across town, her money was stolen, and she can’t find her way here. We're both worried sick and we have to go get her.” I keep my eyes on his, trying to get across how serious this is. Maybe I should have been flirtier with him. If only I’d had more time to play it up. I squeeze his hand, and I hope he's starting to believe me.

“
I don't know, Jamie. You should wait and talk to Mr. Echols.”

I pull a pen from my purse, ignoring his suggestion. I grab his hand and write Sawyer's cell number on it.
“You can get a hold of us here. We’ll be back late tonight, and if you could just cover for us, say we’re not feeling well and sleeping in tomorrow. Then we’ll see you when you get back from the mountains—”

“Wait, you’re not going?”

“We’re going to be out late, Matt.” I reach over and stroke his arm. “I really don’t think I’ll be able to get up in time to go.”

I have Matt’s cell number. If I have to call and
somehow buy us another day, I will, but for now we have to hurry. I meet Matt's eyes again. “Please.” I put all of my heart into the word, and he must sense my desperation, because his head moves slightly up. Then slightly down.

I lean in and give him a kiss
full on the mouth. I hate myself for doing it, but I sense that he’s not quite our ally yet. “I'll see you soon, okay. And thank you.” I back away, but then turn and take off after Sawyer, who is already down the street.

I'm breathing hard when I catch up and can't say anything for a moment.

I move up beside Sawyer, and he says, “Work things out with your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Even saying the word to Sawyer makes me flush.

“Mmm. Maybe you should try telling him that
, rather than kissing him goodbye.” Even though Sawyer has no right to be bothered by this after all the cozying up to Amelia he’s done, there's a strong edge to his voice.

“
He's going to cover for us. At least for tonight,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “As long as Amelia doesn't freak out about us being gone together, we should be okay."

“At dinner
I told her we were cousins,” he says.

We're quiet for a long time, and Sawyer keeps leading the way down streets, following a map in his hands. I don't know where he got the map or how he figured it out so quickly, but I'm thankful he seems to know where we're going.

“You're going to miss
La Padrera
,” he says, out of nowhere.

I'm surprised he even knows that
La Padrera
would have been on the agenda for Amelia’s group tomorrow. I'm even more surprised that he remembers—and even recognized—the painting from above my bed.

“
It's okay,” I tell him. My voice is quiet, and to be honest, it is painful to think of the things I'll be missing. The things I'd looked forward to for months. But I say honestly, “I need to know that Tristan's all right, and this is my only chance to find my dad.”

The way to the train station
feels dark and a little dangerous. Again I think about Tristan in Milan. Part of me still finds it difficult to believe she'd just up and leave for a different country without having a family to stay with. But she does stuff like that. I remember the time she’d pretended to be a college girl trying to get back to campus, and hitchhiked to Detroit because she didn’t have bus fare. I’d been so mad at her afterward for taking such a chance with her safety, but she’d told me she was armed and had shown me the fork—with prongs bent all different directions—she carried with her. “Calm down, Jamie. It had to be done,” she’d told me, and because she’d gotten the modeling gig she’d taken all the risk for, she’d acted like it had been no big deal.

I wonder if she’ll say the same thing about sleeping with Don Bristolle.

Sawyer’s being so quiet. Too quiet, and
now I remember how he had stopped Tristan from going to another modeling audition in Royal Oak. I'd thought it was his jealousy, but maybe he was being protective all along. Maybe there had been more to it than Tristan had told me.

“She’s going to be okay, right?” The question comes out of my mouth involuntarily. “I mean, she probably just couldn’t get away to meet me.”

Sawyer doesn’t answer for a long time. “I wasn’t going to say anything until I knew for sure, Jamie, but there’s a lot of bad stuff that goes on in the Milan modeling world. I hear about it all the time.” This makes me remember what Sawyer had said about having done some modeling. It must be true, and maybe he does know a lot more about that world than I thought. “I just—I can’t even think about if Tristan was desperate enough to go to one of the disreputable places, and…”

He lets his sentence trail off, a
nd I have a sudden thought that sickens me: I’m the one who wanted Tristan to come to Italy in the first place. I’m the one who even put this idea in her head.

If something bad really has happened to
her, it definitely won't be Sawyer's fault. It'll be mine.

Chapter Fifteen

From the outside
, the train station looks fancy and modern, but as soon as we rush through the doors, it’s exactly like every picture of a European train station I’ve ever seen. Kinda dark. Kinda dirty.

We find the ticket kiosk, and Sawyer’s pulling out his money before we get there. I reach for mine, but he says, “No time. I’ll get it.”

A
t the window, I take charge since I assume this whole transaction will go faster in Spanish. “Two tickets to Milan, please,” I say, and I’m surprised how quickly the Spanish words come to me.

The
ticket lady types something into her computer.
“El tren nocturno?”
she asks.

I nod
. The night train will be perfect. “As soon as possible,” I tell her in Spanish.

When
I finally back away from the ticket window, we turn in circles for a few seconds, trying to decide what we should do with ourselves. Sawyer spots another cell phone kiosk.

He points. “We should get you one too. In case we get separated.
”

I swallow at the thought. We can’t get separated. I can’t believe I had ever
even joked about traveling to Milan all by myself. I follow him to the kiosk and barely get my thoughts back together when he’s already paid for my cell phone too.

“Here, I’ll pay you back,” I say, but he waves it away.
“Email?” he suggests.

We
find a spot in the cafeteria and hook up to their Wi-Fi. Sawyer checks his email, shakes his head and then clicks on his cell phone.

There’s still no answer.

“Why isn’t she picking up?” He looks so genuinely worried, and even with all Tristan’s told me about their problems, I can see in his eyes how much he really does care. And in that second I truly believe that Sawyer has come all the way to Europe to try to make things better with his sister. Unfortunately, it may make things much worse when she sees him. If she’s safe.

She has to be safe.

He passes me his laptop and I quickly log in to my account. “Nothing...yet,” I add, as though thinking positive will help. But it doesn’t. “I should have heard from her by now.”

While I’m typing up another email, Sawyer walks away while
he calls Amelia.

Tristan...
I’m worried because I haven’t heard back from you. Maybe you took me seriously and didn’t come to meet me in Barcelona? If so, I wish you would have been clear about that. I figured out the train schedule and I’m leaving right now for Milan. I should be there by morning. Please get back to me and tell me where to meet you now. At the conference center hotel? I have your cell number, so I’ll call it the minute I get in. Please answer your phone.

I’m typing in my own international cell number
for her when Sawyer gets back.

“Still no word, huh?” he
asks when he sees one lonely new message in my inbox, a short note from Mom about how she hopes I’m having fun, but she can’t wait for me to get home and help out.

“I don’t want to go back there,” I murmur under my breath
, clicking Reply to type a quick message back to her.

“Are you sure?” Sawyer asks, as though I’m saying it to him.

“Huh?”

“I mean there are lots of good things at home, too. You don’t have to live with your family forever, and you’ve only been in Europe a few days. I think it’s pretty hard to say you’d want to stay somewhere like this without having a real plan. You know, a job and a way to—”

“Whoa. Calm down there, Sawyer. I was just lamenting a little.” Is he seriously worried that I would ditch my family and stay in Europe? But I guess he doesn’t know what to expect now that his sister’s talking about doing exactly that.

“I’m not going
to do anything stupid,” I say slowly, still trying to wrap my mind around that even being a real possibility. His eyes are studying my face, and I wonder if he doesn't believe me. “I mean it,” I say. To change the subject, I ask, “So you really know your stuff when it comes to architecture, huh? I was surprised you even knew about
La Padrera
.”

He turns away slightly, like he’s embarrassed. “It’s what I want to do.
I want to be an architect.”

“Really?” I don’t know why I’m so surprised. I guess I thought with Sawyer’s charm and good looks, he’d be working in the public somewhere, not in a stuffy office, alone with his blueprints. The more I think about it, though, Sawyer’s built things as long as I’ve known him. He and his dad built a tree fort in their backyard shortly after they moved in. He never even used the thing. Just built it
, and then Tristan and I commandeered it.

He nods, his face flushing. “My parents…they’re not exactly supportive.”

“Of being an architect? Seriously.”

“It’s more my mom. I guess she
wants me modeling. Or acting.”

This doesn’t surprise me. Mrs. Bishop has always pushed Tristan to pursue things that would get her noticed.
She’s obviously done the same thing with Sawyer.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know what it’s like to have
an unsupportive parent.”

Sawyer angles the laptop back to him and brings up his web browser.
“I think we should search out the modeling agencies in Milan before we get there.”

I
hadn’t thought about that. I’d only been concerned about getting to the conference center and the hotel, but Tristan’s emails hadn’t focused much on finding my dad. Maybe Sawyer’s right and we should be considering how focused she was on modeling success.

Before long, we have
a really long list.

“
Over fifty major modeling agencies,” Sawyer says. “That’s just within the city, and that’s only the major ones.”

“
We could call some of them,” I suggest.

He pulls out his cell phone and looks down at it.
“It would probably help if I spoke Italian as well as you speak Spanish.”

“Um, actually, I speak Italian
, too. Or I used to. I was born in Florence.” Sawyer knew my dad was from Italy, but I guess I’d never told him about this part.

“Seriously?”

My heart flutters at how impressed he sounds, but I quickly shake it off and take the phone from him. I dial the first number, but the agency is closed. I glance at my watch and it's almost seven p.m. No wonder.

After five more calls, I finally get an answer, but
the lady doesn’t seem very helpful over the phone. I keep saying, “Tristan Bishop,” and the lady on the other side keeps asking for a
fotographia
, but we're basically getting nowhere.

“
It'll be easier in person,” I say hanging up and feeling useless. I take a long breath and let it out. “If we could map out some of these places, then we could hit the ground running when we get there in the morning. We should download a map of Milan. You’re good with maps, right?” I’m assuming this, since he had no trouble finding the train station.

He nods. “I have one.”

We make a great team, because while we’re waiting in the boarding lineup, I make sense of the Italian directions he’s jotted down from Web sites, and he finds the quickest routes on our map. When he opens his backpack, there are several maps inside as well as Spanish/English and Italian/English dictionaries.

“
Wow, you came prepared.”

He shakes his head. “
I didn’t know what else to do from home. I guess I was hoping my sister would come to her senses and I’d be able to enjoy a trip to Spain with the girl…”

He stops. Which is just great, because my mind wants so badly to fill in the blank. But that’s not at all what I should be focusing on.

“Do your parents know anything?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I’ll call them from
Milan if I have to, but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. She hasn’t forgiven me for the last time I interfered with her modeling.” He sighs. "I heard you talking about a
fotographia
?” His accent attempt is kind of adorable. “Did you bring a picture of her?”

“Oh! I
did,” I say, in probably way too excited of a voice. It just feels so good to have something going for us. I pull out a photo of Tristan and me and show it to Sawyer. When he hands it back, I hold it out in front of a train that’s already boarding. With my other hand, I snap a picture.

Sawyer looks at me strangely.

“Sorry. I, um… she takes pictures of herself, but I guess I’m too shy, so I take pictures of our picture, so it’s kind of like both of us were here together. It helps me believe that everything’s okay.”

This makes him smile a little
more. “Thanks. You're helping me believe that, too.”

When the train pulls in, we’re
near the front of the very long lineup to board. I bought us the cheapest seats. I’m not sure how much spare money Sawyer has, but I don't have much. We walk through train car after train car, keeping an eye on our ticket stubs. We finally find the correct car, the correct seats, and step out of the aisle so others can pass. The seats are well spaced, two on each side of the row.

“Wow, I wis
h they made airplanes like this.” Sawyer places his backpack on the luggage rack at the end of the car. I just realize now that I didn’t pack anything. I was too concerned about getting out of there quickly.

“
I think the lady at the ticket kiosk called them recliners.” I reach down and find a lever, and sure enough the foot end of my chair slowly rises up until it’s nearly level.

“Huh. That’s not so bad.”

“Yeah, well, hopefully you’ll be able to sleep.” He doesn’t look convinced, so I add, “Tomorrow could be a crazy day, Sawyer. The best thing you can do for Tristan tonight is to get yourself well-rested.”

Sawyer
blows out a slow breath. Point taken. 

We both take our seats and spend some time getting
our recliners to comfortable positions. A few other people settle in at the far end of the car, but I suspect most of the travelers in the lineup opted for the higher priced sleeper cars.

Even though the reclining seats are quite nice, I’m starting to regret my decision. If Sawyer’s already had trouble sleeping, I can’t imagine him nodding off much in these seats. Train personnel bring around bottles of water and magazines. I take a business magazine. Even though it doesn’t interest me, it’s in Italian, and I feel the need to brush up
as much as possible before we get there.

“
How do you keep up on learning languages back home?” Sawyer asks, motioning to the magazine.

“It used to be easier. My grand
parents live in Montreal, and Mom and I lived with them when Eddy was first born. I was fluent
en français
when I got back.” I smile at the memory, and at the way
“en français”
feels rolling off my tongue. “I still Skype with them every week. And then you know about my dad and the Italian. Dad was stronger in Italian and Mom spoke mostly English, so I consider them both my first languages. Dad sent me a Spanish program for Christmas one year. That’s still my weakest language, but I was learning ASL at the time to communicate with Eddy, and I think learning both at once made it easier.”

“And obviously
the vocabulary comes back quickly.”

I feel myself blush. “Not as much as I
’d hoped. I’ve been keeping up with the written part, but it’s just not the same as conversing.”

It feels
a little strange—good-strange—to be lying beside Sawyer on our recliner chairs, but it feels even better when the train starts moving and they dim the overhead lighting in our train car. There are reading lights on each chair, but neither of us reaches for ours. With the passing lamps and the moonlight I can see him okay.

Sawyer lifts the armrest that separates our two recliners. If it
weren’t for our worry over Tristan, lying here beside him would be pretty amazing.

But
Sawyer
is
worried. I can see it on his face.

“
It’s only been a couple of days since I’ve heard from her. And your parents just heard from her before we left. She’ll be okay,” I say, trying to convince myself as much as him. Without thinking, I reach over and push a waft of long bangs off of his forehead. “She will.”

He
lets out a long breath, looking like my words help. To be honest, they help me, too. I leave my hand on his temple for just a second, not wanting to pull it away.

He r
eaches up and wraps his hand around mine, then pulls it down to his chest, and holds it there. I’m amazed I’m not hyperventilating. But it’s not like that. We need to count on each other right now. We need to be friends. A feeling of comfort washes over me as we settle in for the night.

***

I wake up a few hours later
freezing
. My hand is back on my own chair, curled into me, and in fact my whole body is curled up into a little ball. Someone has draped a blanket over me, but it’s not enough. I’ve always been a person who can’t warm up at the slightest chill.