Foreign Exchange (7 page)

I
watch TV with Eddy and try to catch up on homework, but the truth is, without school to distract me, I can't stop thinking about what these things with Sawyer all mean.

Mom interrupts me, asking if I’m okay.
I didn’t even clue in that she was still home.

I nod. “
Um, yeah.”

“Are you sure? You look flushed. You wouldn’t want to come down with something
before your trip.”

She sounds so much like she cares, and I mean, I know she
does care about me. But it’s the first time Mom’s actually sounded concerned about my trip. Every other time we’ve talked about it, her only concern was the amount of time she’d have to take off work while I’m gone.

“I’m good,” I say, and look over at Eddy to help
settle my thoughts again. Mom’s still staring at me, so I say, “Honest.”

I can feel her continue to watch me, so finally I head upstairs to
re-check my email. A reply from Tristan has shown up in my inbox.

Hey
, Jamie! I’m here! I’m in Milan, and Jamie, it’s everything I imagined and more! I LOVE Europe! I only wish you could be here to experience everything with me. But soon!

Thanks for your email. I don’t know what I’d do without your support.
Nothing on your dad yet. I’ve been asking for him at the conference center hotel, but it’ll be easier when you get here, since you speak the language. And no modeling stuff. I’ll keep you posted.

I may not be able to write much. I don't always have access to a computer and
it's all harder with having to translate. Every single thing I see makes me think of you and how much you’re going to love it here, Jamie.

She ends her email with another line about how she can’t wait to see me
, followed by a thousand exclamation points. She attached a picture of her, smiling in front of a cathedral in Milan. At least I think it's a cathedral. Who knows, maybe that's what her school looks like.

I
hit reply, telling her I’m happy to help with anything she needs, academic or language-wise. Offering Tristan school help comes second nature to me, and I ask her if she's started her actual classes yet. I guess I’ve always felt like helping her academically was my contribution to our friendship, since she’s always helped me fit in socially.

The part about the conference
center hotel gives me jitters all over again. I haven’t seen my dad in so long. What if Mom didn’t make him stop contacting me? What if he did that all on his own?

I could go all the way to Europe and track him down, only to find out he doesn’t want to help us anyway.

I decide there’s at least one thing I can do from here. I Google the conference center hotel and type a quick email to them in Italian, telling them I’m looking for a man named Giovanni Russo who is booked in during the week of September sixteenth. It takes me a while, because although I remember a lot of Italian, I haven’t written it in ages.

Even
when this is done, my expectations are not exactly soaring. Giovanni Russo is a popular Italian name, which is why I’ve had trouble finding my dad for so many years. Who’s to say there won’t be three or four Giovanni Russo’s booked in at that hotel during the week of the sixteenth?

When I hear Mom
making noise at the front door, I quickly clear the computer history, and head down to say goodbye as she leaves for work.

The second she's off the driveway, I can't stop thinking about Sawyer again. My initials on the bathroom stall. Him telling me he knows how to back off.

Okay, so why can’t we just hang out? I mean he seems to want to. Things were a little uncomfortable earlier because we were at school, and I’m sure that just being around him will help me relax and realize that he's only looking for a friend anyway.

Because I don’t trust myself to
open my mouth and talk to him, I send him a text. I only spend an hour and a half rewording the single sentence, in between feeding Eddy and taking him to the bathroom. I want my message to be something witty but with a little innuendo. The thing is, I’m not really the witty/innuendo kind of girl. Finally I settle on:

Want
to come over?

As soon as I hit
Send, my hands and armpits break into a wild sweat. I check on Eddy again. I’d left him with a checkers board and he’s sorting all the red and black disks into perfect piles of five. I’ve been trying to give him more hands-on things to play with, and I think he likes it.

Having fun?
I sign, when I get him to look up at me. He nods and signs back
Yes,
then immediately goes back to work, like he has some specific plan or system in mind for his game pieces.

We’re alike that way
: I like things to be organized and in order. Dad was like that too, as much as I remember of him, but Mom flies by the seat of her pants through life. It drives me crazy, especially when I have to make up for her lack of planning.

Several minutes later, I'm still waiting for a response.
I navigate to the foreign exchange program's Web site. I check the contact page, and sure enough, like Jennifer said, it’s the same email address I’d sent a message to earlier, and there's a bounced back copy in my inbox.

My phone vibrates from beside me on the computer desk. I flip it over to see the reply from Sawyer.

Really?

My face instantly warms, sure he must see me as incredibly clingy
or stupid or misreading of the situation. But then I think of how he'd been at my house in the dark the other night. Wanting to stay.

I take a deep breath and hold it
. I could get out of this before I’ve even started. I could say I was just kidding to see what he’d say.

Co
me to think of it, I haven’t even looked outside to see if he’s home. I peek through the drapes and don’t see his Jeep, but it could be in the garage.

S
uddenly I want to know. Is he home, or is he out with another girl, maybe Marci Voytek or Caitlyn Powers? And if he
were
out with another girl, would he drop her to come over and see me?

I know it’s a
horrible thought, but I still want it. I want it so badly that I’m typing into my phone again.

Yes.

Seconds later, another reply:
Now?

Yes.

My hands are shaking. I feel the intense need to take the pressure off. Is he going to rush over here thinking I’ve gone all nymphomaniac and plan to jump him as soon as he walks in the door?

I quickly text back one more time:

Can you bring your laptop?

There
, that’ll give him the hint that I’m not completely sex-crazed. Maybe I want to work on homework or something.

As much as I w
ish I could be the aggressor, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. If we got back to where we were huddled over his laptop together, then could I make a tiny move? Do I even want to, or do I just want him around as a friend?

Take risks, take risks, take risks.

I race around tidying up and making sure Eddy is happily fed and has a sippy cup of water in front of him. I still don’t know if Sawyer’s home for sure, and I keep an eye out the front window to see if he drives in suddenly. Although, come to think of it, he didn’t actually say he was coming over, did he? I check my phone and it’s blank. But he hasn’t texted back to say no, either.

A pair of headlights gleams down our street and a mix of emotions runs through me. Yes, he was probably with another girl
, but he did leave her for me. Maybe my friendship is truly that important to him.

But then I realize they’re not Sawyer’s blu
e-tinged headlights. Out of the corner of my eye, I see movement. It’s the Bishops’ front door opening. Sawyer walks outside through it, his backpack slung over a shoulder.

It’s not his car. He wasn’t out with another girl. I let out a breath, surprised at the relief I feel
, the excitement I feel with him headed this way.

Until.

I see whose car it really is.

My mother’s.

Chapter Seven

Mom and Sawyer
walk up the porch steps at the same time. I whip open the door so Sawyer’s not stuck facing her alone.

“Hi, Mrs. Monroe,” I hear him say.
Mom’s head is downturned. I don’t hear her reply and I wonder if she gave one. Sawyer squints at me and I can see his confusion. Like,
Is this some kind of joke?

“I thought you were working tonight,” I say to Mom, to help clear it up for him.
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize they're a mistake.

Mom’s eyebrows shoot up and she looks between
Sawyer and me. “You did, did you?” She doesn’t trust teenage guys, even ones who live right next door. She keeps eyeing Sawyer, like she’s waiting for him to drop me to the ground and pounce on top of me.

“Well, yeah,” I mumble, trying to come up with something. “Sawyer was just coming over to work on some homework for our
World Architecture class.”

Sawyer, catching on, holds up his
backpack. “I brought my notes, so it should be pretty straight forward.”

Mom thinks about this for a few seconds, then with the hand that’s not holding her purse she rubs her temple. “I had to leave work early. I have a migraine.
This is all I need with my upcoming time booked off, Jamie. You two better keep it quiet.”

Mom works as a bartender
, mostly because of the hours—she can work when I'm home to watch Eddy. When I was little, when we lived in Italy, she cut hair at home during the day. She was happier then. Or else now she uses up all her happy words behind the bar.

Mom pushes past me and
I back up to let Sawyer inside. He looks hesitant, but finally moves through the door. After he takes off his shoes, I lead the way to the stairs, figuring Mom will want us out of her range of hearing, but she says, “Where do you think you’re going?”

I pause mid-step, horrified at what I
suddenly know is coming. “Um…I thought you’d want us to work quietly upstairs?”

Mom drops her purse on the dining room table
with a thud. “You will
not
be bringing him up to your
bedroom
.” The way she says the word, it might as well be
brothel
.

Upstairs is
where our computer is, but I can’t bring myself to say it. I’ve invited Sawyer over and I’m not sure I’ll have the guts to do it again. Especially after this episode.

Sawyer has moved over to the couch, probably trying to
get as far out of the line of fire as possible.

“Hey, little buddy,” he sa
ys, even though Eddy’s not looking at him.

“The
dining room table’s fine,” I tell Mom. “We’ll work right here.”

A
s I pull out two chairs, Mom heads for the kitchen, mumbling about working and Tylenol and I don’t know what else. She hasn’t even said hello to Eddy, and she never leaves work sick, so I’m guessing her headache is pretty severe.

“I’m so sorry,” I
say, as Sawyer and I sit down.

“What’s th
at?” Mom calls from the kitchen through our paper-thin walls.

I ignore Mom and hope her Tylenol kicks in
soon. “Why don’t you get your notes out,” I say to Sawyer, loud enough so my mother is sure to hear it.

He takes his computer out of
his backpack and sets it on the table. He presses the power button, but as usual, it takes forever to boot up. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to talk—to Sawyer, the guy who I can barely speak to at the best of times—with Mom eavesdropping from fifteen feet away.

Instead I do what I usually do:
The cowardly thing. “You need the channel changed, Eddy?” He’s not looking my way, so I move to the living room to sign it to him. He’s actually pretty absorbed in a puzzle I’d left for him on the living room floor, and I feel bad for diverting him to TV.

He doesn’t
answer me, so I just switch it to the guide channel. He goes back to his puzzle.

Mom traipses through the living room and up the stairs. I doubt it’s for good. She hasn’t said
good night
or made sure I’ll take care of tucking in Eddy. But still, it’s a reprieve.

I take my seat beside Sawyer again
, but this time I scoot my chair an inch toward him.

He has his computer open, but of course he has no idea why I wanted him to bring it.
We don’t have any World Architecture homework, other than a small section of reading from our textbooks. The computer takes the romantic pressure off, though. Then again, my mother does
that
in spades. 

S
ince I don’t know what else to do, I figure I’ll double check that the email for the foreign exchange program won’t work from his computer either. I’ve had things bounce back to my inbox before, so it could be a problem on my end. Probably not on Jennifer’s end as well, but it doesn’t hurt to triple-confirm.

“Ca
n you open your email for a sec?” I say.

He lets out a
breathy laugh and reaches for the mouse. “Sure.” After a second he asks what feels like a question that he doesn’t want to ask, but he just can’t let it go. “Checking up on me?”

I hadn’t even thought about that. But now that he mentions it, I
feel the urge to have a peek at whom he’s been corresponding with.

“No,” I say with as much surprise as I can muster. “You can even open a new email and I won’t look at your junk if you’d prefer.”

“My junk?” he says, laughing.

My face instantly
heats to a thousand degrees. Thankfully I don’t have to reply because Mom pads back down the stairs.

I get a glimpse of his inbox, and don’t see much, other than a few
messages from names I don’t recognize, and that one message from Tristan. He opens a new email, and then angles the computer to face me.

“This is what I was thinking,” I say for Mom’s benefit
. I angle the computer a little more toward me and try to keep my elbows in while typing in the email address for the foreign exchange program. Then I type a quick test message in the body.

By the time I hit
Send, Mom is busy hovering over Eddy, making sure I’ve been doing my sisterly duty and grilling him on whether he’s eaten and gone to the bathroom lately.

“
This email’s been bouncing back,” I say quietly to Sawyer.

He scoots sideways—toward me—trying to see the screen better. Our knees touch.

Sawyer sees whom I’m writing to and navigates in his browser to the foreign exchange program’s Web site. He checks the contact info, pretty much the exact same thing I did earlier.

But then he does something I didn’t do. He clicks a few places on the screen and somehow brings up the code of the site. I don’t have a clue about coding, but Sawyer
helped Tristan design her modeling Web site, so he must know what he’s looking for.

Or maybe he doesn’t. After a few seconds, he sits back in his
chair with his eyebrows furrowed. Our knees are still touching.

While he thinks, I have an idea. I open a
new Word document and type:

This isn’t what I had in mind
for tonight. So sorry!

Then, for Mom’s benefit, I
point to the words and say, “What do you think of this?”

Sawyer leans in to look at the screen. I watch
for his reaction. A smile plays at the edges of his lips. He reaches up to the keys and types:

What
did
you have in mind?

He rubs his lips together like he’s trying to keep his smile at bay.
My face has barely paled from my moment of talking about his “junk” and I can feel it darkening again.

I put my hands on the keys to type, but I have no idea what to say. I don’t have sexy comebacks
and the confidence to go with them like he does. I do better when I can show someone what I mean. And so I type:

More something like this
...

I’ve typed it. I’m halfway there, and I’m mentally running my mantra
of taking risks like mad. I suck in a breath, move my hand under the table, behind the tablecloth, and place it gently on his leg about mid-thigh.

He looks down. At my hand. On his thigh. I’m
leaving it there, being clear I meant to do it. I need to at least try something with Sawyer before I decide I won’t like this, whatever it is. And so far, I admit, I
am
liking it.

I wait
a long time—hours, maybe days—for him to react. I must have had it wrong and he was just being friendly. Maybe because he noticed I was sad and introverted after Tristan left, he felt obligated to rescue me. But still, I’m not pulling away. I can’t believe I’m here doing this, taking a huge risk with Sawyer, while Tristan’s away focusing on her academics. Maybe it’s an
exchange
program for both of us.

As I’m thinking this
, Mom promises Eddy milk and heads for the kitchen. My hand is hidden by the tablecloth and now both of our eyes are on the computer screen, though I doubt either of us is rereading what’s on there.

When she’s through the door, it happens. He takes his hand off the table, moves it down, toward mine, and I’m wondering if he’ll place his
hand over mine…or move my hand up his thigh. Or if he’ll pull it away and give me a look that ensures I’ll never, ever, be able to look him in the face again.

But he
reaches past my hand, over to my leg, and gently—so gently—places his fingertips there. He doesn’t just rest his hand there like me. He circles his fingers slowly on my thigh, and goose bumps run all the way up my body, up my arms, along my neck, into my hair. I’ve never felt a sensation like this. A sensation so good.

And then my mother has to wreck it.

She doesn’t just walk through the kitchen door, she
bangs
through it, milk in hand, and I swear, the sudden noise gives
me
a headache.

I instantly pull my hand away, and Sawyer
does too.

Mom
sighs, a loud huffy sigh, when she hands Eddy his milk, making sure the sippy lid is on tight. Then she murmurs something that sounds like, “I wish I could just go to bed.”

Of course she can’t go to bed. She has to babysit her sixteen-year-old who’s doing homework with her
neighbor.

Okay, maybe she
does
need to babysit me, because I have a pretty good idea of where this might lead if she wasn’t here. But the truth is, anything I’m going to do, I’ll find a way to do behind her back. If she hasn’t scared Sawyer away from me for the rest of eternity, that is.

I put my hands up to the keys and type
, without stopping to think about any of it first.

I feel like a frigg
in’ two-year-old. She won’t go to bed while you’re here. I know I’m sixteen and I should tell her that, but I really need to be careful, with my trip to Spain coming up, and I don’t want her sticking Eddy in a daycare with twenty other kids and workers who don’t know or care how to look after him.

I’m embarrassed by my rant, but I can’t help myself. I’ve been holding
in so many of these thoughts for too long. It had taken some major convincing for Mom to let me sign up for the trip. It wasn’t just about the money for the airfare and accommodations. She’d either have to get childcare or take a lot of time off work to look after Eddy and she didn’t know how she would afford either.

I’d told her
to ask Dad for some help. If he can’t be around to act like a dad, the least he could do is kick in some money, that’s what I told her. But she glared at me and told me she would sooner go back to Quebec and live with her parents. Which I know from her rant when we left Quebec, would never happen.

After that
, I only brought up my trip when she was in a good mood, and eventually she gave in, even saying she’d take care of Eddy herself.

I stare at the screen, with my hands now balled in front of me in defeat.

Sawyer lifts his hands to the keys, and I’m sure it’s to tell me that he has to go, but he doesn’t type. At first I think I’m imagining it, but I watch his fingers and they go round and round lightly over the keys of his left hand, not actually pressing any keys, but just circling. The same hand that had moments ago been circling my thigh.

My whole body
gets shivers again, just from watching him. My eyes are transfixed on his hand. His perfect, beautiful, smooth fingers that he won’t touch any other girls with. Finally he stops and types:

For the record,
I don’t think you’re anything like a two-year-old.

I stare at the words and
swallow.

His hands are still in place, and he types some more.

I get it. Sometimes parents are just…not people we’re proud of.