Page 10 of Exchanged

Later, as I trudge up to my bedroom, I think about what Dad meant by Garrett being a great fit. Emma was the one who had the idea of hosting an exchange student in the first place. She had complained that we never travel and that this could be a good way to learn about a different culture, to build a connection that might lead to us visiting a far-off country. Dad and I agreed. Our house is big, and the idea of another person around seemed like it could make our family even fuller. I wonder if, for them, this year was always less about the place the exchange student was from and more about how they’d shape our family.

I pause on the top step because I hear Garrett’s voice drifting down from behind the closed door of his room.

“… They don’t think I’m supposed to be here. I feel like I’m squatting at someone’s house.”

A pause.

“Why would they? They expected some dude from Georgia. The country.”

Another pause. And when he speaks again, his voice is vulnerable in a way I haven’t heard before, and he’s just a boy begging for something he can’t have. “Mom. Dad. Can I please just come home?”

During this pause, I can hear the raised voice of his dad on the other end of the line.

Then: “Yessir.”

Pause.

“Yeah.”

Pause.

“Okay.”

Pause.

“Good night.”

Then his door opens and he steps out, holding his toothbrush, and I’m pretending I just got here.

“The bathroom is at the bottom of the stairs,” I say.

He nods and moves past me, both of us acting like we don’t know that I overheard his conversation. When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, he turns around, unmoored in a house he doesn’t belong in. “Could I possibly borrow a towel?”

I hurry down, feeling more and more like an asshole with each step. Hearing him plead with his parents to go home makes the shitty things I said earlier even shittier.

I show him into the bathroom and open the linen closet.

“And I didn’t bring shampoo or bodywash or anything … TSA rules.”

I point him to mine and he thanks me, and I almost consider apologizing or saying something to make things better between us. I open my mouth, trying to think of the right words, but before I can, he closes the door. I hear the water running in the shower, rinsing away the small connection we almost had.

FOUR

The next morning, when I get home from marching band rehearsal—where I’ve been shafted with a pair of cymbals since you can’t march with an oboe—Dad is on the phone at the front desk. He has it on speaker while he digs through a pile of unread mail.

A woman’s voice says, “Mr. Rossi, we did try to notify you several times regarding the placement change for Garrett Andersen. Both in writing and by phone.”

Dad finds an unopened envelope embossed with a golden Global Youth Ambassadors logo and frowns. “Never got a letter,” he grunts, tossing it into the recycling basket, “or a phone call. What number were you calling?”

The woman reads off a series of digits belonging to Dad’s personal cell, not our store phone. He always answers the latter, but never the former. I would bet a thousand dollars that there are several unheard voicemails from GYA waiting on his cell.

He scratches the back of his head—today covered with a forest-green beanie—then pivots to offense. “Why would GYA send someone from Georgia—the state—to Michigan? You’re a foreign exchange program.”

“We do our best to place applicants abroad,” the woman explains with practiced patience, “but with interest in hosting American teenagers declining, this isn’t always possible. So this year we’re piloting our Domestic Exchange Program. Students still receive the opportunity to learn from a new family, live in a different city, and make lifelong connections. Our hope is that this program could bridge the urban-rural divide, teaching students to understand the lived experience of those who are different from themselves. In this situation, we thought Garrett’s experience in suburban Atlanta would be sufficiently different from your … particular geographic context.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I hear a shuffle of papers on the other end. “Irontown is a municipality of four thousand three hundred sixty-eight residents surrounded entirely by national forest. Is that correct?”