Foreign Exchange (10 page)

“
Oh. Okay.” There's a long pause. Did he forget my request for more information?

“So
... can I find out more about it? The prices and all that?” I ask again, feeling stupid about repeating myself. 

After another pause, he says, “We’re just redesigning our
information packets for the spring semester with new pricing. We can send one out as soon as they’re done.”

“
Thanks,” I say.

I'm expecting him to ask for my address, but instead he asks,
“So you’re a friend of Tristan’s?”

“Yeah, her neighbor,” I say again.

“In Ainslea?”

I’m surprised he knows offhand where Tristan's from. They must have a lot of students to keep track of, but then he adds, “Pretty girl,” and then I get it. That’s why everyone remembers Tristan. It’s probably why she got her pick of Italian cities.

“
Are you pretty like Tristan?”

I’m stunned by his question. “Um, n
-no. Not really.” But as soon as the words are out of my mouth, my mind settles on the paper in front of me, and I remember his name: Don Bristolle. D.B.

I clutch my stomach.
No way. Tristan could not have been sleeping with the head of this organization. That's crazy.

“
Do you need any tech help?” Don Bristolle goes on, and I’m so swallowed up by my thoughts that I don’t hear him at first. When I process his words about tech help, I try not to focus on the word “help” on the notepaper. His tone is freaking me out, and I don’t like the fact that Tristan—or I—had anything to do with this guy.

“I
have to go.” The words come out in a rush.

“You tell Tristan if she wants me to fix anything, she’ll have to talk to me first.”

Another wave of nausea hits. Will she only have to
talk
to him? “I’ll be seeing Tristan in a few days, so I’ll tell her to email you, or phone you, or whatever.” I don’t like that I’ve made a promise to keep Tristan in contact with this letch, but at the same time, she has to, doesn’t she? If she’s part of his foreign exchange program and especially if she’s been sleeping with him to get into the program.

I hope Tristan knows what she’s doing.

“I’m here if you need me,” Don says, and even before he’s finished his sentence I’m shaking my head. “If you need help with anything at all.”

“I have to go,” I say again, and this time I don’t wait for him to
reply before clattering the phone onto our coffee table.

After about a hundred deep breaths and a few splashes of cold water on my face, I
lock the doors, check on Eddy, and then sit at our computer to send Tristan a message. How can I possibly ask her if this is true?

I decide to keep it vague.

Tristan,

I spoke with the head of the foreign exchange program tonight. He mentioned
giving me some “tech help.” Please tell me what’s going on with him. I don’t like this.

There are also some other problems on this end, problems with Sawyer, but I’ll work them out. Just, please, tell me what’s going on with this guy.
I know you felt you had to keep some things secret from me, but I hope you realize now that you can always tell me anything. Just know that, okay?

Please be honest.

Jamie

When I’m done, I’m shaking
and I can’t sit still. I flick the channel for Eddy and then text Sawyer.

5 minutes. Between our houses.

He’s already there when I get outside. I take my shoes from him and he starts to talk, but I hold up a hand.

“I’ll ask the questions.”

He looks away, then finally nods. “Fine.”

“You’re using Amelia, that’s all it is?”

“Yes,” he says. Nothing else. He doesn’t even try to make excuses for doing it.

“Were you using me, too?”

“No, Jamie.
No
.” His eyes drill the word into me.

I
can’t hold his intense stare, so I focus on the grass between us. I won’t let myself get swept up in emotions or confused by him. Not tonight. “What is the problem with the foreign exchange program?” I figure I should at least find out how much he knows. Does he know about Don Bristolle and what Tristan had been doing to get into the program?

“I think it’s all a
ruse.”

I look up at him, confused.

“You didn’t know?” He studies me for a long moment. I shake my head, but he keeps his eyes on me. Apparently, he’s been having almost as many problems trusting my motives as I have trusting his.

“What does that even mean, a
ruse?” My mouth is dry.

“It means I don’t think her program is real.” He runs
both hands through his hair. Looks away again. “I think she made the whole thing up to get to Europe and try to model.”

My first thought is that it must be real, because what if Tristan was sleeping with some letch and his program wasn’t even real? It’s too horrible to imagine. But my brain quickly kicks in and I replay his words:
she
made the whole thing up.

I’m glad he’s not watching me, because I need a second to
process. He hasn’t figured out the real reason Tristan’s over there, but what if what he’s saying is true? What if the program isn’t even real and she’s been keeping it from me? Where has she been staying? Is she even safe?

“How did you figure this out?” I ask, finally.

“On my computer. I can show you.” He motions back toward his house.

I can’t leave Eddy at home alone, and Mom gave me a strict talking
-to last night about how I’m not allowed to have boys in the house. If she came home early again and caught me breaking her rules, I suspect she would suddenly become my main concern about my trip. But I have to know what’s going on with Tristan.

“Can you bring it over?” I ask.

He nods and tells me he’ll meet me in a minute.

By the time he shows up, I’ve taken Eddy to the bathroom and set up two chairs near our front window—one hidden by the curtain—so I’ll see if Mom drives up
.

I let Sawyer in, and point him to the chairs. He doesn’t ask about the weird setup and instinctively takes the chair behind the curtain. His laptop is already open. He’d been booting it up on his way over.

He shakes his head staring down at his screensaver, a shot of some sort of castle. I wonder if it’s in Europe. “There are definitely some things I should show you, but... I don’t know where to start.”

“Just start at the beginning. I need to know what’s going on, Sawyer.”

“I know, but... wait, I have an idea.” He points to a button at the top of his keyboard, near the screen. “Do you know what this button is for?”

He’s giving me a computer lesson now?
I think again of Don Bristolle’s tech help and shudder. But no. This is Sawyer. “Yeah, it turns on Wi-Fi, right?” I try not to sound too annoyed. He must be going somewhere with this.

He hits the button and it turns from blue to orange. “Now Wi-Fi is off
, right?” He looks to me for confirmation, so I nod, but can feel my face contorting. Sawyer clicks through a list of file folders, and at first I think he’s stalling, until the Web site of Tristan’s foreign exchange program comes up.

“Hey, how are you getting this if there’s no Wi-Fi?”

He double-clicks another file and the contact form for the Web site comes up, the one that had bounced back our messages. Then he opens another file and the program’s mission statement appears.

“I don’t need to have Wi-Fi because all these files are on my computer.” He pauses a second so I can process his words. The thing is, I can’t make any sense of why they’re important.
Web pages can be viewed offline. I’m not sure how to do it, but I know there’s a way. “Mine and
Tristan’s
computer,” he adds.

I squint at the screen as he continues double-clicking to open files. All
of them are in one master file called
FEP
. Foreign Exchange Program? “Wait, so all these files have been on your computer for how long?”

Sawyer right-clicks a file and runs his finger down the screen until it gets to the
Date Created
line. “May 20
th
,” he says.

“That’s before
Tristan had even had the idea about trying to go to Europe.” I don’t wait for a reply. “So she just saved all their files to her computer. That’s not a big deal, right?” But even as I say the words I know they’re wrong. I know Sawyer wouldn’t be sitting here, silently letting me figure this out, if this were no big deal.

He double-clicks one more file folder, but this one looks like half of the welcome screen for the exchange program has been erased. There are missing chunks of text and no pictures. One square has a paragraph of what looks like Latin filling it. “This one’s called ‘WIP’. For work in progress,” he adds.

Sawyer knows all about Web design. It’s easy for him to find all these files and come to a quick conclusion. He and Tristan worked together on her modeling Web site a few years ago, and even Tristan had gone way over my head when she tried to explain to me how intricate the coding had been.

Tristan. Web design. It starts to click.

“There’s something wrong with the exchange program.” I repeat Sawyer’s words in a whisper.

He nods. “I think
the whole program is a ruse. I found all these when you said the contact information didn’t work. You were right. It didn’t.” He exhales, and I remember back to when Tristan had first brought up the program. She'd actually said that the program was just a way for her to get over there and help find my dad, didn't she? Maybe she'd as much as admitted the whole thing to me and I just hadn't caught on. Sawyer continues. “I wrote and asked Tristan what was going on. We were emailing back and forth all night. At first she flat-out refused to tell me, but when I said I would tell our parents, she wrote back mad as anything, telling me it’s her life, and that if I don’t keep my mouth shut and stay out of it, she’d never forgive me.”

She’d never forgive him. “So you never told her about us?” I ask,
but then snap my mouth shut, feeling like an idiot.
There
is
no us
, I tell myself.

“No, I didn’t get a chance,” he says. “She
went on and on about how she was going to prove herself over there. Prove that she could make it as a big-time model. I didn’t think it sounded safe and I told her so. I told her I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. That’s when she stopped writing back to me.”

She wanted to prove herself? To who
m? I already believe in her.

“So she was angry,” I confirm
. Sawyer sounds so worried, and I am too, but there’s also this underlying calm. “But Tristan…things work out for her. She’s fine. She’s always fine.”

He shakes his head. “She
pretends she is, but she just keeps it to herself when things don’t work out.”

I know he’s right the instant he says it. It took a lot of masked questions to find out about Tristan’s child-acting failures. I wonder how many other things she’s tried
that haven’t worked out the way she hoped. Which makes me wonder and ask at the same time exactly what she had planned in Europe.

“She said she would have a modeling job by the time you got
there. She was going to tell you about it when she saw you. Are you still meeting her at the Barcelona airport?”

The only thing I haven’t told him is about our big secret plan to find my dad. But he’s told me so much. And Tristan’s kept so much from me.

“Yeah, but...” I say, looking over at him. We’re seated side by side, but it’s awkward not having a table to put the laptop on. Even though I feel like Sawyer wants to turn and face me, he only partially does. “The plan is for us to get away from the class and go back to Italy together.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean...” I take a deep breath, “...we’re going to Milan. As soon as I can get away—I’m thinking when half the group goes to the mountains—we’ll leave. I’m hoping Matt Driediger will help cover for me with Mr. Echols.”

“
But why?” he asks. “Are you that desperate to see Italy?”

I explain to him about finding my dad.
“Tristan’s looking for him over there. He’ll be on a panel at an economics conference on the sixteenth. That was her main aim in getting to Europe, to help me.”

Sawyer twists his lips to the side, and I get the impression he doesn’t quite believe that.

“Modeling was only an afterthought,” I say, but as the words come out, I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince, him or me.

Sawyer must hear the lack of confidence in my voice, because he kindly changes the subject. “
That’s quite an involved plan. Why did you break into my house? Was that part of the plan, too?” His words are soft. He’s definitely not upset about it.

“I wanted to get a phone number for the foreign exchange program.”
I need a second of levity, so I add, “But I wouldn’t exactly call it
breaking in
. You leave a key outside.”