Page 13 of Exchanged

I watch as he grasps a handhold above his head, muscles tight across his back. “Who even does that?” I say. “Who leaves their family and home during senior year to live somewhere else?”

Trevor stuffs his hands into the pockets of his swim trunks. “Exchange students do that.”

“I understand going to a different country.” I motion at Garrett, now on top of the rocks with the other guys. He’s been absorbed into the shifting mass of them, laughing and elbowing Tyler as if the two of them have been buddies all their lives. “But what is he getting out of this? Out of living in another state for a year?”

Katrina shrugs. “He’s taking a risk to try something new. Maybe he wanted to learn about himself or whatever.” She nods at the guys drying themselves off. “Look, he’s made some new friends.”

Garrett heads back toward where Katrina, Trevor, and I stand, the other guys following behind him like burly ducklings.

“You don’t have to share a bedroom with him, do you?” Evan is saying.

“No.”

“Good, because … you know”—he makes a limp-wristed motion with one hand—“he would check you out while you sleep or something.”

Garrett smirks and gestures at his shirtless self. “I wouldn’t blame him.” He’s already one of the guys—has proved himself straight in all the small ways he needed to—so they laugh at the joke instead of calling him a fag.

As the boys reach us, Katrina opens her mouth to tell Evan off, but I nudge her. I don’t need her to defend me, especially not in front of Garrett.

“We’re getting ice cream,” Garrett tells us. “Some place called Jilbert’s?”

“It’s kind of a big deal,” Trevor says. “You have to get the Moose Tracks flavor.”

“Unless…” Garrett hesitates. “Do y’all want to come with?” he asks, already knowing the answer. He doesn’t need to understand anything about Irontown to recognize that guys like Tyler Jorgen and Evan Hegge don’t hang out with people like Katrina, Trevor, and me. Some things are the same everywhere. Behind him, Garrett’s new friends watch us, stone-faced and silent.

“No thanks!” Katrina says, giving the correct answer. “We still haven’t swum yet, so we’ll pass.”

Garrett nods, and I can’t help noticing the glistening constellations of water droplets clinging to his skin. And then he’s following his new friends to their car, leaving Katrina, Trevor, and me on top of the sun-washed rocks.

FIVE

“I talked to Garrett’s parents.”

Dad says it carefully, eyeing Emma and me for a reaction. We’re sitting around the dining room table, the leftovers from last night’s over-the-top dinner on our plates. Garrett hasn’t come home yet.

“Can he stay?” Emma blurts.

“It might be for the best.”

Emma yelps excitedly, not noticing what Dad isn’t saying. It might be for the best, like something is wrong with Garrett going home, like staying here is a solution.

Dad watches me over the top of his water glass, his eyes piercing through me. He takes a drink and sets it down. “What do you think, Enzo?”

I chase a piece of rigatoni around my plate with my fork. “It’s fine, I guess.”

“But you were expecting someone else. You’re not happy Garrett’s here.”

“He’s not a foreign exchange student,” I say. “We’re not his foster family.”

Dad is quiet for a second too long. “No,” he says. “We’re not. And you’re the one who will be living closest to him. If you really don’t want him here, I understand.”

“You’d send him home because I don’t want him here?”

Dad nods, and he and Emma go quiet, waiting for my answer, the unsellable grandfather clock in the hall filling the silence with its thudding pendulum. If we were in a movie right now, pulsing strings would underscore a close-up on my face, the rest of the plot hanging on the next words out of my mouth. Then I would smile and say something cliché like What the hell, let’s do this! and the woodwinds and brass instruments would sail in, all playful and bright, before a montage would start rolling: Garrett unpacking in his room; our family walking down Main Street, ice cream cones in hand; Garrett and me striding into the senior hallway on the first day of school before he fist-bumps me on his way into calculus class.

The audience, swept away by the buoyant soundtrack, wouldn’t question why the characters are okay with a kid from Atlanta living in our house for a year.

My life isn’t a movie.