The Exchange

Chapter 1

"Marina, please be nice to him. I've been emailing him quite a bit and he seems to be a kind boy, so don't turn him evil," my mother warns me while I roll my eyes and sit down. The airport in Pasco is really tiny, so there isn't a lot of extra noise around us.

"Thats the plane!" Mom says with excitement. I look up from my phone and gaze out the window. Smallest. Effing. Plane. Ever. "You excited?" She asks me, taking a seat as well. Yeah, I can't wait for a stranger to live in my house and have my parents treat him like my brother because I'm not good enough for them!

That was sarcasm, if you couldn't already tell.

I nod and fake smile for my mother's sake. Don't get me wrong, I do love my mom. It's just that I feel so different from my parents and the rest of my family that its so hard for me to be happy. Anger always gets in the way, and frankly, I don't even know why. I mean, I'm satisfied with my life. I don't expect much more. But I'm angry, and I have yet to find out why.

Enough about me, let's get back to Christian, AKA The Exchange Student.

It all started in the beginning of June. School had just gotten out, so my best friend, Sabrina and I were already kicking off the summer getting ready for an 'End Of Junior Year Party' that would be at her house. But, because of us stupid teenagers who had just gotten a new car and wanted to drive it a lot, we decided to go to my house to get ready. Bad choice.

About an hour after deciding what we were going to wear, the house phone had started to ring. Josh had already left for Sweden two weeks earlier, and my parents work late, so Sabrina and I were the only people at the house. So, the somewhat responsible young adult I am, I picked up the phone.

"Hi! This is Rebecca from American Exchange!" A woman's voice beamed through the phone. Literally sounded like an albino squirrel on ecstasy.

"Hi, my parents aren't home so can I call you back later?" I asked with boredom. You see, I thought this call would be about Josh. If I knew that it wasn't at that time, I would've just hung up on the spot. But it was two months ago and I was too arrogant to think about it.

So, the ecstasy albino squirrel named Rebecca gave me her number and I wrote it down on a sticky note and stuck it on my mother's desk. If it were just an ordinary day, I wouldn't have even picked up the phone. But for the last few weeks before that, Sabrina and I were talking my parents into letting me go to New York with her for a two weeks. She invited me to go because her parents were involved in some kind of business meeting in September. So, while her parents were working in New York, Sabrina and I would be partying it up without parent's supervision.

So, like I was saying, if it were any other day I wouldn't pick up the phone, but I was trying to get on my parent's good side before September.

Just think, if we went straight to Sabrina's house instead of mine I couldn't have heard the phone. And if I wasn't trying to get on my parent's good side, I WOULDN'T have answered the phone. And if it wasn't for that damn annoying albino squirrel on ecstasy talking through the phone, I wouldn't have felt obligated to leave a note with her number for my parents to find and call her back. And if I never left the note, my parents wouldn't have gotten this interested. And if they weren't interested, I wouldn't be at an airport with my mom, waiting for Chris to walk through the door.

So, recap time, I am now at an airport with my mom, waiting for Christian to walk through the door.

Damn logistics.