The Student Exchange

The letter from the IEACS

Cassie never thought she'd get picked. At all.
Of course she wanted to go to Japan... to see the cherry blossoms bloom and the serene city lights of Tokyo. But she never thought she would get to go now. Not until she was older and had finished schooling, and was travelling the world with her best friend, Holly. Holly had been picked for the program too, except she was going to Germany.

Cassie did not want to go on the student exchange for a good few reasons. For one it involved hiking.
Hiking means you need to be fit enough to walk for ages on tricky terrain. Cassie didn't think she was fit. Although she loved PE, she just couldn't bear the fact that she would have to be constantly stomping on dried leaves up a mountain. Like Mount Fuji.

They're also going shopping. Cassie loves shopping, usually, but annoyingly enough all of the 'stuck up' girls are going on the exchange too. Those girls were the ones who rolled up their skirts and wore a full branded wardrobe to mufti days. They hung out with the guys who played multiple sports and were just effortlessly beautiful (even when they did something stupid, which was cringe but at the same time envied because of how good they looked doing it).
But, they were mean. Those stroppy princesses ripped into anybody who wasn't like them, thinking that they were the role models to the rest of the year.
Cassie didn't like them either. And the idea of going shopping with them hardly excited her.

Of course, she'd always wanted to go to a different school. A prestigious school, that was so different in structure and curricular activity. In another town. City. Country. World.
Language? No.
She could hardly speak Japanese. And apparently she'd be able to take lessons at her school if she accepted the program.
Although Cassie was a very smart student, she thought she would struggle with Japanese. She could hardly read Holly's scrawny writing alone, and now she could be learning how to read complicated swirls and patterns with many lines intertwined. Cassie was an art student, but she didn't know whether her Japanese symbols would look like anything more than an amateur attempt to spell a simple word like cat.

And so when she received the elegantly embellished letter from the International Exchange Agency for College Students (IEACS) Cassie was surprised. And then all colour drained from her face.

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Holly scrunched up the piece of refill on her desk. How was she supposed to write such a long essay about the Neolithic Revolution?
She took aim at the recycling bin, scrunched up ball of paper in hand, and threw the paper at the back side of the bin, watching it bounce off and into it. A silent celebration later, and she was again sitting at her desk, bored. Holly gazed longingly at the clock that was tick ticking on the wall, the sound ringing in her ears. Picking up her pencil, she started to write her essay with a basic sentence. "The Neolithic Revolution was long awaited, but what the human race gained was the ability to become self sufficient and effective with food and water production."
She was away, but with her writing smudging because of her hand, she was slowly becoming worried that it wouldn't be able to be read.
And aside from that, she had just read a very exciting letter regarding the student exchange. There, in bright blue ink on a pale yellow page, embellished with many red swirls that sparkled in the light like her favourite gel pen, was her name; Holly Finkle!
She couldn't believe she was selected to go to Germany, and she had always wanted to go on an airplane. This was going to be GREAT!
If she could go that is. As soon as she opened the letter, right until she read the final word, there was one thing on her mind that really bothered her.
Money.
Ever since her parents split up, she'd been darting between the two of them, and they were both struggling with money. Her mum was trying to find someone but sadly there was "no one like her dad", so really her mum has been a mess. She tells her daughter that she wishes she'd never said certain things, and her usual happy self was deflating like a yellow balloon. Which didn't help with her job, as her work ethic and attitude had gone down a lot of notches. Her dad however, is loaded, but hated the idea of Holly going to a different country. On her own. To the other side of the world. On her own. With nobody else, even Cassie. On her own.

Oh but how she wanted to go on the exchange... Germany was such a beautiful country! And the buildings and people and... no. She had to go. But the only thing that blocked her way was money. 
Holly envied Cassie for that. She loved her best friend and all, but Cassie's family was loaded! If she had their kind of money, she'd be coated in brands and already packing her bags for Germany! She'd be in the the cool kids group and buy the best gifts for Cassie like she'd always done for her. Her house would be huge, and her bedroom would be painted a bright shade of ice blue, like the walls were an entrance to a hollowed glacier. Her mother would be so happy, and maybe once her father found out how much of a frustrating beast his girlfriend was, he could live with her and her mother. He would come back with roses and chocolates in hand, the hopeless romantic, and her mother would rush out to meet her soulmate, remembering all the times they shared like it was a treasured storybook that was stored in her mind. The family would be reunited like old times. Christmases and birthdays would be celebrated like old times. Everything would be like old times.
It would be...wonderful.
There is no other word for it.

And she was going on that trip, no matter the cost.