The Exchange

"Why are you getting upset?" he asked.

"Because everything is different now. Call it my lack of emotional intelligence, but I can't stand you!"

"What's different?"

"Everything is. You know everything. You're holding the key to the world just above my fingertips."

"What?"

"You know exactly what I mean."

He rubbed his eyes with his hand. "If I'm doing that, it's only because I'm giving it to you. I'm not against you, and I don't know why you think I am. This was supposed to be a peace offering."

"I don't want peace. I just-" I couldn't hold back my tears any longer. "I just want everything to go back to the way it was."

"Before me?"

I nodded.

Amanda Jayne is a sports-loving, change-resisting math enthusiast. She loves "her" people more than anything in the world, and nothing can ever break their bond.

Or so she thought.

When her brother's best friend Viktor moves in as a foreign exchange student, he shows Amanda what loyalty doesn't mean, and that trust can be built up and broken down like sandcastles.

Can they learn to coexist, or will their different points of view drive them apart?

Rewritten version completed July 14, 2020