The Host Family's Free-Use Exchange Student

Chapter 1

The plane had been a long white noise, and then it was a line.

Lina held her passport in both hands even after the officer had already given it back. Twenty years old. First time this far west. The stamps looked too official for a girl who still packed extra socks because her mother said American houses were cold.

She followed the signs that said BAGGAGE and tried not to look lost. English came out of speakers overhead, fast and cheerful. In Vilnius the announcements had felt like they belonged to her even when she was tired. Here they belonged to other people.

A man waited at the barrier with a paper that said LINA.

Late fifties. Tall. Gray at the temples. A smile that arrived before she was ready for it.

“That’s you,” he said. “Mark. Host dad. You made it.”

Lina shook his hand. He held on a second longer than the handshake needed.

“Yes. Lina. Thank you for… for taking me.”

“That’s what the program is for.” He took her suitcase before she could argue. “Diane’s in the car. Boys are at campus. You’ll meet the twins at dinner. Don’t look so scared. We don’t bite.”

She made a small polite laugh because that seemed required.

Outside, the air was warmer than she had packed for. Diane stood by a dark SUV, waving like Lina was a niece.

“Oh, you’re tiny,” Diane said, and hugged her. Perfume. Soft sweater. “Was the flight awful? Are you hungry? Mark, she looks pale.”

“I’m fine,” Lina said. “Thank you.”

Fine was the word she had practiced.

The city unrolled past the window in wide lanes and huge signs. Lina kept her bag on her knees. Diane talked about the guest room and the extra towels and how the twins, Cole and Ryan, were twenty-one and loud but good. Mark watched Lina in the rearview more than a driver needed to.

“You have a boyfriend back home?” he asked.

“Yes. Tomas.”

“That’s sweet. You can Skype whenever. House Wi-Fi is decent.”

“Thank you.”

Diane glanced at Mark. “Let her land before you interview her.”

“I’m being friendly.”

Lina looked at her hands.

The house was bigger than her parents’ flat and the stairwell combined. Cream walls. A kitchen that looked like an advertisement. A backyard with a grill. Diane showed her the guest room at the end of the upstairs hall: pale bedspread, empty desk, a window onto the street.

“Bathroom is yours unless the boys hog it in the morning,” Diane said. “No lock on the bedroom, I’m afraid. Mark hates locked doors. Family house. You need anything, you yell.”

Lina set her suitcase on the bed.

“I only want to study,” she said, too fast. “And see the city. Museums. I don’t want to be trouble.”

Diane smiled. “You’re not trouble. You’re a guest. Dinner at six. Come down when you’re ready.”

When the door clicked, Lina sat on the mattress and let her spine fold.

No lock.

Family house.

She unpacked in neat piles. Modest shirts. A cardigan. The good sweater her mother had insisted on. Extra socks. A paper dictionary even though her phone had an app. A photo of Tomas in her wallet, printed because she did not trust the cloud.

She opened the laptop and the time difference made Tomas’s face appear in evening light.

They spoke Lithuanian and her shoulders dropped.

“The house is large,” she told him. “They seem kind. I will go to campus tomorrow and get my card.”

“You look tired.”

“The plane.”

“If it’s strange, you say. I can still be angry from here.”

Lina smiled. “It’s not strange. It’s only new. I want the library and the old buildings. That is all.”

Tomas tapped the camera with one finger, a habit. “Eat something.”

“I will.”

She did not tell him the host father had held her hand too long. She did not tell him there was no lock. Those were small American things. She would get used to them.

After the call she put on socks and lay on top of the covers with her shoes still lined up under the chair.

Dinner was roast chicken and too many questions.

Cole and Ryan came in together, which made the resemblance louder. Same height. Same dark hair. Same grin. One had a small scar at his eyebrow—Cole, he said, pointing at it like a name tag. Ryan slouched into the chair across from Lina and looked at her mouth when she said pleased to meet you.

“You’re the exchange,” Cole said. “Lithuania. We Googled it.”

“That is… nice.”

“She’s polite,” Ryan told the table. “We’re doomed.”

Diane passed potatoes. “Be decent.”

Mark poured wine for everyone except Lina, then paused the bottle over her glass.

“You sure? Welcome drink.”

“I don’t drink. Thank you.”

Ryan’s eyebrows went up. “At all?”

“At all.”

“Nuns drink wine,” Cole said.

“Cole,” Diane said.

Lina looked at her plate. “I just want to study. And walk. I have a list of museums.”

“We’ll take you,” Ryan said. “City’s confusing the first week.”

“I can take the bus.”

“We’ll take you,” Cole repeated, smiling.

Mark watched the exchange over his glass. “Give her room. She just got off a plane.”

It sounded like protection. It also sounded like he was the one who decided what room was.

Lina ate what she could. The chicken was good. Her stomach was still over the ocean.

After dishes, the twins offered a tour of the house that was really a tour of themselves: game console, basement laundry, a framed photo of the four of them at a lake. Ryan slung an arm toward Lina’s shoulders and stopped short when she stepped aside.

“Jumpy.”

“Tired,” she said.

Cole laughed. “She’s going to hate us.”

“I don’t hate you. I don’t know you.”

That made both of them look at her a second longer than a joke needed.

Mark clapped once. “Let her sleep. Campus in the morning. I’ll drive.”

“I can—”

“I’ll drive,” he said, friendly and final.

In the guest room Lina put the chair under the doorknob even though Diane had said the house did not do locks. The chair was an idea, not a tool. It would slide if anyone pushed.

She wrote in her notebook, English on one side, Lithuanian on the other.

*House is fine.*

*Twins are loud.*

*No lock.*

*Library tomorrow.*

She pulled on a second pair of socks and got under the blanket.

The house made American noises. Ice in a fridge. A television downstairs. Footsteps that paused too long outside her door and then kept going.

Lina stared at the ceiling.

She had come to study and to see a city that was not hers.

That was still the plan.

She closed her eyes and saw the arrivals hall, the paper with her name, Mark’s smile arriving early.

She slept in her socks, one hand on the phone that held Tomas’s last message.

The chair held until morning.

Morning would be campus.

Campus would be simple.

The house, she was starting to understand, would not be.

She did not have a word yet for what it would be.

She only had extra socks, a boyfriend four thousand miles away, and a door that did not lock.

It was enough for the first night.

It would not be enough for the rest.

She slept anyway, because the plane had taken everything else.