Four
The next morning, when I get home from marching band rehearsal—where I’ve been shafted with a pair of cymbals since you can’t march with an oboe—Dad is on the phone at the front desk. He has it on speaker while he digs through a pile of unread mail.
A woman’s voice says, “Mr. Rossi, we did try to notify you several times regarding the placement change for Garrett Andersen. Both in writing and by phone.”
Dad finds an unopened envelope embossed with a golden Global Youth Ambassadors logo and frowns. “Never got a letter,” he grunts, tossing it into the recycling basket, “or a phone call. What number were you calling?”
The woman reads off a series of digits belonging to Dad’s personal cell, not our store phone. He always answers the latter, but never the former. I would bet a thousand dollars that there are several unheard voicemails from GYA waiting on his cell.
He scratches the back of his head—today covered with a forest-green beanie—then pivots to offense. “Why would GYA send someone from Georgia—the state—to Michigan? You’re a foreign exchange program.”
“We do our best to place applicants abroad,” the woman explains with practiced patience, “but with interest in hosting American teenagers declining, this isn’t always possible.
So this year we’re piloting our Domestic Exchange Program.
Students still receive the opportunity to learn from a new family, live in a different city, and make lifelong connections.
Our hope is that this program could bridge the urban-rural divide, teaching students to understand the lived experience of those who are different from themselves.
In this situation, we thought Garrett’s experience in suburban Atlanta would be sufficiently different from your … particular geographic context.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I hear a shuffle of papers on the other end. “Irontown is a municipality of four thousand three hundred sixty-eight residents surrounded entirely by national forest. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“So,” the woman continues, as if explaining basic math to a toddler, “GYA determined that your town could replicate a foreign experience for someone from a more populated area. We thought Garrett could learn about rural poverty, differing educational standards and political beliefs, and outdoor survival.”
Dad closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “And what about what Garrett wants? Have you considered that he might not want to spend his senior year in a new town and at a new high school?”
“That is precisely the experience all GYA participants agree to when they apply to the program.”
“They’re signing up to study abroad. It’s different, and you know it.”
“Mr. Rossi, we give our applicants every opportunity to drop out of the program and receive a full refund for their fees if we cannot find them an international placement. The Domestic Exchange Program is entirely optional. Garrett’s parents, however, insisted that he remain in the program.”
This gives Dad pause. “His parents?”
“Yes. In all of our communications with them, they expressed their desire to have him complete the program regardless of where he would ultimately be placed.”
“Why?”
“You are more than welcome to ask them yourself,” she replies, sounding like she’s reached the limits of her patience. “Their contact information was included in our most recent mailing, but I can provide you with it now.”
Dad jots down the phone number she reads.
“And I must ask: Are you wishing to terminate Garrett’s placement in your home? Because this is a two-way agreement, and if you are unwilling to host him, GYA needs to know as soon as possible.”
Dad runs his hand over his beard.
“Mr. Rossi? Are you there?”
“Yeah, sorry. I need to talk to his parents. And my kids. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”
He hangs up. We look at each other for a long moment before he asks, “Did Garrett say anything about this to you last night?”
I think of Garrett’s conversation with his parents, the way his voice sounded small and weak. How all the confidence he’d projected in front of our family bled from him through some invisible wound.
“No.”
Dad tilts his head to the side a fraction of an inch, spotting my lie. I don’t like hiding things from him, but if Garrett wanted us to know about his parents, he would have told us. I can at least give him that privacy.
Dad lets it pass. “I should talk to Mr. and Mrs. Andersen myself anyway.” He releases a long breath, looking around the entry hall with its double-wide front doors, yellowing floral wallpaper, and shelves of antiques, as if the space will give him the answers he needs.
In the living room, a customer browses a collection of tattered Agatha Christie novels.
“You should take Garrett to see Lake Superior or something,” Dad eventually says. “You can use the truck and drive out to Black Rocks.”
“Now?” I say, feeling my stomach twist at the thought of the two of us alone together for several hours. “I have a shift starting soon.” During the summer, I work part-time at our shop. I take inventory, manage the front desk, and help Dad collect large items from people’s homes.
“Take the day off. Emma can cover for you. And while you’re in Blue Harbor, you should take a drive through campus.”
The School of Mines is in Blue Harbor. Dad never misses a chance to remind me of this.
“Why?”
“To get used to the place before next year.”
“Hard pass.” I don’t need to drive around the eight squat buildings named after deceased mining executives to reinforce the reality of my dismal future.
Dad sighs. “I don’t want to argue about this, and I’m not going to make you hang out with Garrett if you don’t want to. I just thought he might appreciate getting out of the house.”
In my head, I once again hear Garrett’s pleading voice. I think of him alone in our guest room. I hold my hand out for the keys to Dad’s truck. “Whatever. He probably won’t want to hang out anyway.”
To my surprise, Garrett does. Twenty minutes later, we are scrambling over rocks warmed by the late August sun, the waves of Lake Superior crashing below us, driving and percussive.
The sky and the lake stretch out into endless blue summer, a fermata before the beginning of school.
The view sparks an orchestra of bagpipes and brass and frenetic strings in my head like the bombastic theme from How to Train Your Dragon.
On our way over, we picked up my best friends, Katrina and Trevor.
I’ve known Katrina since the first week of kindergarten.
I had stepped in pee in the bathroom while wearing only socks, and she gave me an extra pair and told me I was dumb to go to the bathroom without shoes—that’s Katrina, both judgmental and generous—and then we were friends.
Trevor was the boy whose socks Katrina “borrowed” to give to me.
Katrina plays clarinet and Trevor plays French horn, and though I just saw them at band rehearsal this morning, they were eager to meet Garrett. I had described the insane situation to them, but they weren’t as shocked as I wanted them to be.
Trevor had shrugged and said, “It’s not that different from having a random guy from halfway around the world living with you. This was always going to be weird. Now it’s just weird with someone whose native language is English.”
Katrina had agreed with him and told me that Georgia is in Eastern Europe, not Western Asia, and that I need to be less awkward around straight guys.
“I’m straight,” Trevor had complained.
“But you’re a mathlete,” Katrina said. Then she looked at me. “He’s a hot straight guy, isn’t he?”
“Why does that matter?” I’d blustered.
She smirked. “That’s what I thought.”
Now Katrina is scrambling across a rocky crevice and asking Garrett over her shoulder, “What’s your neighborhood in Atlanta like?
” She wears a large Irontown Band sweatshirt on top of her swimsuit, and her white-blond hair is pulled back in a tight braid.
She and Trevor spent the entire ride peppering Garrett with questions about life in the city and the South.
“It’s fine. I actually live in a suburb. It’s one of those places with crazy-expensive houses where the people pretend the homes weren’t all built less than ten years ago. Filled with a lot of freeways and strip malls that take themselves too seriously.”
“Blue Harbor has a strip mall,” Trevor offers. “It has a drive-through coffee place and everything.”
Garrett’s lip twitches as if he’s holding back a smile, and it feels patronizing. We reach the highest point of a rock face, scarred black stone plunging vertically to the water below. It’s thirty feet down, but we can still feel the cold spray of water from up here.
“This is Black Rocks,” I announce.
Pulling themselves up the rock face are some guys, hair dripping wet and forearms straining as they claw their way onto the ledge.
I recognize Tyler Jorgen and Evan Hegge—of eighth-grade stomach-punching infamy—and a few other seniors.
When they get to the top, Tyler gives a half wave, but the rest ignore us.
They roughhouse and swear at one another, and then, one by one, they walk to the ledge and jump into the water.
Garrett watches them splash into the water below, his head tilted to the side. Then he takes his shirt off and strides to the edge, looking down. When he turns back to us, Katrina’s question—Is he a hot straight guy?—trumpets in my mind.
The answer is conclusive and unarguable.
His body is a sculpture, tall and toned, every line and curve carved with intention.
Muscles rope over his shoulders and arms and across his chest, yet he lacks the hulking, clumsy physique of Tyler’s friends, with their arms the size of misshapen Christmas hams. There’s a leanness to him, every part of his body aware of its purpose with nothing extra or unnecessary, all bone and muscle beneath a tapestry of freckles.
The bottom edges of his abs triangle toward each other, disappearing into the waistline of his low-riding swim shorts.
And his face. He has a proud jaw and cocky eyes, the kind that make you want to do something reckless to get noticed by them.
His hair is short on the sides and carefully messy on top, and is the color of iron-ore dust when it settles on white houses, warm and earthy and glowing in the afternoon light.
Yep. Definitely hot.
He nods toward the water. “Well?”
“Oh,” Trevor says, “we don’t usually jump. We swim from over there.” He points to a rocky beach backdropped by pines.
“Why?”
Katrina glances at me. “Some of us aren’t the best swimmers.”
I look up at the sky as if I suddenly care about the seagulls circling overhead.
Garrett’s eyes flick over me appraisingly. He lifts his shoulders. “Suit yourselves.”
And then he dives. His body is fierce and confident as it forms a graceful arc, briefly suspended over the ultramarine waves.
Tyler and his friends were stones plummeting into water.
Garrett flies. He barely creates a splash.
Seconds later, his head breaks the surface, haloed in bubbles and water droplets.
“Fuck, it’s cold!” he shouts.
Tyler, halfway out of the water and gripping the rock face, laughs and says something I can’t hear. Garrett swims to him and begins following him up the rocks.
Katrina nudges me with her shoulder. “He’s not as bad as you made him sound.”
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.