As an exchange student from Scotland, a whole new world opens up to Darren Green when he moves to the United States. He'll live with a host family, start at a new school, and he'll have to make new friends. However, what won't be a part of this new...
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"HEY, MY BOY." His father's face smiled at him from the other side of the screen. It was dark in Ryan's room, and his face was more pixelated than normal.
"Hey, dad." Darren forced himself to smile too. "What time is it there?" he asked, referring to the darkness. Seeing his father was almost impossible if it wasn't for his white teeth and the small light reflection in his eyes.
"Ten," his father said at the same time as Darren had managed to calculate the time in his mind. The time difference between Florida and Scotland was only five hours, but it felt like more. "I don't want to turn the light on because the girls are sleeping," he explained. "I'm afraid to wake them up, and I already feel bad for calling you without them here." He smiled as he took another good look at his son. "They miss you."
"Tell them I miss them too," Darren said. He almost choked on his words.
"I will," Ryan said. Darren could trust him on his word; his father always did what he promised. "How are you doing?" Ryan had noticed the tone in Darren's voice as well as the lack of happiness at the beginning of their Skype call. Instead, a veil of graveness seemed to cloud their conversation.
The simple question was all it took for Darren to break. "I think I messed up, dad." He buried his face in his hands. "Like, really messed up."
"Why do you figure?" Ryan asked. The sight of his son suddenly breaking upset him, but he tried not to be taken aback by it. He wanted to be the listening ear for his son – it was the only thing he could do with an entire ocean separating them – and he couldn't do that if he let himself be controlled by his emotions.
Darren uncovered his face. "This friend of mine..." He turned his head away, not able to look into his father's sincere eyes. "I hurt her."
"What did you do?" Ryan prompted.
Darren bit his lip in an attempt to get rid of the tears before the camera would catch sight of them. How could he explain what he'd done? He had been mulling over the conversation he'd had with Dakota, analyzing if he could've said something different or should've brought the news to her in a different way, but every time, he came to the conclusion he'd caused the problem long before that conversation.
"Darren?"
His name sounded so different in a Scottish accent, but it was just like how he was used to. It brought back happy memories from home that only seemed to conflict with the memories currently going through his mind.
"She and I..." Darren shook his head and started over again. "I think I've talked about her to you before. Her name's Dakota." It sounded more like a question than a fact, and Ryan answered positively.
"She's also the one you spent that Saturday morning with when we came to visit, right?"
Darren nodded. He remembered how that Saturday morning and the night before he and Dakota had had such a good time. It was the second-to-last party he'd been to, and it had been drastically different from his last one. "And you know... You know she's an orphan, right?"
