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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
DARREN'S SCOTTISH LIFE HAD ENDED the moment he'd decided to go abroad for the last year of high school and all of college. He'd started saying goodbye to his friends and the customs he was so used to. The last few days in his native country were spent with family, and with everything he did, he thought to himself, I'll never do this again.
The feeling had become definite when he arrived at the airport, getting ready for a fifteen-hour flight. The moment wasn't shocking or emotional, though; he had been preparing for it for weeks.
When his American life had ended, he didn't know. Maybe it was the moment Dakota had rejected him for the first time, or the moment she had confronted him in the cafeteria and he started to realize he had to accept there was no place for him in her life. Maybe it was when he read the email from Princeton, saying there was no place for him at their university.
And maybe, it had been a step-by-step process, just as how he'd left Scotland: an accumulation of short moments of his environment telling him to let go.
This is how Darren found himself in between two lives. Arriving at Glasgow International Airport, he was confronted with the life he'd so long ago said goodbye to, and the overwhelming feeling of being out of place got to him. The first thing that gave him that feeling was the announcement by the pilot on the plane, saying they had arrived and in what weather conditions: "Welcome to Glasgow. Currently, it is minus five degrees Celsius or twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit. Thank you for flying with..."
Just when he heard "twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit," a shiver had crawled along his spine. He'd gotten used to the luxurious Florida weather, always over sixty degrees Fahrenheit. When he'd left the state, he'd been wearing shorts, but on the other side of the ocean, long jeans and a thick winter coat were required if one did not want to faint from the cold.
Although it was a small detail, the second thing that had made Darren feel like he didn't belong in Scotland, was him yawning and feeling the urge to crawl into bed even though it was eleven in the morning when the plane landed. In just a few months, he had become an American, and this was just another bit of evidence supporting that.
But his family couldn't care less which nationality he had taken on, and when they saw him, they welcomed him into what had once felt like his native country with open arms. It had been the same club of people that would follow him around no matter where he would go: his mother Elle, her soon-to-be husband Larson, Darren's father Ryan, and his little twin sisters Keri and Brielle. His friend Colin was there too, and when Darren laid his eyes on him, he was overwhelmed by guilt of not having called his Scottish friend more often. If he had, he would've known his friend had gotten rid of his bouncy curls and instead was rocking a bald head. It was another example of how he'd said goodbye to Scotland, the place he'd once called home.
"Hey, mate," Colin had said in that characteristic Scottish accent of his. Darren had only heard this accent through the distorted computer speakers, but it was as warm as it had always been. Colin had then given him a hug, and the club of people went to the house Darren once called home.
