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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PERHAPS DARREN SHOULD HAVE KNOWN better than to follow Liam's advice, considering that the first time his host brother had advised him, it had caused the fight between Darren and Dakota. Yet, Darren had listened again, and he found himself in the same situation as before: ignored.
Dakota had read his message about him having written to her mother almost immediately, as the two blue check marks testified, but she hadn't answered, just as he had gotten used to over the past few weeks.
Still, Darren felt the need to ask her about it during English. "Did you read my text?"
She stared out straight ahead and humphed.
"Is that a yes?" he asked.
She made the same sound, and she didn't take her eyes off their English teacher who was intently reading Pride and Prejudice, like the model English teacher he was.
"So, what do you think?" Darren asked. He shifted in his seat so his entire body was turned towards her.
The muscles in her jaw tensed, but now, she didn't even give a nonverbal reply.
"About me writing to your mum, I mean."
"I got that."
The first three words he heard from her lips in all of November. Progress, he thought with slight satisfaction. Her voice sounded just like it always had, light and silvery, although it lacked any emotion. He was used to it being filled with excitement when telling a story and a wide range of intonation to bring her story across better. However, these three words were flat in tone.
"Great. So you read the text?"
No reply.
"Have you changed your mind about not wanting to meet your mum?"
Quiet.
"She's lovely, really."
He knew he shouldn't even expect an answer to that, so he went back to his strategy of asking questions.
"Do you want to know what your mum wrote?"
Silence.
"Or what I wrote?"
At this point, the silence went on for so long Darren expected to hear crickets in the background. He looked around to see if anyone was listening in on their one-sided conversation, but all other class members were too busy doing something else to notice them.
"Let me show it to you." He didn't yet know how he was going to, considering Dakota still didn't look at him or had turned his way, but he got his phone out of his backpack and opened up Facebook.
