Beside a dark road in northern Virginia, a deer shot its head up from the grass. It stared down the road as it stood motionless. In the distance, the sound of a car grew louder. Light hazed from around the corner. The distinctive rumble of a four-cylinder boxer engine cut through the warm, humid air. The deer jumped into the brush along the shoulder as the car's headlights glared. If the deer knew what music was, it would have heard the raging guitar of mid-2000s pop-punk blaring out the open window.

Inside the car, a teenage girl was singing along, practically yelling the lyrics over the rush of the wind.

Don't look so blue, you should've seen right through

I'm using you, my little decoy

My little de-COY!

The road straightened and Amy let the engine rev all the way out to redline before shifting. She had learned to drive on this car, and soon it might be hers. As she'd driven more and more, Amy had grown kind of fond the little blue car. She was proud of the manual transmission and her ability to drive it – her father had insisted that everyone in the Miller family would be at least familiar with driving a stick.

Amy pulled the Subaru Forester into its spot in the driveway, revving the engine one last time. She loved the soft, barely audible whine of the turbocharger. Driving and listening to the engine was one of her favorite escapes. It was up there with hiking, music, and really anything else that wasn't annoying. Trees don't talk, engines don't have opinions, and a good song can make you forget anything else for three and a half minutes. As Amy walked inside, she turned back to look at the car. The paint was reflecting the full moon, and the body lines were visible in the pale light. Even with the mid-generation facelift, second-gen Foresters still look like a toaster on wheels. Sure, the hood scoop kind of made the front end a little less boxy, but it was a lovable box all the same. The Seven Sisters badge caught the moon just right, as if it were glowing like the stars it depicted.

The next evening was not as picturesque. Amy had been trying to apply for colleges way early, but she hated every minute of it. Individual essays and reasons to go to each school, sending transcripts, and filling out the same boxes over and over was dull and tedious. She'd spent half the time texting her friend Amanda to complain. After an entire evening, Amy was absolutely drained and hated everything. Driving had worked the previous night but driving this angry was just asking to mess up. Amy stepped outside and watched the light fading on the horizon. She brought in that day's mail. Apparently, she was the only person in the house to remember that snail mail existed.

The mail was always boring and full of flyers or pamphlets from different colleges, most of which Amy had never heard of. She wasn't even sure half of them really existed. The same format applied to every single one: something about a family, something about learning amazing things, something about having an experience, insert graduation statistics and a picture of three to seven students smiling.

Amy tossed the new packet onto the small stack beside her desk. She sat with her head in her hands, feeling miserable. Her phone buzzed.

How are the applications?

Like hell. I'm done with this; I just wish I could apply to the schools I really want to instead of carpet-bombing the state just to get in.

Oh. Any new fan mail?

"Fan mail" was what they called the constant waste of paper that was Amy's inbox.

Yeah.

Open it, see if you can get all the boxes on "Basic Advertisement Bingo."

She stared at the day's mail. It was a manilla folder, and that set it apart from the other papers that were normally brightly covered in the school's color scheme. On the back side, the address seemed odd. It looked like regular mail, not any sort of ad. It was addressed to her, and it came from Dominion Girl's High School in… No way, this had to be fake.

Dude, you're not gonna believe this. The mail? It says it's from Japan. Dominion Girl's High School.

Either you're lying or you're high. Or that is the fakest letter from the fakest school ever.

IKR

Open it and tell me how bullshit it is.

Amy opened the envelope, and inside was a letter. Of course. There was always a "personalized" letter.

There's a letter.

Okay? What else? How badly written is it?

She read the letter. Then she read it again. Then she pulled up Google on her computer and searched the name of the school and some of the names of the people who signed it. No way.

Um

What?

UM

WTF?

It's real.

No way… I refuse to believe this LOL. A school sent you a totally sketch envelope?

Seriously. Google Dominion Girl's High School in Japan.

Wow…

But here's the thing…

Amy explained to her friend what the letter was asking.

The letter wasn't from a college, but a high school in Japan inviting Amy to be a foreign exchange student for a semester. Not only that, but they were requesting that Amy participate in their Tankery team. If she could put that into her applications, colleges would kill to have someone who was an exchange student. It didn't matter whether that person played once they got accepted, just that they'd done so in another country. The letter was not in fact another boring paper, it was the solution to Amy's problem and the problems of many others.