Three Hundred Dollars and a Camera Crew

Chapter 2 The Application

The Exchange was a reality show on a cable network I had never watched. It paired people from different backgrounds and swapped them into each other's lives for two weeks. Rich kids went to rural towns. Poor kids went to country clubs. City and country. Have and have-not. The premise was always the same: you will learn something about yourself, and the audience will learn something about you.

Derek told me about it. He had actually seen a few episodes.

"It's kind of fake, man," he said. "Like, they find people who are gonna have big reactions. Cryers. Fighters. People with, you know, issues."

"I don't have issues," I said.

He looked at me. He looked at the empty bowl of rice on the counter behind me. He looked at my wrists, which had gotten thin enough that my watch slid up and down when I moved my arm.

"Okay," he said. "Sure."

The application showed up in my email two days later. My mother had filled out most of it. Name. Age. School. Family background. There was a section called "Personal Challenges" where she had written: Caleb struggles with discipline and attitude problems. He has difficulty managing money and tends to blame others for his own poor choices. We believe this program can help him.

I sat in the library, reading that sentence on a public computer because my laptop had died three weeks ago and I could not afford to fix it. The library was warm. There was a vending machine by the door. I had eighty cents in my pocket and a bag of unopened pretzels in my backpack that I was saving for dinner.

Discipline and attitude problems. The words blurred in front of me. I thought about the night before, when I had eaten a single hard-boiled egg for dinner and then laid in bed with my hand on my stomach, counting the hours until morning.

There was another section on the application. "Goals for the Exchange." My mother had written: Learn gratitude. Learn respect. Learn to appreciate what he has been given.

I clicked into the box and typed my own sentence. I deleted it. I typed another one. I deleted that too.

I wanted to write: I want to eat. I want to stop being hungry. I want someone to see that I am not a bad person, I am just tired, and hungry, and tired of being hungry.

But I knew how that would sound. It would sound like an excuse. It would sound like exactly what they wanted me to say: please feel sorry for me. And I did not want to be the kind of person who asked to be felt sorry for.

So I wrote: I want to understand why my parents think this will help.

The producers called the next day.

Her name was Angela. She had a bright, professional voice, the kind that sounds like it is reading off a script. We talked for thirty minutes. She asked about my relationship with my parents. She asked about my grades. She asked about my "lifestyle."

"What do you eat on a typical day?" she asked.

I hesitated. "Rice. Beans. Whatever I can afford."

There was a pause on the line. A keyboard clicking.

"And that's because of your budget?"

"Yes."

"How much is your monthly budget?"

"Three hundred dollars."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"For everything?" she said.

"For everything."

She said the show would cover my transportation and any replacement costs. She said I would be sent to the home of a family in a different part of the country and would live with them for two weeks. She said cameras would follow me most of the day. She said the other participant, the one coming to my apartment, would be a girl my age from a wealthy family who wanted to experience "the real world."

"Okay," I said.

"Great," she said. "We'll be in touch."

I hung up and looked out the window of the library. It was raining. The town of Marrow Bay looked gray and soft and far away, like it belonged to someone else.

I wondered what my parents had told them. I wondered if the producers knew about the three hundred dollars or if they thought I was just a kid with a bad attitude and an empty fridge.

I wondered if anyone had ever actually asked my side.

Six days later, a production crew arrived at my apartment. They set up lights in the living room. They clipped a microphone to the collar of my shirt. They told me to just act normal.

Act natural, the producer said. Pretend we're not here.

I sat on the couch and tried to act natural. The camera operator, a guy named Ben with a ponytail and a fleece jacket, ate a granola bar while he adjusted the lens.

I watched him eat it. I could not help it. My eyes followed his hand from his pocket to his mouth. My stomach made a sound that was loud enough that Ben looked up.

"You good?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Just hungry."

He laughed. Not meanly. Just like I had made a joke. Then he went back to his granola bar, and I went back to pretending I was not watching him eat it.

That night they filmed my mother and father in their living room in Redfield. I was not there. I heard about it later. My mother cried. She said she had tried everything. She said she did not understand why I was so angry all the time. She said she worried about my future.

The camera stayed on her face, and the tears, and the trembling hands. The narration said: Diane has given her son every advantage. But Caleb's attitude has made him impossible to reach.

When the clip aired, three weeks later, people would watch her cry and believe every word. They would watch me sit silent in my apartment and think: what is wrong with that kid?

And the answer, which no one knew yet, was simple.

Nothing was wrong with me. I was hungry.