A short jerk and then the plane stopped abruptly. That was it, Max’ new life began now. He felt great when he was finally able to stretch out his feet after a 10 hour flight. The warm summer air punched into his face when he left the plane. He didn’t have any bags and his parents were already waiting at the airport for him because they arrived in Paris one week earlier. They were very excited to show him their new home. His dad had already bought a new car and so they drove exactly 45 minutes from the Charles-De-Gaulle airport to their new house in one of the suburbs of Paris called Saint-German-En-Laye. The name already sounded crazy.  He didn’t speak a word French and had no idea how he should pronounce this name. When they were finally there, he realized how hard life is gonna be for him in France without one word French. How should he ask someone for the way to his new home when he got lost, he already forgot the name of the suburb, let alone that he knew the name of the street or the house number. His dad already told him all the details a thousand times, but he keeps on forgetting it. It was something like “rue leon desoxyn set”. That made no sense and he had no idea what it should mean. But he had no choice. He had to live in France now.

Max still had three weeks of summer holidays, until the school started and he decided to use this time to learn French. He went to a language school three hours a day and spent the rest of the days learning vocabulary. But as hard as he tried, he still had a very hard accent, when the holidays ended. On his first day of school he was scared, scared that everyone is gonna laugh about his accent, that they will make fun of him and that he won’t understand anything. But when the time came and he went into his new classroom for the first time, everything came different. The French students welcomed him very nicely, they directly included him into the class community and a guy called “Timothy” offered him the place next to him and his accent wasn’t a problem at all. Far from it! The girls loved his accent and Max felt great. He wasn’t mad at his parents anymore for leaving America and he also forgot about his dream being a NFL quarterback one day. In France he started playing soccer, like everyone, and he was actually quite good as a striker, so that his coach made him a starter already in their second game. All in all you can say that he loved France.

But as the time went by, it was already winter, Max began feeling lonely. He was in 12th grade and lots of his friends in France had girlfriends, also Timothy who had become his best friend. And so they all had less time to hang out, all the time his friends were doing something with their girlfriends or met without him to talk about how awesome their girlfriends would be. Max wanted this feeling too, he wanted to have someone he could always count on. And actually he was in love. Already the first day of school he fell in love. Her name was Charlotte. He didn’t like the name in America, but he loved the French pronunciation. The name sounded majestic and sublime, but in the same time a bit cute and adventurous. Every time he said her name, he had to smile and every time he heard that name he had to think about her. She looked stunning in his sight. Everything about her was fantastic. Her long blonde wavy hair, her diamant-like sparkling blue eyes, her perfect narrow lips. Every time he saw her he felt the urge, just to go to her and to kiss her. But he never did it. He wasn’t even brave enough to talk to her, let alone asking her for a date. When she actually talked to him, what happened very seldom, he went red and started to stutter. He felt stupid, in these moments he just wanted to sink in the soil. And that’s what happened to him day after day, week after week, month after month, until finally:

It was 8:05 am when Max arrived in school, he was too late, as always. He ran up the stairs until he reached the third floor, where his classroom was. The door was closed. He knew they had Maths with Madame Varane, she wasn’t alway nice to him, but he was sure that she wouldn’t send him to the principal just because he was too late. So he opened the door and stepped in. As soon as Madame Varane saw him she said “Ou lala, you’re a bit to late aren’t you. I mean I’m old, but I’m still able to read the clock.” The whole class laughed, not because it was such a great joke, they just wanted that Varane likes them, so that they get a better grade. Max stuttered a bit and said “I’m sorry that I’m too late Madame, my alarm clock didn’t work.” She looked at him with big eyes and said “Oh Max, you’re saying that since three months. I think you really need to buy a new alarm clock.” And again, the whole class laughed. Max didn’t like Madame Varane very much and he especially hated her bad jokes. But he didn’t find the right words to reply her and  so he went just straight to his place in the last row, next to his best friend Timothy. Madame Varane continued the lesson, respectively started it again, but Max wasn’t listening. He looked out of the window at the many dark clouds. He didn’t know, why he was actually too late today. It was always something different. After a while he began panning the room, but he always caught himself staring at Charlotte and everytime he noticed that he was staring at her again he turned red, he was embarrassed and he hoped that no one saw him. But it always happened, he was always staring at her. He looked at her wonderful blue eyes, looked at her blonde hair, perfectly cut, always bright and brilliant, looked at her lips, he dreamed about kissing them one day and looked at her eyes again. These eyes were so blue. It seemed like you could see the ocean in her eyes. When he looked in her eyes once, he wasn’t able to turn his eyes away anymore. As he was dreaming about being together with her, as he was imagining lying at a beach with her, watching the sunset, he heard a voice. The voice became louder, until he finally woke up. He saw Madame Varane standing in front of him and saw all the other students laughing. What happened? Did he fall asleep. He blushed like a tomato and the other students laughed even more. Why didn’t Timothy wake him up. He gave him an angry look and then he looked at Madame Varane again. She was standing right in front of his table, had her arms crossed and looked at him with a strange look. It felt like she was looking at him for hours, the class already turned quiet again when she finally said something: “ So Max, I hope you had a nice nap.” And everyone laughed. Max was angry on his whole class, on Timothy and on Madame Varane. That wasn’t even a joke, why did everyone had to laugh? He turned even redder if that’s possible at all and then he quietly said “I’m sorry Madame Varane, I didn’t sleep a lot last night.” “Oh that’s not my problem” she answered and this time no one laughed because they knew that she was angry now. But then suddenly after Max said that he was sorry a few more times, she said “Alright, so let’s go on with the lesson” and she kept on talking about exponential functions. This time Max didn’t fall asleep. He didn’t really listened to Varane, but he was able to stay awake, at least for Maths. But already in the next hour he fell asleep again.

This time he had a different dream. He remembered his last football game in the states. He could smell the fresh air, the scent of fresh lawn. He remembered how his coach called a timeout, it was the division 3 state championship, they were back with 5, 10 seconds left on the clock and 23 yards to the endzone. It was their fourth down already. The coach said he should throw a pass and they would play Hail Mary. Max had the chance to play the final play. He had the chance to be a star. But he said: “No coach, I think we should run the ball, Jordan had a great game today.” Jordan was their running back and so the team  did what Max proposed. Max gave the ball to jordan, the offensive line did a great job and so the way was open for him. He ran, ran into the endzone and scored a touchdown. The time was over. They had won the game, they were state champion. And everyone ran on the field, ran towards Jordan, they hugged him, took photos with him and celebrated their victory. But Max wasn’t part of the crowd which was celebrating. He was standing on the other side of the field. They had won, but he didn’t feel like a winner. He could have thrown the final pass. He could have made himself immortal, but he was scared of throwing an interception or fumbling the ball. He was to shy. He was too shy to shine.

Max was done for the day. He was done with everyone, he just wanted to leave school and go to the gym to unload his fury on a punching bag. He was tired of everyone else. He was fed up to the back teeth. But then his mood changed abruptly. It was already the end of the day and they had English class with Mrs. Porter, she was from England. And what she said made him directly feel better. She wanted everyone to work in couples and to hold a presentation at the end of the week. And then she announced the couples: He was gonna work together with Charlotte! He felt amazing and instantly had to smile. He looked at Charlotte and what he saw made him feel even better, if that was possible in this moment. She smiled too! Everyone had to sit together with their partners and at first Max was scared of going red or stuttering, but when she came to his place, he noticed that nothing happened. He didn’t change his colour and he was able to say “Hey, how you’re you doing?” to her fluently. He felt like he had butterflies in his stomach and he was extremely excited, but he appeared calm. And as the week went by he had a great time with her. They met twice after school to prepare their presentation and they had a lot of fun together. And when Friday came they were perfectly prepared to hold their presentation. Max spoke fluently, he was actually able to help Charlotte out once what made him feel very good and in the end they got an A+. After the presentation Charlotte came to him and quietly whispered “Thank you.” in his ear. He already thought he would go red, but he was able to buck up. He’s been floating on cloud 9. And this time he finally had the courage to ask Charlotte for a date. Max caught her after school, he knew they had pretty much the same way home, she lived in the “Rue pereire” which was just one block away from his house. While they were walking home together they talked about their presentation and about Timothy and his girlfriend who were smooching the whole time, so that they made Mrs. Porter angry because they didn’t know anything about the presentation when she asked them in the end of class. They laughed a lot, but when they were finally standing in front of Charlotte’s house they both got quiet. Max knew that this was his chance, he had to do something, to say something. Now or never. And so he opened his mouth and said: “Finally friday, I had a great week, I didn’t know that school could be fun.” Both of them laughed. Then Charlotte said:” With me everything is fun.” And they laughed again and got quiet again. Now he really had to ask her. And so he did:”Yeah it really was more fun with you. And we actually got a good grade.” He went read, why did he say that about the grade!? But he went on, he didn’t care about anything right now, he just wanted to ask her this one question. “So, however, have you already planned something for the weekend or do you maybe, euh, wanna hang out with me? We could go swimming in the Seine tomorrow, there is a special event near to the Eiffel Tower.” He went really red, while he was saying that, but he said it, he had find the courage to ask her for a date. But she became quiet. She stopped smiling and bowed her head. “Didn’t you know?” she said “I have a boyfriend Max! He’s 18 and he’s going to the University of Strasbourg. He’s coming to Paris for the weekend, and I already told him to go swimming with him. I’m sorry Max, I thought you would know.”

In this moment his whole world collapsed about him. He didn’t know what to response. He felt sad, angry and embarrassed at the same time. He wanted to cry, he wanted to beat somebody up and he wanted to sink in the ground. He just didn’t know what to do, he was completely desperate. But then she started laughing, louder and louder. He was confused, he didn’t know why she was laughing, he became angry, his situation wasn’t funny! But then she said:” Oh Max! I’m just kidding, you should have seen your face!” She laughed even louder.”For sure I would like to go on a date with you! I’m waiting for you to ask me since forever, since the first day you went in our class!”