A Princess in Paris

Chapter Eight

Maria's POV

I went home with a huge grin on my face. Charlotte and Georgette thought it was weird how I was smiling for such a silly reason, but in the end they laughed for a really long time. Jacques laughed from the second I entered the house. I figured that maybe it wasn’t normal for people to walk alone with smiles on their faces. Whatever. I was just too happy and that’s that. I changed into some sweats and asked Claude if he had a soccer ball. He did his whole interrogation business before he gave me the ball. I told him that tryouts were tomorrow, so I had to get in shape.  I said that sentence about fifty times to answer all of his questions because no matter how much he twisted them, they all sounded the same to me. I wanted to scream, “Just give me the ball already!” so badly, but I didn’t in the end because right now, I was eternally grateful to Claude, so I had to show it genuinely and be as patient as possible.

I took the ball to the family’s tennis courts and did some stretching first. Then, I did some tricks I picked up from Claude’s playing the other day. I shot the ball at the wall a few times, and then I went back to tricks. I ran a few laps around the court and noticed that in the couple of weeks that I was here, my speed increased drastically. I was able to jump higher and balance the ball on my head longer, too. As I was drinking from the water that Madame Martin gave me, I noticed that Claude was watching me from the window in Jacques’s room. I waved to get his attention, but instead of waving back, he turned around and closed the curtains. I really wanted to know why he did that, but I didn’t bother myself to think so much. It was Claude and I was totally used to him doing weird things for weird reasons.

I was starting to walk back inside to do take a nice long shower but halfway there, I saw Claude hustling over. He gestured for me to throw the ball, so I did. He kicked the ball and it landed in the basketball hoop all the way at the end of the court.  I was impressed. He was the first person I met that could teach me new things in soccer.

“That was awesome! Teach me how to do it!” I praised and begged at the same time.

“I’ll teach you how to do that if you teach me some of the tricks you were doing before,” Claude answered.

“So you were watching! I knew it!” I shouted as I pointed to him.

“That doesn’t matter. How about that one-on-one?” He asked trying to avoid the subject. I let him do that when I looked at my watch.

“Give me all you’ve got,” I said confidently. And with that, Claude and I played for about two hours and the score was still zero-zero. Competitive as I was, I didn’t want that as a score, so when I had my last chance, I used Claude’s shoulders as a ramp and jumped over him. With that I was able to steal the ball and distract him long enough to score the tie-breaker. Claude’s mouth fell open, so I gently closed it for him. Poor guy, he probably wasn’t used to being beaten by a girl twice.

“Hey, that move is against the rules,” he started complaining. Now he was going to do the impossible to change the score back. I opened my mouth to retort, but Jacques did it for me.

“Actually, it isn’t. It’s just that nobody has ever done it before,” he said. I nodded with agreement even though I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was saying.

“See?” I asked Claude as I pointed to Jacques.

“How would you know? And wait! When did you come here?” Claude asked his brother. Jacques laughed. It was very tempting to laugh with him, but I couldn’t get myself to do that. Instead, I took the ball and headed back inside. I walked straight to my room to take a nice bath. Nothing was nicer than a bath after an awesome win.

The school day went by very very slowly. When I told that to Christine, she said it was because Madame Boyard gave us two periods of Algebra in the same day. Pierre joined the conversation and stated that it was too long because we were all waiting for the soccer tryouts, well, most of us anyway. I had to agree with both of them. I told them to go on ahead. Claude had soccer practice, so his team was on one side of the field, while the girls trying out for the soccer team were on the other. I looked around to see if there was anyone I knew, but there wasn’t anyone. The coach appeared out of an old Mercedes at exactly 3:30. She made us run a few laps around the field and every time I passed Claude, he gave me a thumbs-up. I smiled every time. I guessed that was his way of showing support. After some stretching and some shots at the goalie, Coach Jolene finally decided to announce who was going to fill the two empty spots on the team. I felt my heart beat faster because there were more than twenty girls trying out and only two were going to make it. And there was some really good competition for me out there.