Day 8 (Sunday)

I woke up to see that Sammy had replied to my text I'd sent last night.

Sam: Really? What is it?

Caitlin: I want to keep some sort of surprise for when I get home. You'll have to wait until I get back to see it. That's why I called it a surprise.

Sam only replied with some sad face emojis.

I continued texting Sam, telling them about how Jagged Stone got us into the concert yesterday, until Adrien soon knocked on my door.

"Come in,"

"Hey Caity, what do you think of ice skating?"

"I've actually never been. It's not all that common in Australia. I've been roller skating, but never tried ice skating."

This time, Adrien had invited not just Marinette, Alya and Nino, but also a bunch of our other classmates. Adrien got along well with the other boys in the class, like Ivan, Kim, Max and Nathaniel, and Marinette had suggested inviting most of the other girls, so Rose, Juleka, Alix and Mylène were there too. I was one of the slowest to put on my skates, and I watched as Mylène and Ivan began to skate together, starting off slowly. Meanwhile, Alya was faster, skating off ahead while Nino called for her to "wait for me," and they chased each other jokingly. Kim bragged that he would skate more laps than anyone, while Alix sped off while he was still busy bragging. Once I finally got my skates on, I attempted to stand up, barely able to balance. I stumbled around before just managing to grab onto the fence of the rink. I figured maybe I should ask someone to help me get started. I looked around at everyone else, try to determine who was doing the best. I quickly noticed how easy Alix made it look, and made my way into the rink, clinging to the fence, and waved to her. She expertly came to a stop in front of me.

"Hey Caity. First time ice skating?" She asked.

"Yeah! How did you get so good? You make it look really easy."

"I roller skate basically everywhere I go, so it wasn't too hard to get used to it. It's basically the same as in-line skates. It's all about confidence and balance."

"Two things I usually lack," I mumbled.

"Just try to get your balance by learning to stand still first," she suggested. "Try to copy the way my feet are positioned." I looked down at her feet and tried to adjust my feet to copy hers, moving my feet apart from each other and pointing them out in a V shape. I slowly attempted to let go of the fence, before panicking and grabbing the fence. But Alix was patient with me. She gave me a few little tips to adjust my stance and eventually I managed to let go of the fence and balance. Eventually, she showed me a simple technique to skate forward. But every time I tried, I would panic and grab the fence. She tried to get me to skate a bit faster, but I just couldn't bring myself to. Sometimes I would go a bit faster, but then I would notice how fast I was moving and panic. Eventually, Alix figured something out. "You're scared of falling, right? That's why you don't want to go fast, because if you fall while moving faster, it would hurt more?" She was right.

"Yeah, that's probably it." I admitted.

"I've got an idea." She said. She skated off the rink and went over to her bag, and pulled out a few things, and brought them over to me. "I use these when I'm skating on the footpath, since the path can be bumpy or have cracks, so I'm more likely to hit something and fall. I didn't bother to put them on here, since I'm not very likely to fall on the rink, since it's smooth. But since you're scared of falling, you can borrow them for today since you don't have your own, and I'm not using them." She handed me a set of elbow and knee pads. I went to a seat to sit down to put them on. "Now if you fall, it won't hurt at all."

"Thanks," I said. I got back on the rink and tried skating. Still a little scared of falling, I forced myself to skate faster. Suddenly, I began to feel unsteady, like I wasn't fully in control of my feet's movements. As I grew scared, I felt even more unsteady. I looked over to the fence, but I realised I had gotten overconfident and I was now too far from the fence to grab it. As I wobbled even more, my legs finally gave out and fell forwards onto my arms and knees like a floppy ragdoll. The sound of ice skates grew louder as I noticed that Alix was making her way towards me.

"You okay?" she asked. As the shock of the fall wore off, I looked down at my knees where I expected to see a graze, a bruise, something. But instead I was met with the sight of my knees covered by the pads I had put on. That was when I realised I had fell, but… it didn't hurt at all! I smiled and looked up at Alix.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am okay. It doesn't even hurt! This is way better than I expected." Alix smiled back and held out her hand. I took her hand and she helped my up. I was a little unsteady at first on my way up, but managed to readjust my feet to get back to the posture Alix had taught me to help balance.

"Shall we get moving again?" she asked. I nodded and let go of her hand. "Catch me if you can," she challenged. Though I could tell she was skating much slower than she usually would, since I had seen her skating much faster earlier. Taking on the challenge, I starting skating again, starting off slow and building up speed. As I started to get faster than I had been before, my feeling of worry briefly came back, before I told myself, 'What am I scared of? Falling doesn't even hurt, so there's really nothing to be scared of.' After realising that, I started really moving my feet faster. I began to feel excited, almost like a little kid, since I was happy to be getting the hang of it.

"Alix, look!" I called out excitedly. "I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" I saw Alix turn around and face me with a smile, and gave me a thumbs up, before skating backwards for a bit so she could watch me. Wow, I wish I could skate backwards. I excitedly kept skating forwards, faster and faster, until I neared the other side of the rink and I realised… "wait, you never told me how to turn!" I moved my feet around, trying to figure it out myself, before realising I couldn't and instead tried to slow myself down before the inevitable impact with the rink wall. Crash. My feet stumbled about like crazy, but I grabbed the wall as my knee pads gently bumped into it, stopping my legs from hitting the wall.

"Sorry about that," Alix said.

"Oh, don't worry. It was kind of fun." I laughed. Alix showed me an easy way to turn, and I tried to copy her, falling over the first time, but I got the hang of it.

"Hey Caity, how are you finding it?" Adrien asked, skating over to me before skating alongside me.

"It was hard at first, but I'm having fun now."

"Great, but this isn't the only thing I planned for today. After we're done here, we're all going to get ice cream from Andre. His is considered to be the best ice cream in Paris."

"Okay, but first…" I poked him with a finger. "Tag, you're it." I attempted to speed up and skate ahead of him.

"Alright, I'm coming!" Adrien skated towards me and caught up, tagging me. I stopped for a moment and looked around, before noticing Ivan and Mylène skating nearby. So I skated over to them.

"Ivan, Mylène, join the game of tag?" I asked.

"Well, alright." Mylène said.

"Then you're it!" I said, tagging her. Pretty soon, our whole group was in the game. Although eventually a few people decided they'd had enough and dropped out of the game. Once everyone had enough, we all agreed we were done skating, and decided to head off to get ice cream.

I followed the rest of the group to the Pont des Arts bridge, walking alongside Marinette, who told me more about the ice cream we would be getting.

"Andre is known as the sweethearts ice cream maker. Legend has it that any couple who eat his ice cream together will be in love forever!" She explained.

"That's nice. Hey, but what if two friends shared his ice cream? Would it affect them differently or just do nothing?" I asked.

"Hm, I never thought of it that way. I suppose if the ice cream helps couples stay in love forever, then… then maybe if two friends eat it together, they'll stay friends forever."

"Good idea." As we got to the bridge, I noticed someone walking in our direction and nearly squealed in delight. "Doggy!" I said excitedly. Looking up, I recognised the dog's owner as Miss Bustier.

"Well hello there. Wow, it's almost all of my students all together." She said.

"We're taking Caity for Andre's ice cream." Marinette told her. Meanwhile, I just stared down at the small dog whose leash Miss Bustier held. I recognised the breed as a papillon, one of my favourites.

"Aww, you're so cute." I said, kneeling down to talk to the dog. Yes, I know, my obsession with dogs was a little immature, but hey, I'm pretty mature when I need to be. But when it comes to dogs, yes, I will talk to them, and call them doggy like a little kid.

"Her name is Molly," Miss Bustier said.

"Hi Molly." I said. "Do you want a pat-pat?" I said, reaching out to pat her. The friendly dog sniffed my hand before I gave her a pat on the head. Looking up, I noticed that most of the others were walking ahead, and I didn't want to hold everyone up, so I said, "Bye, Molly," and gave her one last pat before standing up and saying goodbye to Miss Bustier as well.

"Bye everyone, see you in class tomorrow." She said, before continuing her walk.

We kept walking until we reached the Pont des Arts, a bridge that went over the River Seine. The fence of the bridge was covered in padlocks which people had written names and initials on. Love locks, I knew, since I had seen something similar on a bridge in the Melbourne CBD. In the middle of the bridge, the ice cream man had his cart set up, and my friends all began to line up to get ice cream from him. Some lined up together, like Alya and Nino, and Ivan and Mylène, who seemed to be couples, while some people lined up alone. When I got to the front of the line, Andre beamed at me.

"A new customer! I haven't seen you around before." He said happily.

"I'm Caity. I'm an exchange student, so I'm here for one more week. My new friends here have been showing me around. They told me I have to try your ice cream, since it's the best in Paris." He smiled happily at the compliment.

"Ah, and I see you've made so many new friends here. Will you be sharing an ice cream with any of them, to strengthen your friendship?"

"Hmm…" I looked around at my classmates. Adrien seemed like the obvious choice, since he was the one I've been spending the most time with, as my host. But he's already promised to keep in touch after my trip. Maybe I should ask someone else, since he's already really likely to stay friends with me? But who? Marinette was really nice, Alya was fun to talk to, Alix helped me with skating… I shook my head. "There's just too many of them to choose from. I want to be friends with all of them. Is that silly?"

"Not at all!" He scooped a cone full of rainbow ice cream. "Rainbow flavour, to connect you with the many friends you have met here. The ones who you truly belong with will stay in your heart no matter where you go." A bit poetic, but I thought it was nice, so I took the rainbow ice cream he picked out and thanked him, before walking over to sit down with my friends. I thought about what Andre had said. 'The ones who you truly belong with,' he had said, meaning the magic wouldn't necessarily work on eveyone I've made friends with. Maybe some are only meant to be short-term friendships, but I suppose fate or destiny or whatever will find a way for me to stay in touch with the friends that are destined to last longer than the short time of my trip here.