An irish Lovestory - the summer of Life

The first day of School

Three days later, school starts again. Carlotta and Luke even arrive on time, for once, and are able to catch up on all the organisational matters. "We also have a new pupil, she's staying here until the end of the school year and she's from London," says Mrs Niebeck when there's a knock at the door. A dark-haired girl with a ponytail comes in. "I'm sorry, I'm still on for an hour later," she says as she stands in front of Mrs Niebeck. She nods and talks to her briefly in English. The stranger introduces herself. "Hi, I'm Katie, I'm from London and I'm your classmate for a year now. My mother is originally from Hamburg and wanted me to come here to improve my German." She sits down in the empty seat next to Mia and takes out her writing utensil.

At the back of the last row, Diego whispers, "Oh man, not another Carlotta!" Indignant, Carlotta turns around to the back and glares angrily at Diego. Luke grabs Carlotta's arm briefly. "Please, he's not worth it!" he hisses at her. She sees it and turns back to her desk to write down the things about the class trip with her.
In the very next lesson, her motivation is completely gone, because chemistry is on the timetable. In itself, she has nothing against the subject, but with this teacher, it's no fun for anyone. As blunt as ever, he talks to himself and shows them an experiment on the beamer... Connected to a VHS tape. Carlotta is writing under the table with her friends and yawns a little to herself when Mr Liwl takes her in. "Charlotte, please come to the blackboard and solve this problem!" he says in the same monotone as last year. Why didn't Carlotta drop Chemistry and take Computer Science instead? That would save her some trouble now.
But she goes to the blackboard and writes down the reaction equations. Luckily they are correct and she is allowed to sit down again. "You were more attentive last year," the teacher notes, whereupon Carlotta hisses quietly, "Then the lessons were also a bit less boring than right now!" Fortunately, Mr Liwl didn't hear that, because otherwise she could pack up her things and head off to Mr Kresu.

The rest of the lesson she pays a little more attention, because the teacher also takes the students just like that, even if they don't report. When the bell finally rings for break, the teacher makes the students all sit in their seats even longer until everyone has copied everything off the board.
As soon as they are all out of the room, Carlotta, Anastasia, Petra and Elea go down to Sophie and Hugo in the corner under the substitution plan. "Back in the country?", Hugo asks Carlotta jokingly. He was in on the plan that Luke was going to Ireland to apologise to Carlotta. Carlotta answers briefly and typically: "Jo, 'türlich." Since she also lived in Hamburg for a few years, she sometimes still speaks very flatly and can't resist letting the North German Deern hang out at least sometimes. Although the friends all saw each other in Ireland, they didn't really have time to talk to each other, especially since Carlotta disappeared rather quickly into the room with Luke first and then also went straight to the airport the next day. The last few days were also too busy for them to meet up again, so now, during the twenty-minute break, they chat a bit and exchange the latest gossip.
When the bell rings, the girls, with the exception of Sophie, head off to PE class. Luckily, their teacher is so cooperative that they don't have to walk in the nice weather and even agrees to take the class on a trip to Lidl. Carlotta lets herself fall behind a little to get to know Katie, the new girl. Much to her amazement, Katie also starts talking a little in Low German. "Wow, ik wuss neet, dat man in Engelland een finnet de platt snackt. *I didn't know that in England you can find someone who speaks Low German," she says to the new one. Katie replies in High German, "Well, I snack a little Platt, but not much and good. My mother often swears in Platt (Low) German, so I've trained myself a little too." Mr Zhreg listens to their conversation for a while and then starts talking to them in Platt (Low) German. Carlotta stares at her teacher. "You speak Platt?! Klei mi an Mors," she slips out. Katie looks at her in shock.
"Sorry, I meant, of course, how nice that you also speak Platt," she improves. Mr Zhreg grins. He has simply overheard and walks past the two girls without saying anything else. Carlotta and Katie walk a little faster so as not to bring up the rear. Katie goes to Mia to get to know her seatmate a little better and Carlotta joins Helen and Charlie to tell them about her little mishap. "What, you accidentally said 'fuck you' to our teacher in Low German?" Charlie starts laughing, that could be him. Unfortunately Helen was a bit too loud and a few classmates turn to them. Luke has heard it too and gives her a thumbs up. Carlotta would like to sink into the ground, but Mr. Zhreg says quietly, "Wat mutt dat mutt, I scared you too." Carlotta smiles gratefully and keeps her mouth shut the rest of the way to Lidl. By the time they arrive back at school it is almost three o'clock and they could theoretically be home already.
The friends go out for ice cream with Luke, Helen and Charlie, with Luke going home early to get all their things ready. When Carlotta arrives home around three, they just quickly do their chemistry and English homework before getting into the car and Luke drives them to practice. Peter is very surprised because the two of them haven't told him that they are back in Germany and he has assumed that the two of them are already on the plane back to Ireland. "How long can you grace us with your presence?" he asks the two of them as soon as they have entered the hall. Carlotta says, "As long as you can stand us. Ne jest, we'll stay in Germany, Ireland is wonderful but still I especially miss something." Luke nods, Carlotta has cried her ears off to him several times in the last six months that she misses training. They have also trained a little on each other, but it is quite different to practise a few throws, holds, levers and throws on mattresses without a judo suit than it is to train on the judo mat with others. "Does anyone know you're back?" asks Peter Luke, shaking his head. Just at that moment, Lily comes into the gym.

Carlotta and Luke have hidden from her at school to give her a bigger surprise. They definitely succeeded, because Lily stares at them both, stunned. "We were writing last night and you said you were in Ireland," Lily says to Carlotta. She pulls her shoulders up and says, "Well, I'm here now and the surprise definitely worked."
While Luke is talking to Franko, who has also come in between, Lily and Carlotta are chatting too. It's as if the two of them had never been apart, because like the last few years they are talking about their geography teacher Frau Blume again. The old familiarity is also there on the mat, because as always, the two of them take part sensibly, but still allow themselves the odd joke with Jano, a boy who has only been there for a year and annoys the two girls every time.
They also do the fitness training together, because they agreed a long time ago that they would do it together every fortnight so that Lily could also do it with Charlotte. Luckily, Carlotta also has Luke, who also enjoys doing the fitness training with her. Not because it's training, but because it's his girlfriend, but no one needs to know that.
As soon as all the training is over, Luke and Carlotta get changed and go home. Carlotta is lucky that Luke is now allowed to do escorted driving and she can now legally drive herself when he is in the car. She skilfully drives the twenty minutes to Luke's home and runs upstairs to the bathroom. Unfortunately, she is not quick enough with locking it, so Luke pushes the door open and only then locks it. "Why not take a shower together?" he asks her. Carlotta looks at him a little anxiously. "Don't worry, nothing can happen!" he assures her. So she nods and strips down to her underwear. Luke closes the window, then gets into the shower. Carlotta gets into the shower with him and turns on the water. "Oh God, Carly, how can you shower so cold?" Luke asks her after two minutes, during which she has already wet herself completely and is already soaping herself up. Not even Luke is done that quickly and no sooner is she completely soaped up than she is showering off again. When she is done, she gets out of the shower, wraps a towel around herself and leaves the bathroom. Luke just leaves her standing in the shower. He shouldn't see her naked for too long or he'll tell her again that she needs to eat more. But she is still of normal weight and doesn't need to eat more than she does at the moment. She did lose quite a bit of weight in Ireland, but maybe that's because of the cabbage with bacon that she had every day. As soon as she arrives in her room, she puts on her bathrobe and rubs her hair dry. She doesn't even begin to dry it completely, but it's better than nothing.

Luke comes into the room as soon as he has finished. Carlotta looks at him with fear-filled eyes. "What happened Carlotta?" he asks her, but she doesn't answer. He can't know about the guy who held her earlier. She knows him because he went to her school, but she can't rat him out to Luke or he'll get some stupid ideas.
The two of them spend the evening apart after dinner, because Carlotta absolutely has to talk to Johanna on the phone, because she has only written to her best friend a few times since she escaped in Ireland.
"Come on, tell me, how was the first day of school without an exchange in Germany after a year?", Johanna asks her straight away. Carlotta says: "With the exception of accidentally saying 'Kiss my ass' to my teacher in Low German, actually quite good. But I'm calling about something else. Luke just wanted to take a shower with me! You know I lost a bit of weight in Ireland and he's going to drag me to the doctor again soon when he sees me. On top of that, there was this drunk guy there earlier, he just held me by the arms and I can already see slight bruises there." Johanna understands her fear. The drama was high six months ago when Luke dragged Carlotta to the doctor to get her into therapy to beat her eating disorder. Johanna had to talk her into it for three days to get her to do it at all.

Carlotta tries to divert attention from the subject and asks Johanna how her day at school was. She says: "All right, but actually the same as always. But now tell me, do you think you'll have a relapse?" Carlotta says she doesn't think so, but you never know.
The two friends talk on the phone for another hour until Carlotta says she is tired and is going to sleep. Actually, it's not like her to go to bed so early, but Johanna says goodbye and wishes her a good night.
Luke comes in a little later to check on Carlotta, but she is sleeping fitfully by now. She rolls around in bed and thinks about what happened at the bus stop earlier. Luke sits down next to her again and gives her a kiss on the forehead, then he quietly leaves the room and goes to eat a snack before he too goes to bed, but watches a few more series.