Ed's eureka moment came in the form of two red balloon-shaped dangle earrings.

He had spent most of English class trying to think of a way to confess his love to Audra. It wasn't entirely pathetic. Miss Larsen had begun a new lesson that day, so she just played slides: nothing that would require much attention. Ed was relieved to be done with Shakespeare. He didn't quite understand the fuss with Shakespeare. Sure, there was some funny bits in the version of Hamlet Miss Larsen showed last Friday after the unit exam, but Kenneth Branagh couldn't make Ed fall in love with it. Shakespeare was all strange interrogatives with meanings that weren't at all obvious. Wherefore was a synonym of why? Whose idea was that? And then there was iambic pentameter- whatever that was meant to be. He knew it had something to do with syllables. He also knew he got that question wrong on the unit exam. The metaphysical poets had to be easier than Shakespeare; poetry was all basically bullshit, how bad could it possibly be?

Even if Ed had been paying attention, he wouldn't have really gathered a whole lot from that morning's lecture anyway, except that John Donne had a pointed brown beard and wore an Elizabethan ruff. It was a good day to allow himself to daydream, if he could choose what times to be overtaken by his fantasies. That's not really the way Ed's mind operated. His brother Mike seemed to be able to channel his dreamy creativity into productivity- at least, ever since he had gotten contracted at that record label in the west end of town- but Ed wasn't even impressively dreamy. Musical talent? Zilch. Artistic ability? Nada. Sure, he was romantic, but in a stifled,good-for-nothing way. Ed could come up with a thousand stupid ideas, and maybe stumble on half-a-good-one. But even then, he wouldn't be able to put it into motion. The balloon plan was the best stupid idea Ed had considered that morning.

Its conception was nothing short of miraculous. Ed had tried to keep his eyes from wandering to Audra, seated in the desk beside him. But as Miss Larsen flipped through seventeenth century oil portraits and cloudy photographs of grassy English churchyards, something red in his right periphery caught his attention. When Ed was sure Audra was engrossed enough in the lecture not to notice him peeking, he snuck a glance at her. Her slender neck, her short black hair, and there, dangling from her left earlobe, a small red balloon.

Of course, balloons.

Ed's eyes fell back onto his desk. Audra liked balloons. Ed remembered her mentioning that on Valentine's Day. The eleventh grade's student council representatives had passed out that year's "Valentine-A-Grams" in the cafeteria. Phil had bought Emily one as a token of his love, for their entire friend group's lunch table to behold. Audra had seemed so impressed by Phil's gesture that Ed half-hated himself for not ordering her one of those silly bouquets of heart-shaped Mylar balloons. At least until Audra added that she preferred the plain-old latex kind. Mylar was too crinkly, she said. At that point, of course, it was too late to get her a decent valentine. Besides, Ed hadn't felt confident enough to make his affection known back then. Not that he was exactly confident now, just two months later, but he had resolved not to let this opportunity escape him. This would be his last chance.  

Ed could buy a tank of helium and inflate a bouquet of latex balloons. He could tie the balloons to Audra's locker, looping the ribbons through those little vents in each locker door. What were those vents for anyway? Did the original locker-designer anticipate that skinny misfits would be shoved into his creation? Were they therefore intended as life-saving ventilation? Ed had never actually seen a misfit shoved into any locker, except in movies. He decided that it was just as likely that the vents were intended as a balloon-ribbon tying apparatus. He could write Prom? and With me? and Ed? on the three front-most balloons. It seemed like a fool-proof plan, initially. But there had to have been something wrong with it. Ed chewed on his lower lip and tried to conjure up any possible doubt.

The trouble with balloons in this scenario, Ed soon supposed, was that it might look like he was trying too hard. He only wanted to ask Audra to prom, not marry her. If he had already been dating Audra, then it wouldn't matter whether or not he was trying too hard. She would already have accepted him, in his true, try-hard form. It would have been glorious. But he hadn't been able to get any real one-on-one time with her in the eight months she had been in America, and by the end of next summer she'd be back in France, and that would be it.

Ed thought it was lucky that Audra had been adopted into his friend group in the first place. Emily was very skilled at French, and had been assigned to be Audra's "liaison-to-the-American-high-school-experience" by Madame Boucher. Emily took her position as "liaison" very seriously. That meant that Audra was always at the same parties Ed was invited to; she went bowling, or mini-golfing, or mall-ratting with him and his friends. The catch was that she always paired off with Emily. It didn't help that Emily's parents had volunteered to serve as Audra's host family. And while Emily was probably Ed's best friend, she was also the sort of person you'd describe as a big personality. Come to think of it, all the more important people in Ed's life seemed to have big personalities. But Emily- no one could get a word in edge-wise. What Ed would have done to be assigned Audra's "liaison-to-the-American-high-school-experience." Too bad he couldn't speak French. He had a good accent, Madame Boucher always said, but absolutely no vocabulary retention. 

"Ed? Did your mom raise you to be this rude?" Miss Larsen lifted an eyebrow.

"My mom?" Ed absently repeated. The flash cards Ed had made in the weeks after Audra first arrived were utterly useless. He had thought he could impress her with an at-least-conversational grasp of her native language. He'd at first remember the word for bicycle, or fish, or butterfly, but then as soon as Audra would open her mouth to speak to him- those pretty words would race, or swim, or float away, as if he had never learned them at all.

"Can you understand me?" Miss Larsen was now laughing. Ed became aware of his surroundings. The classroom was dark and the projector still on, but Miss Larsen had finished with the slides, and exited out of her presentation. The entire class seemed to be in on a joke that Ed hadn't heard.

"Yeah, uh," Ed said. "Sorry, I-"

"The lights please?"

"Oh, right." How could Ed not have realized that's what Miss Larsen wanted? Miss Larsen always asked him to switch on and off the lights. She had asked him to get the lights at the beginning of her lecture, and now class was almost over. The lights. That seemed to be his designated role in every classroom. He wasn't clever enough to be the "smart kid," he wasn't cool enough to be the "funny one," and he certainly wasn't rebellious enough to be the "degenerate." He was the "one who switched on and off the lights." He had been since first grade. Maybe because his last name began with an F, which always seemed to mean he was seated at either end of the front row, by the usual locations of the light switch panel. Maybe because he had always been a little taller than his classmates and could reach the light switch when others couldn't. Maybe because he always did what he was told. Or maybe, as Ed suspected, the only thing his teachers' ever had to say about him was that he was very adept at "turning on and off lights." He was sure that each semester his new teachers met with their predecessors and collected information as to whom was suited for the light-switch position. Ed was confident that would be the sum of his college recommendation letters: "Ed is an obedient child who is tall enough to reach the light switch panel. Highly recommend for that position in classroom, 10/10." And now Ed was slacking on the job. What would his college recommendation letters look like if he couldn't even be counted on to man the light switch panel effectively?

Ed attempted to spring from his desk-chair. His knees were broader and his legs longer than he realized, and he somehow knocked the underside of the desk panel and spilled his notes onto the classroom floor. Ed rubbed his aching knee as he hobbled to the light switch panel, and performed the duty expected of him. It was only after Miss Larsen's reprimands that his classmates stopped laughing.

Ed laughed too, but he felt a bit like vomiting. I'm a dick, Ed thought as he smiled at Miss Larsen, Somebody should kill me. The end-of-first-period bell saved him, and Ed's classmates filed past him into the hallway. As Ed returned to his seat, he saw Audra kneel onto the floor and reach for his notes and pencil. Don't get too excited, Ed told himself. She sits next to you; she's best friends with your best friend; she's trying to be nice.

"Thanks Audra, but, I," Ed began, as he sunk to the floor.

Audra held Ed's notebook, her dark eyes transfixed on something he might have scribbled in the margins. Oh God, Ed thought. Did I write her name? Please let me not have written her name. Ed thought about snatching the notebook from her pretty hands, and gauging both his eyeballs out with his mechanical pencil.

"I could just take that," Ed gently tugged on a piece of notebook paper.

"Oh, sorry," Audra looked up at Ed and smiled. "I see you have doodled." She handed him his notebook. "I figured you were a doodler." Ed thought Audra's accent was the single most beautiful accent he had ever heard.

"I seem like a doodler?" Ed quickly analyzed this statement. Was it a compliment? Audra was smiling. Yes, it might be a compliment. Did he seem artistic? French girls liked art, right? Wasn't that supposed to be the stereotype? He seemed artistic. Sensitive. Brooding. Ed grinned so widely his cheeks smarted.

"I am too, a little," Audra said, then pointed at the drawings in the margins of his notebook. "Are these supposed to be balloons?"

Ed deflated. Even if he seemed artistic and sensitive and brooding, Audra would quickly discover that he wasn't any of those things. She probably discovered his total talentlessness just that moment, as she examined his doodles. Ed himself looked at his doodles. A couple egg-shaped "circles" drawn through with squiggles. Beside these was the word balloons, rewritten several times, each time followed by a check mark. It appeared Ed had labelled his own doodles. Lame.

"I guess they are," Ed looked back at Audra, still kneeling beside him, "balloons." The loose coils of Audra's hair seemed to sparkle in the yellow fluorescent light. Ed wondered if his spleen was about to rupture.

"I love balloons," Audra said, standing up.

"I know," Ed jolted to his feet.

"Because of these, then?" She wiggled one of her earrings with an index finger.

"No," Ed didn't want to admit he had been peeping at her jewelry. "I didn't see those, I just remem-"

Audra furrowed her eyebrows.

  "What I meant," Ed realized that repeating a comment she made a month and a half ago might come off a little creepy, "was I love balloons too. Balloons are fun, they're all latex, and stuff."  

"Latex, yes," Audra reached for her brown suede backpack.

"Some people are allergic," Ed felt he was losing the conversation, "to latex. Not us, though."

Audra started to laugh. Was this a good sign? Maybe he was funny? If he were funny, he couldn't be losing that badly.

"You're silly, Ed," Audra pulled her backpack onto her shoulders and slipped past him. "I'll see you later."

Silly, Ed thought. Silly is not funny. Silly is losing. I am losing. I am a loser.

Ed put his notebook into his backpack. The classroom was now empty, except for Miss Larsen, who sat behind her desk and played with her iPhone. Miss Larsen had probably decided he wasn't fit for light-switching duties, after that performance. She'd change the seating chart tomorrow, as a way not to be so obvious with his demotion. Ten years of light-switching, over like that. Ed picked up his own backpack and headed toward the classroom door.

"Bye Miss Larsen," Ed called out. "Sorry about the, uh,"

Miss Larsen looked confused. "About the what, Ed?"

***