Louis, a nine-year-old boy from Paris, spends his summer vacation in a small town in Brittany. His mother Claire has lodged him with her girlfriend Marcelle and her husband Pelo while she’s having her second baby. There Louis makes friends with Martine, the ten-year- old girl next door, and learns from her about life.

Maddy is 16 years old. She lives alone with her sick grandmother in a rundown farmhouse off a highway in Nowheresville, Texas. She does her best to take care of her mute, wheelchair-bound grandmother, but life at home is lonely and depressing. So, like everyone else within a 20 mile radius, Maddy spends her free time at the only place with half a pulse- the local roller rink.