He loves her. I looked at my reflection in shop windows or the passing glass of carriages. I thought, Why her, not me? But I knew why.

I’d always known she was beautiful. I was four years old when we met, and even then her hair was gold and shiny. She wore sackcloth and she scrubbed the grease from the walls yet I watched her and thought, I wish I looked like you.

What part of Cosette had made the people in Montfermeil whisper Poor dove when they saw her, or Such a pretty thing … before moving on with their own small lives? She was neat. She had elegance so that even when she swept the yard, she did so very daintily. Her hair curled at the ends. Her lips were rose-colored. Her eyes were like pools—blue, deep, reflecting the trees and the sky.

In Les Jardins, she looked exactly the same. She was older but she was still Cosette. I stood on the rue Christine. It was evening. I could see my reflection in the candlemaker’s window. Of course he loves her, not me, I thought—for the girl who looked back at me was drab and bruised and impossibly thin. All the thistles in the world had not made her hair tidy; knots still hung on it with feathers and twigs. Her collarbone stuck out. Her forehead was lined. She didn’t have either a waist or a chest to speak of. Her lips were cracked and dry.

Of course he’d choose Cosette. It would be like choosing between a puddle and the sea. A snapped stick and a springtime tree. A pebble and a mountain.

I was so silly to think he’d love me. Silly to think he liked walking beside me, that day.

*  *  *

I stole again. I returned to being the Eponine from the Sergeant of Waterloo who plucked rings off fingers, snapped buckles off shoes. I did no good deeds. I only thought, Why bother? It didn’t seem worth it anymore.

I walked home with sous in my pockets. A wind blew and the few, thin trees were turning brown.

Autumn was coming. My hopes for a better life—for a kind and loving one—were blown away with the leaves.