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When I was a little girl I used to think that when it rained, it was the sky crying. If I was crying at the same time, I wondered if the rain was coming down in sympathy, matching my feelings, saying, There, there

It was like that in Paris, that day. But it wasn’t raining: Instead, it was the hottest day I’d ever known. I sweated under my arms and my skin turned red. The world is burning, I thought. Like I burned inside, last night.

It meant the streets smelled more than ever. They stank of sweat and sewage and rotting meat. Dogs panted for water. Tempers were like tinder so that the tiniest thing sparked them and people brawled in the street. Near the Tuileries one man stabbed another; I heard the scream and I saw his blood flowing out.

“This is dangerous weather,” somebody said.

The cholera was even worse. It had always been there in the shadows but now people were squatting in the gutters or vomiting in corners. Bodies were left outside the morgue. I held my breath as I passed them and thought of Gavroche because some of the bodies were child-sized.

Please let him be safe—and please let Marius and Cosette and Jean Valjean be safe. And the man who gave me chestnuts.

And Azelma. I thought of her too. So she had been standing on guard last night, at the end of the rue Plumet? Their new, better lookout. She’d gotten as hard as stone but she was still my sister and so I thought, Keep her safe too.

I sent small prayers out for everyone I cared for, and for the people that they cared for too. But I forgot about the man called Larmarque. I forgot to whisper, Keep him safe from this fever. Could I have saved him? If I had whispered it?

On June 1 he died. And if the city had been hot and angry before, it really caught fire with this.

*  *  *

I heard the news in Les Halles. Just as fires snicker from twig to twig and get stronger and louder, so this news moved through the crowd … Lamarque! Dead! The cholera’s got him! What now? What now?

I thought of Marius and his curly-haired friend in Café Musain who had called Lamarque the man who will save us. The market swarmed and wailed.

Within days, the gunshots began. I was near the Café Musain when I heard them and dropped to my knees. “What’s that?” I cried out.

A man helped me up. “Soldiers.”

“Why are they shooting?”

“There are riots already. You know Lamarque’s dead? There’s no one to fight for the people now and so the people are having to fight themselves. I’d leave here,” he said. “It’ll only get worse.”

I thanked him and hurried on. Marius and Cosette were safe, weren’t they? Holding hands in the rue Plumet and not here, on the streets? But I was scared. I ran down the rue de la Chanvrerie and straight into a girl.

She shouted, “Hey! Watch it!” It was Azelma.

We stared.

I hadn’t seen her since we left prison and she looked much older now. There were lines by her eyes, and bruises. Her hands were tightly closed so I knew she’d been stealing—centimes, perhaps. There couldn’t be much left to steal anymore.

“Azelma! How are you? Are you well? No fever?”

“Do I look as if I’ve got the fever?” Still sour.

Perhaps the question was stupid but I didn’t blush. “Where are you living?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she said, “Papa told me what you said to him, the other night. We disgust you, do we?”

“Not you, Zel. Papa. The others. Do you think he’s ever really loved us?”

She hardened her jaw, defiant. “Perhaps he never loved you. But he loves me.”

“Does he act like he does?”

She looked a little sad for a moment. “What does love matter anyway? It doesn’t feed or clothe you. That house? In the rue Plumet? The things inside it could have fed us for a month!”

“But the people who live there are good people! They’ve had their own suffering and don’t deserve more.”

“Their own suffering? They’re rich! And we’re not! What do I care about their suffering? I could be wearing silk dresses now …”

“So you’re happy to steal all your life?”

“It’s a cruel world and we must be cruel to survive it.” I heard our mother’s voice in that.

“Look at me, Azelma: I’m surviving it! But I haven’t stolen anything since I left Madelonnettes. I beg or I scavenge but I don’t steal, and I haven’t done a single cruel thing—and I’m happier for it! Oh, Zel …”

Suddenly, she softened. She looked her age, which wasn’t old at all. “Do you think we’re the only ones living like this? Didn’t you hear the gunshots? Worse things are happening in Paris than a stolen sou or two. Stealing’s what I know. It’s what I’m good at and it’s what Papa and Montparnasse want me to do.”

“Montparnasse?” I frowned. Why would she do what he wanted of her? Then I guessed: She likes him. Perhaps she hadn’t run away from his mouth, as I’d done. Perhaps she actually wanted to feel those hands …

I loved my little sister then. I wanted to whisk her up in my arms and take her far away from there—from diseases and prisons and the city’s heat. “Do you remember your doll?” I asked.

“My doll?”

“We used to play with her … remember?” I reached for Azelma’s hair and stroked it. “Shall we go somewhere? You and me? We could leave Paris and head south, follow the sun … Maybe we can find a little work picking fruit or pressing grapes into wine with our feet, or plucking hens … An honest life. A better life than this.”

She moved my hand away. “And what of Papa? I won’t leave him. You might think he’s a disgrace but I don’t. I’ll stay with him, and with Montparnasse, and if you really hope for a good, honest life then I’m telling you, Eponine, you will fail. Haven’t you seen? There are riots! A revolution is coming, and no one will care for your high morals! What matters is blood and anger, kings and the rest of us. Everyone hates one another and it’ll be a fine time for stealing—all these gatherings. You’ll miss out,” she said, and stepped back.

We looked at each other. I remembered how we used to sleep together in Montfermeil, under the same blanket. Her little pops of sleeping breath. Her warm body pressed against my own. I felt sad.

“Be careful.” In my head I thought, Find love. Fall in love with someone who’s worth it—for it changes everything.

She sniffed. “I’m going to where the gunshots came from. Newly dead men are easy to rob.”

Oh, she was our father’s daughter.

“You know that you’ve angered them? By defending that house? They will steal from it, Eponine—and they’ll hurt everyone inside it too. You can’t defend it forever.”

With that, she went. She moved through the crowds until she was lost among them, and I wanted to call out, I love you!—because I did. But she moved too quickly.

I had a strange feeling, at that moment. I felt, in my bones, that my sister was gone now and that I’d never see her again.

*  *  *

Azelma was wrong in a lot of what she said. But one thing stayed with me: You can’t defend it forever.

I sat in the elm tree that night. Somewhere beneath me, Paris glowed with fires and the flashes of gunshots. Tomorrow they’d bury Lamarque. I couldn’t imagine a quiet funeral procession—nobody could. There’d be trouble, I was sure of it.

I wanted to warn Cosette and Valjean, to knock on their door and say, Do you remember the people who hurt you, Monsieur? In the Gorbeau? Well, they’re coming back to take everything you have and to hurt you again … But those tall iron gates were always locked. I wanted Cosette to walk back out through the dusk so that I might shout out to her—but she was always inside, these evenings. She was no longer lovesick, sighing in the dark; she had Marius now.

I rubbed my eyes, tearful. Why did things always have to be so hard?

But then among the gunshots and dogs barking and distant calls for help, I heard another sound. It was the skittering of paper. Beneath me, a tiny piece of newspaper blew by.

I’ll write a note! I grabbed the paper and walked until I found a little bit of charcoal and then I wrote: “You’re in danger. The villains from the Gorbeau know you live here and are coming again. Be careful.”

I dropped it through the iron railings, into the garden. It lay next to the lavender bush so I knew it would be found—my little act of love.