Said he’d never let me go.
It’s hot.
We never went to the abandoned place this time of day, mid-afternoon when the heat is at its peak.
I wipe sweat from my forehead with my arm. I’m sitting on the countertop, surprised it didn’t break, but it creaked a little. The one-eyed squirrel is just where we left it, like it just waits and waits until we come by. I feel as if I owe it an apology for coming here alone. The pile of bottle caps are next to me. You’d think we’d been trying to build something. You’d think we’d each added a piece, one by one, for a purpose.
But it’s just a pile of bottle caps.
It means nothing.
I don’t know why I’m here. It’s not like he’d be here waiting, with an explanation, with an apology, and my relief would be immense. That’s the sad part. That I’d feel that way after days of nothing, after all of this, I’d be okay. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t be a fool, but there was no stopping it. There was no helping it.
Maybe that’s what it was.
A fly buzzes around my head, and I wave it away. I hear a car on the street and it seems for a second that it’s slowing down, but it moves on. I don’t even care if it’s that same square again, come to chase me out of here. Maybe the guy wouldn’t care so much if it was just me. He probably wouldn’t even notice.
I wonder what would happen if I just sat here. All day, all night, and just stayed right here. Just sat right here on this busted countertop with the flies and the bees and didn’t move, didn’t do anything else ever again. Aunt Amy would look for me, of course, but she wouldn’t think to look here. This place was special, our own.
My eyes sting.
So, I couldn’t even count on her finding me. It would just be him, it would have to be him, and he’s gone.
My eyes blur.
I say it out loud. “He’s gone.”
The walls seem to sag a little at this news. The droopy-eyed windows get droopier. The squirrel’s one eye seems to get a little misty. This is just a stupid pile of shit now. A place nobody wants.
I get down off the countertop.
I reach over and smack the pile of bottle caps to the floor, making a racket, frightening a pigeon nearby, its wings fluttering and feathers flying.
I turn my back on the mess, the thing we’d built, for no reason, but it doesn’t matter now.
He’s gone.
I’m at the part where Éponine has taken a bullet for Marius.
I used to read this part with sympathy, but I always knew—like anyone who reads this knows—that Marius wasn’t meant to be with her. She was going to die and she wasn’t pretty. Hugo wrote her as looking so malnourished as a teen that she looked middle-aged. She was missing teeth, had hardly any clothes, and drank too much with her sister. She was supposed to contrast with Cosette, because they’d grown up together with the scummy innkeepers. The Thènardiers put Cosette in rags, they didn’t take care of her, but they spoiled Éponine. So it was fitting, some kind of universal justice, that Cosette would grow up to be desirable and Éponine would not.
Marius wasn’t meant to love such a spiraling disaster, such a tragic casualty of poverty and corruption.
So, I used to think it was good Éponine died when she did. Her life would have gotten worse, after all. She would have ended up alone in a room with peeling paint, stained curtains, prostrate by a dirty fireplace, with a bottle in her hands and tangles in her hair.
It was her lot. Someone must bear the burden of unrequited love, and she is the patron saint.
I would read right past this part, over and over, countless times, allowing Éponine to pass into the night like the smoke from a snuffed-out candle. Then I would just move on, like everyone moved on, including Marius.
And now I take her last words like a knife into my chest.And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you.
I say the words to myself.I believe I was a little in love with you.
I do it again, as Aunt Amy comes into the sitting room to turn on some dinner music on the High-Fi. It’s a low, waltzing tune that I don’t recognize. It clashes with my mood, fingernails on slate that I can feel in my teeth. And within it, I can almost see poor Éponine, disguised as a boy, dying in the arms of someone she loved.
And he just let her die.
He did.
