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It's not often the girls get the TV to themselves. There's always someone in the house, clamoring to take over, or else to join in. And it's not like Cosette minds. When the other kids try to join them, she always acquiesces, unless she's watching something they're too young for (which is highly subjective, so it depends on who comes to ask, because some of them are quite young). But tonight she and Beverly have a whole evening planned. With school and everything, they've been super busy, so now is the night for catching up, watching movies, and eating sweets. (Cosette no longer works on the boardwalk, but the owner is still fond of her, enough to give her a little discount on the sly, so she has far more candy than is humanly necessary.)

It's almost Halloween, so they've found a horror movie simply called The Haunted, which sounds maybe a touch dumb, but creepy enough to be fun. More than that, though, Cosette looks forward to chatting. She brings the largest bowl the house has into the TV room, overflowing with popcorn, and sets it down next to her candy stash and the sodas she got after school. The staff at the home don't necessarily encourage such indulgences — or these movies either — but they don't exactly stop the girls either. Cosette has learned how to enjoy the grey space in-between.

Lowering herself gracefully onto the couch, she reaches for a worn pillow to hug to herself. "There," she says, "all set."

To most, Cosette suspects, Saturday night in Darrow seems dull and quiet. It's a city with much to do, but teenagers are wandering, curious creatures, always straining against their boundaries, and Darrow has plenty of those, as well. To her, though, it remains enchanting. She'd like to see the world as much as anyone else, of course. But for her, this is more than she'd ever thought she'd get to see at home. She gets to live. No more hiding behind a garden gate, wondering how long the world will pass her by. No more eyeing handsome soldiers and knowing she'll never get to speak to them, or merely glimpsing attractive strangers in a garden and never exchanging a word. Oh, she misses her papa, of course she does. Some days it hurts like a physical ache to know she might never see him again. But there's excitement to be had in Darrow and there are boys.

She's coming out of the movie theater in the early evening when she spots him, her brow quirking in interest. He's come into the candy store on the boardwalk before when she was working; perhaps, she began to suspect, because she was working, once or twice. In summer, they were terribly busy, so she didn't always have much of a chance to talk, and now that school is back, she's left her position there.

Well, there's nothing to keep her from talking now.

"Steve," she calls gaily, "isn't it? How nice to run into you here."

School is back in session, to Cosette's mingled horror and delight. She loves some of her classes as much as the others annoy or bore her, but they all have the unfortunate side effect of taking up a considerable amount of her spare time. It's such that she rarely makes it to the beach anymore. Granted, the days are growing cooler and briefer, and perhaps the beach isn't the destination of choice for her peers now. They prefer to be indoors, cozying up to each other over cups of hot cocoa and things that taste of pumpkin and spices.

It's not even that cold yet, she thinks, but that stops no one. It wouldn't stop her either if she had someone to cozy up with, homework or no homework.

But she doesn't, which means she has time to head to the beach.

There it is that, at the end of an outcropping of rocks, she spots a figure. It's a stranger, which isn't enough to deter her from picking her way further out along the rocks, closer to the water. What does stop her in her tracks, however, is when she recognizes that the stranger isn't alone. In the water are a trio of dolphins, almost as if the young woman is holding court.

Cosette gasps softly, making her way cautiously down the rocks to try and get closer.

With school back in session, Cosette has been terribly busy. Her summer of fun and freedom is at an end, and instead, she's found herself spending much of her free time at the library. It can be dreary — as much as she enjoys education in general, she's not always fond of her specific classes and assignments, let alone the teachers — but she tries to brighten her days by thinking of what lies ahead. There are dances to attend and Halloween costumes to choose and plenty else to occupy her as the days grow briefer and more chill.

Still, in the meanwhile, there's studying to do.

The library at Petros High is pretty good, but the public library downtown is better still, which is how she finds herself back there, a cup of coffee in one hand from a nearby café and a stack of books tucked under the other, backpack dangling from one shoulder.

At which point she realizes she's unsure how to get the door open.

It's relief and embarrassment both to hear someone else approaching. She steps aside. "Could you get the door please?" she asks, all apologetic, as she looks to the man with wide eyes. "I have overloaded myself."

Cosette's job ends with the summer, but she hordes her savings carefully — what's left of it after back-to-school shopping, anyway. What she gets from the city more than covers her expenses anyway, but she's almost 18 now, and when she moves out of the home, she'll need it.

The prospect of leaving is one that she greets with equal measures of delight and horror. To live on one's own! To be truly the mistress of her own household, however small and empty! And yet, to leave behind her friends and the companionship of life in the home, which at times reminds her so dearly of the convent, and care of the garden, where she's spent such happy hours!

That isn't for some time yet, though. She has time to plan and prepare. Before then, however, there's Halloween.

She's become quite fond of Halloween. It's enchanting to dress up as something entirely other and to get candy for it, even if her summer job has put a bit of a damper on her sweet tooth. It's probably for the best anyway, and besides, she usually ends up sharing quite a bit of her bounty with the younger children anyway.

This year, though, she's not at all sure what she wants to be. They're browsing the aisles of a big Halloween store, leafing through cheap taffeta and polyester, and Cosette wrinkles up her nose. "I hardly know where to begin," she says, lapsing into French as she always does when they're alone. Eponine always reminds her of home.

( Read more... )

( This'll get long. )

School is back in session, and, as much as Cosette loves her studies, she misses the too brief, heady days of summer. The bonfires on the beach, her hands sticky with ice cream, the smell of salt in the air — everything was so light and fun. Every day on the boardwalk was a carnival.

Now the air is turning colder and those days are gone. That's fine, too, though; Cosette loves the fall and the countryside, and she's happy to make her way out there to visit Ellie now. She's done all her homework like a good girl so nothing can keep her from enjoying her time with her friend.

Getting out of the hired car, she flounces up to the door and knocks.

Hello. You've reached the voicemail of Cosette? Leave a message after the beep.

Leave mail here for Cosette Fauchelevent.

This city made little sense to Cosette at first, but she's been watching it. For those first few days, she scarcely dared leave the children's home to which she was taken. For all that it seemed more like the convent than anywhere else she's been, without Papa there, she has the strong presentiment that a wrong move might bring trouble down on her head, or even that the Thénardier woman might emerge from the shadows of her fancies to strike her.

Time passes, though, and they remain kind there, albeit, some of them, indifferent. She grows slowly accustomed to these electronic devices they use. Everyone seems to carry the ones they call phones everywhere at all times, and always to be tapping madly away on them. They only serve to make Cosette lonely; she has no one to call or tap to.

Well, that won't do. She can't sit inside all day and fuss and wallow, just because she's been snatched from home without so much as a by your leave! The days that come find Cosette buzzing determinedly about the city, shopping until she can dress in a manner both modern and warm. She's not quite so bold as to start wearing jeans yet, but she decides she only needs time.

In the meanwhile, she explores.

This includes places, shops, books, as much history as she can find, videos on this strange thing called the internet, clothes, shoes, makeup, but also food. She's entranced by the food. One afternoon on the boardwalk, she discovers cotton candy, popcorn, candy apples, and peanut brittle.

Later that afternoon, she discovers the stomachache.

"Dieu au paradis," she says, leaning against the counter at a little café, waiting for a tea she's ordered. "Quel erreur."

The city is a very confusing place. Even in the (somewhat) quiet of her shared room at the children's home, Cosette is surrounded by strange objects, things she neither recognizes nor understands. She's been given by this city a strange metal and glass object they tell her is a telephone, that she can use it to call anyone she likes and speak to them across great distances. But she wants to call Papa, and he cannot hear it if she tries.

She is very determined to make sense of it all. She has the sense that she spent a very long part of her life living very poorly, in all manner of speaking, though so much of it exists only in a haze in her mind. Here she has limited funds, but also few things to spend it on, and so she spends some time studying modern fashions and then she goes out shopping.

There are things she won't do, things she's not yet ready to do in order to adjust to these modern times. These jeans are out of the question, at least just yet. Bared shoulders are nothing; wearing a dress that bares her ankles, however, feels like deliciously scandalous behavior. That no one else here will think much of it makes no difference to her. It matters to her, and that is all.

She finds herself, one day, at Objective, browsing aisles of products labeled "Beauty" that are utterly unfamiliar to her. Thanks to some strange magic of this city, she understands English and can speak it, if with an accent, but that doesn't make the labels on the boxes any less confusing. She picks up a long, cylindrical metal device that's on display, twisting it in her hand. "'Curling iron,'" she reads aloud. "Mais c'est quoi?"