The men were all alike. Although they came to her with different names and faces, they paid the same amount and they left anonymously. Éponine had been fourteen when her father sold her virginity. Her first customer had not been too rough or cruel, but it had hurt and she disliked the feeling. He mashed his rubbery lips against her chapped ones, and she lay still as he did the deed.
Her mother had been so kind to her in the morning, fussing over her hair and making sure her belly was full. She'd sleep with strangers if it meant that she'd be treated as she had been in her childhood. But the second time her parents whored her, her mother had dropped all pretenses that Éponine was anything but a means to an end.
By the time Éponine neared her nineteenth birthday, she had been sold more times than she could count. She didn't mind the duty itself; anything to keep the bread coming home helped. It had become routine.
A week before her death, she spent the night with a customer younger than what she was used to. He wasn't handsome like Montparnasse, nor particularly kind like Marius, but she felt a little sorry for him. He was virginal and probably younger than she. His hands shook too hard to unbutton her dress, so she did it for him. He entered her and finished almost immediately. His boyish cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he paid. While he fled from the alley, she could hear his friends' drunken laughter as they cheered him for his success and jeered at him for not having taken a woman before. She cleaned herself up as best she could and slipped back into her meager clothing.
She watched the boys— for they were simply boys— walk away and she wrapped her arms around herself, relishing in the slight comfort it brought her.
"Goodnight," she whispered to their backs.
No one answered her, save for the whistle of the midnight wind.