i.
The first time he met her, he knew she was something special.
He had bumped into her, quite by accident, one day when the summer fair had been to town and the sky was a glorious shade of ocean blue.
Strolling along the pavement on his way home, Enjolras is quite content to lick at an ice cream and contemplate the clouds, when out of nowhere he is hit with the spine of a hardback book (its owner having walked straight into him); ending up with a nose full of vanilla.
'Hey!'
He blinks through a curtain of chocolate sauce to see a pair of deep brown eyes staring back at him.
"Watch where you're - oh".
Picking up the book now lying open on the ground, he hands it shyly over, noting the words scribbled on the inside cover.
"Is – is this yours?"
The girl simply looks at him, her solemn dark eyes taking in the sight of the ice cream now dripping from the end of his nose, and her lips curl in a dry smirk.
"You have pistachios in your eyebrows."
Cheeks burning, he rubs his face on his sleeve and desperately tries to hide his own awkward grin, while she bites her lip and turns her attention to her toes.
Enjolras hovers there for a while, shuffling from foot to foot and unsure of what to do next - but as the girl glances back up at him through long sooty lashes, the mischievous glint of laughter in her eyes makes his decision for him.
Terrified, the small boy makes a run for it, the sound of hearty laughter washing over the back of his ears as he leaps through the front door of his parents' house.
(Peeking through the letterbox, he sees that she has once more buried her nose in her picture book, and is continuing on her way).
He knows he has met his match when the girl beats him at Sports' Day a month later.
He is as competitive as she is a cheat, and it isn't long before the event has turned into a fierce battle between the pair for first prize.
Ever since the New Girl had been seated at his table in school, they had been determined to outperform one another in everything from spelling to arithmetic, including the daily race to be first in line when the bell rang for lunch. For a new student, she has an uncanny knack for knowing all the shortcuts to the canteen, and is often seen giving a hearty wave to an infuriated Enjolras who stands with arms folded, three places behind her in the line.
But today – today – Enjolras is adamant that he will have his victory.
...
The girl beats him at the Egg and Spoon race; she is all elbows when she runs and Enjolras more than once drops the egg, proudly choosing instead to blame his clumsiness on the design of the cutlery.
To his dismay, they are paired together for the Three-Legged Race. Nonetheless, they take the challenge in their stride – literally - and they win, falling over the finish line with an extravagant flourish. He can't help but look at her in awe as they disentangle themselves from the scarves and from each other, and she simply grins at him, a little shyly, shrugging her shoulders before skipping off in search of her parents and an ice cream.
On the final sprint race of the day, they are both almost disqualified for trying to cross the starting line before the whistle blows, until the girl's father stealthily hands over a crisp banknote beneath the suspicious eyes of his fellow spectators. Still, it pays off, and once more the game is on for the two children nudging each other out of the way at the starting line.
When the whistle blows, Enjolras feels his feet have grown wings, and he howls indignantly as a blur of wild dark hair flies past him regardless.
"Eat my dust, sucker!"
(In the end, they tie for second place).
He knows when he sees the dim light coming from the tree-house in next door's garden that the girl's parents are fighting again.
"They could shout for all of France," his mother would say. "They never were a match, in my opinion, but that's what comes of chasing dreams and not good solid practicality."
The light in the tree-house stays lit for hours, and Enjolras wonders what the girl does to pass the time, boxed in with no one for company but the night moths and occasional restless squirrel. Sometimes on these evenings he stays awake too, refusing to turn off the night light on his bedside table.
"Should've been gypsies, if you ask me. Could never stay put for long – he was just peculiar, and her, she was a holy terror when she was young, always running off after some new fancy. I'm surprised they settled down in this neighbourhood at all."
He wonders if the girl notices the glow from his window, and if it is a comfort to her, keeping her company through the long hours of the night.
ii.
He'd written the inscription down from memory, as it were, scrawled on a piece of paper torn from an old textbook. He finds it one day as he is spring-cleaning his room, casting junk into boxes, ready to be sold or simply thrown away. He still remembers how he had stood on this spot in the middle of the room, how he had held the paper in his hands, letting the words roll off his tongue in different ways as he worked out how to say her name.
(He pockets it).
He knows the girl is changing when she starts to swop dungarees for light summer dresses, her gap-toothed smile thickening into a full pearly white grin.
He's not sure why, but it makes him sad (although, he's changing too).
He sees her sometimes on the sidewalk where they met all those years ago, and she throws him a little wave when she catches him staring from the window, his book forgotten on his lap.
The day she stops to talk to him is the day she has lost her pet rabbit "Peter" and he helps her search beneath the boughs of the cherry trees that grow along their avenue.
"Peter? That's original."
"It's Beatrix Potter!"
"Well, exactly. S'pose you read those when you were a kid?"
"Didn't everyone?"
"Not me."
It is easy to talk to her, really, and he does, chattering away as they meander down the street, balancing on the kerb like a tightrope with arms outstretched on either side of them. The fair has already been and gone this year, and whilst he is loathe to admit it, Enjolras rather misses the colourful banners and delicious smells that filled the town only a month ago, and wonders whether a life in the circus would be half bad.
"Anyway," she gesticulates, swinging her arms by her sides as he lays flat on his stomach to search for Peter beneath a large azalea bush, "I like reading, but I always preferred picture books."
Shuffling back onto his knees, Enjolras smiles at up at her from the grass.
"I know."
The sun continues his route across the sky, peeping through the clouds and winking at them cheerily, whilst the warm Spring breeze blows inland from the coast, trembling the leaves of the trees overhead; the promise of a hot summer just around the corner.
"Hey, remember the day I beat you at the Egg and Spoon race?"
"You never really beat me, it was a fluke!"
The young teens bicker like old chums for the rest of the hour as they search high and low, talking about anything and everything beneath the wide open sky.
(They eventually find the rabbit hiding in Mr Fauchelevent's vegetable patch at the end of the avenue, munching on a forbidden carrot).
He knows she is stressed when her hands are stained blue, Indian ink blotting and swirling in the lines of her palms, their patterns printed like a stamp on her furrowed forehead as she works out particularly difficult sums.
Exam season is always tough, and both students are equally determined to do well, although it must be said that Enjolras handles the stress much better.
He sits in quiet poise and concentration as papers fly furiously on the other side of the table in the library. Every so often he'll glance over the top of his book to where she sits facing him, masses of papers strewn haphazardly in front of her and a pen sticking out from behind her ear.
Sighing and fidgeting, she doesn't stay for long, hating to be cooped up in the stuffy heat of the library, and chooses instead to cycle her books to the park where she can revise in the fresh air.
(He knows this won't last long either, for the shouts of the children from the play park will drive her straight back regardless.)
He knows she is in another world when he's talking to her and she gets that look in her eye.
It's a look that comes back at the end of every school semester, when the holidays are nearing and the students are getting restless for adventure.
Today is the last day of term and their teacher has given up all hope of imparting wisdom, choosing instead to sit with his feet up and have a siesta under the heat of the afternoon sun, which is shining lazily through the classroom windows and illuminating every speck of dust that hangs blissfully in the air.
Enjolras leans over the desk in the noisy classroom and talks louder, but his companion merely 'hmms' nonchalantly and continues to stare into space, eyes trained on the sky outside.
Beneath her eyelashes he fancies he can see the very gulls soaring across that giant blue, their shadows flickering upon the long grasses which bend in the soft breeze that sweeps across the cliff tops.
There's no bringing her back to earth when she's in this mood.
So he lets her dream, and his words dwindle to sleepy silence.
"To our darling Éponine, on your 1st Christmas!
With lots and lots of love,
from Mummy and Daddy."
When he arrives home early one summer evening he knows for sure that her parents have separated, for the car is still missing from their driveway, and it's been at least a week since he's heard from her.
He follows his instinct and the mossy stepping-stone path which leads to the old tree-house at the bottom of the garden next-door.
It's still daylight, and the flowers of mid-June are casting a fragrant perfume into the air, bees humming lazily in the last golden rays of the afternoon.
And she is there, as he knew she would be, huddled beneath her old comfort blanket in a corner of the wooden house, her old nursery books scattered around her feet and mascara caked half way down her reddened cheeks.
Slipping an arm around her shoulders protectively, and cursing the gods of Growing Up, he sits with her until dawn.
To Be Continued.