"Courfeyrac?"
"That's my name, and you are Eponine."
"How do you know that?"
"Well right after you ran into me yesterday I went to see Tyce, like I frequently do. He looked quite confused and told me that a girl named Eponine, who claimed to be Gavroche's sister, had brought breakfast and then asked him to punch her in the face and ran away once someone started calling her name. You can see how he might have been…puzzled."
"Ahhh…yes, well he was quite helpful with the situation I found myself in. Why are you friends…how are you friends with Tyce?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well…you seem to…come from a nice family, go to school, have the things you need…and well Tyce lives in an alley behind a tavern."
"Tyce is my friend because we get along and seem to enjoy each other's company. What situation did you find yourself in? Why did you ask Tyce to hit you?"
"That isn't important."
"I think it is."
"So you have known Tyce for a while then? Is he a good person? My brother is he safe with him?"
"You're trying to change the topic."
"I'm trying to find out the kind of people that my brother has been living with, is there anything that I should know?"
Courfeyrac looked at her, he could see the family resemble between she and Gavroche. They both had dark, big eyes, and were physically very small. Eponine herself looked to be only nine or ten, although spoke like she was twice that age.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Eleven" she said proudly standing up straighter, "but I'll be twelve next week."
"Is that so?"
"It is" Eponine said defensively, "besides now who is trying to change the topic."
"I'll make you a deal." Eponine viewed Courfeyrac cautiously. From her experience deals were only made by people like her father who wanted something and never planned to give something in return. But Courfeyrac was different than her father, he seemed honest. Courfeyrac continued, "you tell me why you asked Tyce to punch you in the face, and I will tell you what I know about him."
She looked at him a bit longer, looking at his face he didn't seem to have any bad intentions and Eponine was starting to get good at reading people.
"Fine" Eponine said. Courfeyrac held out his hand and Eponine shook it.
"Now Eponine, why did you ask Tyce to hit you."
"I stole from my father in order to buy the food that I gave Tyce for my brother. I thought he would be more forgiving if he thought it had been stolen from me…so I needed some proof."
"And was he more forgiving?"
"More or less." The three francs still weighed heavily on Eponine's mind, but now she had a different job to complete. "Now it is your turn, what do you know about Tyce?"
"Why don't we go for a walk?"
"You told me you would tell me about Tyce."
"And I will, but it is a long story and I fancy a walk, so what do you say?" Eponine nodded and they headed out of the alley.
"Tyce didn't always live on the streets" Courfeyrac started, "I guess not many do, but the transition for him was difficult. Tyce lived quite comfortably; he was the son of a butcher that is how I first met him. I would go with my father to get the roast on the weekends, my father would talk to the butcher, so I talked to his son, Tyce, he was only a year younger than me. Later I recognized him on the streets after school when my father allowed me to 'explore my city' and I found myself spending more and more of my free time with him, he was fun and could always come up with the most creative games."
Eponine smiled at this, "Gavroche likes coming up with games too" she said.
"It is a good skill to have no matter what your position in life." Courfeyrac answered. "But Tyce's position in life soon changed. When he was eight his parents got ill, at the time I didn't quite understand what was happening, but my father stopped going to that butcher's shop and I stopped seeing Tyce on the streets. It wasn't until a month later when I finally did see him out. He seemed different, aged in a way. I could tell he had been crying, he confided in me that he feared that his parents were close to death, he was afraid and the land lord kept coming by demanding rent. He didn't know what to do and he had no family, expect for a brother that was four years old."
Eponine gasped, so Tyce did have a brother, his odd behavior a couple days before suddenly made more sense. Courfeyrac looked at Eponine, she did not realize that she had gasped so audibly. "I'm sorry" she said, "please continue."
"Three months later there was a new family moving into the shop that Tyce's family had owned and I still did not know where he was. That is when I really started spending my 'explore the city' free time, exploring the city, looking for my friend, I missed his games. It was selfish of me really, I don't know if I cared about him, or cared that I was lonely without his company. After a couple months I stopped looking and it wasn't until nearly a year later when I actually saw him again. He was living on the streets alone; although many boys would follow him around, he ignored their attention in what seemed like a cruel way to me at the time. It wasn't until he shared things with me a couple of years later that I finally understood. A week after Tyce had shared his fears with me his parents did die. It turned out that they had nothing so they had a pauper's funeral and only a week after that we was out on the streets with his brother. They fended well enough for a couple of months, begging, stealing when needed, they were a team his brother and him. But then his brother who was only five at the time got sick. Tyce did everything in his power to help him, he tried to take him to the hospital but they wouldn't see two street urchins. A week later his brother died. Tyce had lost everyone in his family to illness. This happened two weeks before I found him living on the streets, and avoiding the younger boys. He never said so but I think they reminded him too much of his brother. Eventually he came to care for them; he specifically seems to looks out for the littlest ones who seems weakest and adopts them one could say. They all look out for each other, they have rescued and been rescued and are extremely protective."
"Is that how my brother came to be with Tyce?" Eponine asked.
"I actually found your brother" Courfeyrac said.
"Really?" Eponine was surprised.
"I was walking around eating some lunch one day when I saw a little boy sitting on the side of the street and I asked him if he was lost. He looked up at me, well not so much looking at me but at the baguette in my hand so I broke him off a piece and asked him again if he was lost. He said that he was waiting for is papa and didn't know where he was. He said that he had been waiting for two days. I asked him if he wanted to wait with me and some friends and so I brought him to Tyce. I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do, I didn't want to separate him from his father but he seemed like he needed some looking after."
Eponine shuttered at the idea of her brother sitting and waiting for his father to return and she hated her father for it.
"You did the right thing; my father was never coming back for Gavroche. I don't think he ever wanted a son, and things were changing. When he had the opportunity to throw Gavroche out he took it."
Courfeyrac looked at Eponine. He could not imagine a father who would simply get sick of his son and decide to leave him to live on the streets, and worried for anyone who would have to live with someone like that. But before he had a chance to voice his concerns Eponine spoke again, "Thank you, thank you so much."
