Azelma perches on the front step of the shop, waiting for Eponine to emerge. The street is full of people; some of them smile down at her as they pass, but most of them are too intent on their own business to pay any attention to her at all.

She turns her eyes downward. The hem of her skirt is caked with mud. Bored, she starts trying to pick it off. Though really there isn't much point; the skirt is ugly and worn-out, having been Eponine's before it was hers, and some better-fed girl's before it was Eponine's.

Azelma used to have pretty clothes, once. There was a blue dress that she loved, with little flowers embroidered. She remembers a doll, too, vaguely, and a pretty room of their own with a window. It is hard to recall now when that was.

Eponine comes out of the shop, banging the door. Azelma jumps, and scrambles to her feet as her sister marches past her. "Wait, 'Ponine."

"Shit," Eponine says audibly.

Azelma gawks. "'Ponine!"

"What?"

"You're not s'posed to say that."

"I'm thirteen. I can if I want to. Shit, hell, whore." She raises her voice as Azelma covers her ears. "That woman didn't give me hardly anything for 'em."

"She didn't want the clothes?" Old baby dresses, mostly, and the last of the sheets and things that they had in Montfermeil.

"She didn't want to pay for them. I'm going to get in trouble, dammit."

Azelma hugs herself anxiously, trailing along as Eponine storms down the street. This is another thing that seems, sometime, to have changed. They never used to get in so much trouble, when they slept in the room with the window, and being in trouble wasn't as scary somehow.

"'Ponine?"

"What?"

"Did I have a blue dress, once?"

"I don't know."

"With little flowers," and Azelma points at her drab clothes to illustrate where they were.

Eponine looks at her askance. "That was my dress."

"Oh."

"I guess you had it after me."

"I guess so." Azelma looks at the ground. "Did we--" She pauses, not wanting to be wrong again.

"Now what?"

"Did we have a baby brother?"

"That was Gavroche, stupid."

"I meant after him."

Eponine shoots her another look, sharp, almost scared. "No."

"But--"

"No! Shut up! I'm tired of talking about used-to! I have to think. Let me think." When Eponine is mad she sounds like their father, hard and high-pitched and dangerous.

So Azelma shuts up, knotting her hands in the folds of the ugly skirt, and follows her sister, trying not to make any noise as she cries.