Billie by Anna Gavalda, Jennifer Rappaport

it’s precisely because of it that I’ve been going on and on like this for hours!
    The reason is totally idiotic and I can barely dare to say it. The reason is: love.

 
    A fter that it got sadder and I’m going to run through it quickly.
    Afterwards, you were looking elsewhere . . .
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    First there was summer vacation which put a bit of distance between us (we saw each other three times in two months, once by chance and super uncomfortably because his mother was nearby) and then his going off to school separated us completely.
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    He was far away and as for me . . . during that period, I repeated a year of school, developed tits, and started smoking.
    To pay for my cigarettes, I began to fool around, and so that my tits would serve some purpose, I shacked up with someone.
    Yes, . . . shacked up . . . there was a boy who passed by, he had a motorbike, he could take me away from the Morels from time to time, he worked at a garage, he wasn’t all that nice, but he wasn’t mean either, he wasn’t all that handsome and couldn’t have hoped for better than a girl like me for an easy lay. He still lived with his parents, but there was a trailer at the back of their yard—and that was great because I felt completely at home in trailers—so I brought my bag of clothes and moved in.
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    I cleaned it; I sat inside and did what he did: I lived stealthily at the back of the yard.
    His parents’ yard . . .
    His parents who didn’t want to speak to me because I was such bad marriage material.
    He was allowed to have his meals with them, but me—no. Instead, he brought me out a lunchbox.
    It bothered him a bit, but as he said: it was only temporary, right?
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    Where were you little star?
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    Oh . . . I have to go quickly over these moments from my past because it reminds me too much of the present.
    Because, you know . . . I keep going on and on with my story, but I’m waiting for you and feel really cold.
    I’m really cold, really thirsty, really hungry, and really not doing so well.
    My arm hurts; I feel bad about my friend.
    I feel bad about my Francky who’s all messed up . . .
    And I still feel like crying.
    So I’m crying.
    But hey, it’s only temporary, right?
    Suddenly, it came back to me, little star. Monsieur Dumont didn’t only teach me that I was from the underclass of France, he made me write down somewhere that you were dead . . .
    That you had died billions of years ago and that it wasn’t you I was looking at but your remains. The remains of your ghost. A sort of hologram. A hallucination.
    Is it true?
    So we’re really alone?
    The two of us are really lost?
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    I’m crying.
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    When I die, there won’t be even a trace of my presence left behind. No one has ever understood me, aside from Franck, and if he dies before me, it’s over. I’ll die too.
    I’m looking for his hand and squeezing it tight. As tight as I can.
    If he dies, I’ll go with him. I’ll never let go of him. Never. He has to save me one more time . . . He’s already done it so often that he’s like some hoisting mechanism on a helicopter . . . I can’t stay here without him. I don’t want to because I can’t.
    I pretended that I could escape the underclass, but in truth, I never left it; I tried, though. I tried with all my heart. I tried all my life. But it’s like a disastrous tattoo, that crap; unless you cut off your arm, you have to lug it around until the worms eat it.
    Whether I like it or not I was born a Morel and will die a Morel. And if Franck abandons me, I’ll act exactly like my stepmother and all the others: I’ll drink. I’ll make a hole in the floorboards and I’ll make it bigger and bigger until there’s nothing human left in me. Nothing that laughs, nothing that cries, nothing that suffers. Nothing that