Billie by Anna Gavalda, Jennifer Rappaport Page A

could make me risk raising my head one last time just to get smacked in the face.
    I let Francky believe that I had pressed reset, but all that was bullshit. I did nothing at all. I just trusted him. I trusted him because it was him and because he was there, but without him, such a lie won’t hold up for a minute. I can’t press reset. I
can’t
. My childhood is a poison coursing through my blood and I’ll only stop suffering when I’m dead. My childhood is me, and since my childhood is worth nothing, with me behind it, no matter how hard I tried to thwart it with all my strength, I was never strong enough.
    Â 
    I’m cold, I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, and I’m crying. I don’t give a damn about you, lousy little star, you who don’t even exist in my dreams. I don’t want to see you anymore. Never again.
    I turn toward Franck and, like a dog, like White Fang when he finds his master, I wedge my nose under his arm and lie stock-still.
    I don’t want to ever go back to living in a trailer. I don’t want to eat other people’s leftovers anymore. I don’t want to convince myself anymore that I am anything other than myself. It’s too tiring to lie all the time. Way too tiring . . . My mother left when I was not even a year old and she left because I did nothing but cry. She’d had enough of her baby. And well, she was right, because after so many years, I haven’t made any progress: I’m still the same pain in the ass little girl who cries all night long . . .
    I forgave her for abandoning me. I was able to understand that she was still a child and it must have been impossible for her to imagine the rest of her life in the Morels with my father but . . . but the thing that keeps me from forgetting her completely is wondering whether she thinks about me sometimes . . .
    Only that.
    Â 
    I’ve stopped crushing his hand—I need to move; I may want to die in the next minute, but I’ve had enough of having a sore arm for the next second, and just as I’m rolling onto my back, he starts squeezing me in turn.
    â€œFranck? Is that you? Are you there? Are you sleeping? Have you passed out or what? Do you hear me?”
    I’ve stuck my ear against his mouth just in case he is too weak to answer me clearly and also to act the way they do in the movies, like, when a dying old man murmurs with his last little breath where he’s hidden his treasure, and so on.
    But no . . . his lips aren’t moving . . . his hand, however, is still squeezing mine . . . Not a lot. Just barely. A weak grip. But for him it must be a humongous effort.
    His hand is too weak and doesn’t really squeeze at all, but he is pressing me a little with his comatose fingers. His fingers, in a last little burst of movement, are saying to me: “But you don’t see that your treasure is there, you big dope! C’mon, stop crying! Do you realize you’re starting to bore us with your miserable childhood? Do you want me to talk about mine a little? Do you want me to tell you the effect it had, growing up with a mother on antidepressants and a father on “anti-the-whole-world”? Do you want me to tell you what it’s like to live with constant hatred? Do you want me to tell you what it’s like being the son of Jean-Bernard Muller and to realize at eight years old that you would only ever love boys? Is that what you want?
    â€œDo you want me to tell you again all about the bloody war that was waged? The resulting carnage? The domestic terror? So, stop for two minutes, please. Stop. And can we give up on your bogus star there? . . . There is
no
little star. There is
no
sky. There is
no
God. There is no one other than us on this fucking planet; I’ve already told you a thousand times: it’s just us, us, us, and us again. So stop always digging into your shitty memories and inventing your