A sunny day, at last! I left the Opera early in the morning, wearing a thin summer dress for the first time in months. I felt like dancing, singing, spinning, right there on the streets, under the warm sun! I walked in a fast pace to the bakery where my mother had started working part-time.
The smell of fresh-baked bread was lingering in the air, and it could be sensed many houses away. Everybody seemed pretty invigorated that morning, a lot of talking going on in every store, the street vendors pacing madly among the people on the sidewalks, announcing their products loudly.
I entered the bakery with a wide smile to my mother, who was buried behind the pile of packets to be delivered at the clients' residences. I heard the glass door slamming behind me.
"Good morning, Mom!" I said enthusiastically.
"It may be morning for you, young lady, but for me work has begun a long time ago," she complained.
"Eh, what a nice mood we are in!" I teased, making a face.
Fortunately, her stern look dissolved into a light expression. "Grab a bread for yourself, Meg."
I went behind the counter in the back of the store, greeting the owner of the establishment. He seemed to be a nice old man, for the little I had heard from him. He grabbed a small cake, with a secretive smile, and threw it inside the bag I had gotten. I thanked him, laughing.
"Meg, don't forget to take an extra bread for Marcelle!" my mother yelled to me.
I did so, and left the bakery. "It has been quite a while since I've last talked with Marcelle," I thought. I missed her.
She had been my friend since the very time I arrived at Paris. Things were a lot harder then, and although my first impression of the city had been very generous, it didn't take me long to realize it was all an illusion. Paris was a nasty city, even worse at that time. All I could remember was the cold; a winter very similar to the one we had just had, keeping me inside the apartment.
Ah, that apartment...how I hated it! It was not only the fact that it was located in one of the worse suburbs of the city, but the sensation of claustrophobia it would give me. It was not before six months living in Paris that we managed to move to the Opera, and until that happened, I was left inside four walls in the most absolute and detestable boredom.
I couldn't understand my mother's reasons by then. Or better - I could, but I didn't accept the fact that family problems had taken me away from the village I lived in, from country school I used to attend, and from the friends I used to have. And above all, I hated having so much free time and not being able to do anything useful with it.
Books became my world. I spent months on end dutifully reading and rereading whatever I could lay my hands on. I would spend days travelling in fantastic stories, learning new things, seeing pictures of far places...and yet I longed for a real life. I didn't care for fairy tales.
Marcelle was my blessed escape from them. One day, at last, I decided I was definitely tired of all that, of being enclosed in a dark and poorly heated place, and went for a walk around the city. I was eleven years old, I think, and my mother got really mad when she found out I had been wandering around, unaccompanied, in one of the most dangerous parts of the town.
I saw Marcelle for the first time in a neighborhood park. She was a year younger than me, but looked a lot older and bigger. She was smoking a little cigarette. I sat close to her and initiated some conversation, out of my loneliness. She laughed at my country accent and said I needed to learn a few things about Paris in order to like it. From that day on, we became inseparable friends.
Remembering those things, I began to laugh to myself, drawing stares from people passing on the streets. I laughed even more then, amazed at how easily people judge you, and how quickly they cast you reproving looks. That made me think of Erik, as everything seemed to lately.
Was he able to go out on the streets at all? I'm sure his mask would look very odd in the streets of Paris, especially accompanied by his immaculate black outfit. Besides, knowing a little of Erik's short temper, I don't think he would take people glaring at him, with that stupid expression on their faces.
He probably felt as lonely and bored in his cellars as I did in my old apartment...
The sun was stronger now, making me squint as I looked for Marcelle on the boulevard. She jumped from behind me, giving me a big scare. We embraced each other, laughing loudly.
"So, Margarette Giry, start telling me everything about our Monsieur Prince Charming!"
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