A close noise above startled me. Someone was coming. I pulled my shirt back on hurriedly, not wanting to be caught half-naked. The noise came again, the plink of something small falling through the grate and hitting the sewer floor. Curious, I moved closer to the grate, though I knew that I should not. I saw a young woman, close to my own age, a year older maybe, standing alone. My heart rose with excitement. The girl looked so fancy and clean she could not possibly be real. Beneath her tam hat, she had hair a color I had never seen, bright red, brushed until it was luminous and secured in the back by a single bow with perfect ringlets flowing in a ponytail beneath. I bowed my head slightly, feeling the knotting of my own hair despite Mama’s care and remembering when it wasn’t tangled and filthy. The girl wore a crisp light blue coat. What I envied most was the coat’s sash, white as snow. I hadn’t known that such pureness existed anymore.

I noticed that the girl held something in her right hand. Flowers. She had been buying flowers at market, red chrysanthemums, the kind the sellers always seemed to have, even though they were not in season. Envy shot through me. Down here we barely managed to eat and stay alive. Yet there was still a place in the world where beautiful things like flowers existed and other girls could have them. What was wrong with me that I didn’t deserve the same?

For a second, I thought the girl looked familiar. She reminded me a bit of my friend Stefania, I realized with a pang, except Stefania had dark, not red hair. I had never seen this girl before in my life, though. She was just a girl. Yet I desperately wanted to know her.

A hand touched my shoulder. I leapt, startled. I turned, expecting to see Saul again. This time, it was Mama. “What are you doing here?” I asked. She almost never left the chamber anymore.

“You were gone long. I was worried.” She had gotten up from her resting place with effort and was supporting her back with one hand, reaching for me with the other. I expected her to scold me for standing in the open beneath the sewer grate and risking detection. But she stood beside me, hidden in the shadows, not moving. Her eyes traveled to the girl above.

“Someday,” Mama whispered, “there will be flowers.”

I wanted to ask how she could say that. The idea of a life outside the sewer with nice, normal things sometimes felt like a nearly forgotten dream. But she had already started her slow amble back toward the chamber. I started to follow her. She stopped and turned me around firmly by the shoulders. “You stay there and feel the sun on your face,” she instructed, seeming to know what I needed more than I did. “Just keep out of sight.” She disappeared into the chamber.