Dear Athan,

  I don't even know where to start. I wish you could see this place, I wish I could lift you up on my shoulders and show you everything at once. Paris is like a giant breathing thing. Like it's alive, but not in a way that makes you feel safe — in a way that makes you feel like you could get swallowed if you don't move fast enough.

  There's noise all the time. Carriages clatter by at all hours, and people shout from their windows like the whole world is their living room. Smoke curls from chimneys and mixes with the river smell and the scent of baking bread until you can't tell if you're hungry or sick. Some streets are so narrow the buildings practically lean in and whisper to each other across the sky.

  I keep looking for patches of sky, but the buildings eat it all up. You only get tiny slices, like little pieces of cake, and even those are dusty and gray.

  Sometimes I think the streets are watching me. Laugh if you want, Athan, but I can feel it. Like when I turn my back, the cobblestones shift a little, just enough to trip me. Or the alleys breathe out, and the shadows twitch like they're trying to follow me.

  Dallas says that's just the city being the city.He says if you listen too close, you'll go crazy.

  But sometimes... sometimes I hear music where there isn't any. Like a piano playing deep under the ground, so soft you can't tell if it's real or not. And once, when we were walking home late from the Bleeding Rose, I thought I saw a man with no face standing at the end of the street. Just standing there. Watching.I blinked and he was gone.

  Maybe I'm just tired.Dallas says Paris does that to you.

  Quinn's doing okay, mostly. He's coughing a lot though. I try to give him my scarf when it gets really bad, but he always pushes it back at me like I'm the little one. He still smiles though. It's like nothing can break him.

  I wonder if Mama would like it here. I think she'd say it's too dirty, too noisy.I think maybe you'd hate it too.But part of me — the part that sits very still and very quiet at the bottom of me — part of me thinks maybe you'd love it.Maybe you'd laugh at all the strange people selling frogs on sticks or paintings of the river with boats that look like they're about to fall out of the frame.Maybe you'd tell me to stop being afraid.

  I miss you every second.Even more now that the walls are bigger, and the sky is harder to find.

  Your brother,

  Lou

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  Dear Mama,

  I hope you are well. I hope it very much. I don't know if you even remember me very well now. Maybe you are too busy and the house has gotten bigger without me and Athan. Maybe I am only a little thought that comes sometimes, like when you hear the birds and think about something that used to be there but isn't anymore.

  I'm writing because I think you would like to know that I am doing something good now. I have a job! A real one, with people who give me coins for doing work and not just for sitting quietly or learning useless things like at the school. Dallas helped me find it — you'd like Dallas. He's very smart and he always knows what to say to people to make them listen. He could have been a gentleman if he wanted, like the ones Papa always talked to at the estate.

  We work at a place called The Bleeding Rose. It's not very fancy, not like the rooms back home with the golden frames and the big mirrors. The Bleeding Rose has cracked wooden floors and the windows are always a little foggy from the smoke. But I think it is beautiful in its own way. There are big red curtains behind the stage and candles on every table, and sometimes when I wipe the tables and straighten the chairs, I pretend I am making it ready for you to visit.

  I mostly do cleaning. I mop the floors and collect empty glasses and sometimes I help move crates in the back. It is very hard work, but it makes me feel strong, and I think about how proud you would be to see me doing something real. I'm not useless, Mama. I know I'm not.

  The best part — oh Mama — the best part is the piano.

  There's a little old piano in the corner of the bar. It's not perfect; it's missing a key and the pedals creak when you press them, but when you touch the keys they still make music, like they're just waiting for someone to remember them.

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  Sometimes, when the boss isn't looking, Dallas lets me sit at the piano and play. I'm teaching myself, you know. Dallas shows me some, and then I just feel around, trying to find the right notes like a blind mouse in a dark room. But sometimes... sometimes the notes come together, and it sounds like something real. Something alive.

  When I sit there, Mama, it feels like the world outside stops shouting at me. It gets quiet in my head for a little while. It's like the music holds everything together that would fall apart otherwise.

  I wish you could hear it.

  I even thought — maybe someday I could get good enough that you'd come and hear me play. You'd sit right at the front table with a red rose on it, and I would play just for you. I'd wear a nice shirt and comb my hair and you'd smile the way you used to when I did something good, even if it was small, like drawing a bird or tying my shoes.

  Maybe if I got really good, you would write back to me. Maybe you would say, "Lou, you are not a mistake."

  I want you to know I'm trying. I know Papa said I would only bring shame to our name, but I think maybe — if I keep trying very hard — I can make you proud instead. Maybe Athan would clap for me, too. Maybe all of you would.

  Sometimes Quinn listens when I play. Quinn is one of our friends. He's younger than me, and he has a cough that never really goes away, but he smiles when I play, like it makes him forget about the cold and the aching. That makes me think maybe the music is not just in my head. Maybe it's real enough to touch someone else too.

  I think you would like Quinn. He's very polite, always says "please" and "thank you." Dallas teases him, but it's gentle, like a brother would. We are a sort of family now, the three of us.

  Sometimes, when I think about home, I still feel very small. Like I'm looking at everything through the keyhole in my door again. But when I sit at the piano, I feel bigger than the walls. I feel like maybe I can reach all the way back to you.

  Please think of me, just once, Mama. When you look at the roses in the garden or when you hear a song you used to hum. Think of me working hard and trying my very best.

  I promise I am not being bad anymore. I promise I am trying to be good enough to come home.

  I miss you every day.

  Your son,

  Lou

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  Dear Athan,

  It's funny how different everything smells here.The rain smells dirty and sharp, like old pennies, not like the soft, sweet grass back home.Even the people smell different — smoke and metal and something else that I don't know the name for.

  I wonder if you would like it. Probably not. You were always the clean one.

  I wish you could see the Bleeding Rose.It's always buzzing — laughter, shouting, the clinking of glass — like bees trapped in a jar.At night, the lights are low and thick smoke curls around the tables, and sometimes I feel like I'm inside one of those dreams you have when you're sick.

  I play the piano more now.The boss heard me once by accident and instead of yelling, he just nodded and told me to keep at it, but not to neglect my other duties.Dallas says he's keeping an eye on me, "in case I'm worth something."I don't know if that's good or bad yet.

  I clean a lot, and sometimes they let me serve drinks when it's busy.I carry the heavy trays and pretend I'm invisible, because the men at the tables don't like to be stared at.Most of them look tired. Some look angry.Some are so pale and twitchy it's like their souls are trying to crawl out of their skin.

  And there's something else, Athan.Something I didn't know at first but now I see more and more.

  There's a little back room behind the kitchen.It smells like vinegar and mold, and it's always warm in a rotten sort of way.At first, I thought it was just where they stored the kegs and wine barrels, but I was wrong.

  Dallas told me, after a while.He said if I ever needed to "take the edge off," that's where the men go.Some of them take powders, some take little paper-wrapped cigarettes that don't smell like tobacco, some prick their arms with sharp things.

  He said it's normal here.He said it helps "dull the edges when your brain won't shut up."He said, "Sometimes you gotta bend before you break."

  At first, I didn't understand.But lately...

  Lately, the noises in my head don't stop.They whisper more now.Not always loud, but sneaky.Sometimes I hear my name when no one's speaking.Sometimes I see little flickers of things — shadows moving wrong, faces that aren't there.

  Sometimes when I'm playing, I hear notes that I didn't press.Ghost notes. Like someone else is sitting at the piano with me.

  It scares me, Athan. It really scares me.I don't want to tell Dallas because he'll worry. And I definitely can't tell Quinn — poor Quinn is already so fragile, coughing his lungs out every night. He tries so hard to be cheerful, but I can see the fear in his eyes when he looks at the door sometimes, like he's waiting for someone bad to come through it.

  I think...I think maybe the others here, the ones who slip into that back room, they know something I don't.

  Maybe the powders and the papers help quiet the wrongness.Maybe it makes everything soft, like a blanket over the broken parts of your mind.

  I'm scared to try, Athan. But I'm scared not to, too.Because the bad parts are getting louder, and some nights, even when I squeeze my eyes shut and put the pillow over my head, they don't go away.

  I wish you were here.I wish I could ask you if I'm making it all up. If I'm bad again. If I'm slipping back into the thing Papa was afraid of.

  But you're not here.You're probably home, probably still golden and good and not broken like me.

  And I'm here.In the Bleeding Rose. In Paris. Learning to float in a world that sometimes feels like it's made of smoke.

  Dallas says I'll get used to it. That I'll toughen up. That maybe one day the ghosts in my head will listen to me instead of the other way around.

  I don't know.I'm trying. I'm trying really hard.

  I promise I won't do anything stupid.(At least not yet.)

  Tell Mama I'm doing fine, if you see her. Tell her I'm working and trying and playing songs for people who clap even if they don't know my name.

  Maybe that's enough. Maybe it will be.

  I miss you. Even if you forgot me.

  Always your brother,

  Lou