In June 1940, Isabelle Rossig­nol finds her­self trapped in a fin­ish­ing school over­seen by the aus­tere Madame Dufour, a woman who embod­ies the rigid soci­etal expec­ta­tions of the time. The school, housed in a medieval vil­la, is designed to shape young women into refined, obe­di­ent fig­ures suit­ed for mar­riage and high soci­ety. But for Isabelle, whose fiery spir­it refus­es to be tamed, the school feels less like an insti­tu­tion of learn­ing and more like a prison that seeks to sup­press her indi­vid­u­al­i­ty.

Dur­ing a for­mal din­ner, Isabelle’s grow­ing frus­tra­tion with the suf­fo­cat­ing cus­toms reach­es its peak when she is expect­ed to peel an orange with uten­sils, a seem­ing­ly small but deeply sym­bol­ic act of con­trol. The point­less eti­quette feels like yet anoth­er attempt to con­fine her, anoth­er rule designed to make women docile and com­pli­ant. When she fails to meet these arbi­trary expec­ta­tions, she is swift­ly expelled, an out­come that hard­ly sur­pris­es her but deep­ens the life­long pat­tern of rejec­tion she has faced from both insti­tu­tions and her own fam­i­ly.

Expelled once again, Isabelle is sent back to Paris, where her father, Christophe Rossig­nol, man­ages a small book­store, his pas­sion for lit­er­a­ture over­shad­owed by his grow­ing detach­ment. Their rela­tion­ship is strained, built more on absence than pres­ence, as Isabelle has spent much of her life being shuf­fled between board­ing schools and dis­ap­prov­ing guardians. Though she des­per­ate­ly wants to prove her­self, her father’s demeanor is dis­tant, as if he sees her as more of a bur­den than a daugh­ter.

As war looms over France, Isabelle sens­es the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion and is eager to con­tribute in any way pos­si­ble. She pro­pos­es ways she might help, but her father quick­ly dis­miss­es her, insist­ing that she stay out of harm’s way. His reac­tion is not just a reflec­tion of his own fears but also of the deeply ingrained gen­der norms of the time, which dic­tate that women should remain on the side­lines while men engage in war.

The frag­ile nor­mal­cy of Paris is shat­tered when the first wave of Ger­man planes appears in the sky, their dark sil­hou­ettes herald­ing the arrival of destruc­tion. Pan­ic spreads through the streets as civil­ians scram­ble for safe­ty, real­iz­ing that the war is no longer some­thing hap­pen­ing elsewhere—it is now at their doorstep. Isabelle and her father, along with their neigh­bors, take shel­ter in a cel­lar, the walls trem­bling with the force of bombs explod­ing above them.

In the cramped dark­ness of the shel­ter, Isabelle’s rest­less ener­gy refus­es to be con­tained. The war is no longer just an abstract con­cept but a bru­tal force of destruc­tion that is chang­ing every­thing she has ever known. For the first time, she begins to see her rebel­lious nature not as a flaw but as some­thing that could be used to fight back against the forces that seek to con­trol and oppress.

As the bombs con­tin­ue to fall, the real­iza­tion dawns on her that she can no longer afford to be a pas­sive observ­er. The world around her is unrav­el­ing, and she is deter­mined not to sit idly by while every­thing crum­bles. She sees the fear in her father’s eyes, but instead of adopt­ing his instinct for self-preser­va­tion, she feels some­thing else entirely—resolve.

The stark con­trast between the world she was forced into at the fin­ish­ing school and the one she now finds her­self in could not be greater. At Madame Dufour’s vil­la, she was told that obe­di­ence and refine­ment were the ulti­mate virtues, but here in war-torn Paris, those qual­i­ties mean noth­ing. It is resilience, courage, and the will­ing­ness to act that will deter­mine sur­vival, and Isabelle is begin­ning to under­stand that these are the traits she must embrace.

The chap­ter ends with a heavy sense of dread and antic­i­pa­tion, as Isabelle and her father remain trapped in the cel­lar, wait­ing for the bomb­ing to cease. The destruc­tion she has wit­nessed cements her belief that she must carve her own path, one that defies both soci­etal norms and the chaos of war. Though the future is uncer­tain, one thing is clear—Isabelle is not meant to be a bystander, and the fire inside her is only just begin­ning to burn.