School returns, but it does not raise Zlata’s spirits. Though she maintains high grades, her acceptance of the situation wears thin. The family bird dies, casting a pall over the family. Her father buries him in the garden, but the empty cage sits in the apartment, and Zlata misses his cheerful singing more than ever.

Nedo continues to bring Zlata sweets and food from his job for UNPROFOR, and family friends occasionally send care packages to replenish the family’s dwindling stocks. Chocolate especially lifts their spirits. In mid-April, evictions occur across Sarajevo, raising the possibility that Zlata’s aunt Seka and her family, whose home in Otes was previously razed, will lose their new place in their friend Bokica’s apartment. Many refugees have moved into the apartments of friends and family who went abroad, but officials now plan to move new refugees into abandoned homes. Zlata sees no sense in evicting one refugee family to house another.

Zlata rages that the war is stupid and that she's starting to feel as though she will never escape the city or the conflict. She confesses that she does not know whether it is worth enduring further hardship or if it might not be better to die by suicide.