Page 9 of Ghost Ribbon

“I’m never sad,” I said. Marco studied me for a long moment, his eyes too knowing for his age.

“Then you can look at it when you are nothing and remember that there is light behind the dark. Even for you.”

I stared at him.

“I see you, you know,” he smiled. “The nothing inside. It is very big. Very scary. But it is not all of you. There are little parts that are not nothing. I can see them hiding.”

No one had ever seen me.

No one had ever looked at the void and found something other than emptiness.

“You don’t know me.”

“No,” he agreed easily. “But I know the stars. And you look at them the same way I do. Like you are looking for something. Like you hope they might have an answer to a question you don’t know how to ask.”

I looked away, up at the sky, at the hope star he had claimed as his own and now shared with me.

Then Marco reached into the pocket of his trousers. “I have something.”

He pulled out a ribbon.

Pale blue satin, frayed at both ends. Cheap, probably cut from a package or old dress or gift wrap. It was wrinkled from his pocket and softened by handling, worn thin in places where small fingers had rubbed it over and over.

He held it out to me.

“What is that?”

“My brave thing.”

“Your what?”

“My brave thing,” he repeated, as though it were obvious. “When they put needles in me, I hold it. When Mama cries, I hold it until I can make my face happy again. When the stars are too far and I can’t see the hope star from my bed, I hold it and pretend I can feel the light through the dark.”

He pushed it toward me. “You can have it.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No.”

“You do,” Marco insisted, his voice rising with urgency.

I didn’t move. So he took my hand.

No one took my hand.

He placed the ribbon in my palm, his small fingers folding mine over it one by one, making sure I held it properly. His touch was gentle.

“There,” he said. “Now you have a brave thing too.”

“What if you need it?” I asked, and heard my voice come out strange.

Marco smiled, his gap-toothed grin radiant in the starlight.

“I am already brave.”

It was a child’s answer.