Page 94 of Ghost Ribbon

I watched him go, confused, clutching the blanket tighter around myself. Then he walked back toward me carrying a black telescope.

My eyes went wide.

“Is that a telescope?”

“Yes.”

He adjusted the angle, then he stepped back and gestured toward it.

“Take a look at it, then.”

“Really? You’re not… I mean, you’re not going to make fun of me for wanting to look at my star?”

He gave me a look that somehow managed to be both flat and incredibly gentle.

“I’m not going to make fun of you for wanting to look at your star, Marco.”

The use of my actual name did something to my chest that I wasn’t prepared for.

I scrambled up from the blanket, wrapping it around myself like a makeshift toga because I wasn’t about to crouch naked in front of a telescope with full consciousness of what that looked like. I shuffled toward him in my fabric cocoon, nearly tripping on the hem, and ducked awkwardly to press my eye to the viewfinder.

For a second, everything was dark.

Then Alexei adjusted something, and the image sharpened.

My breath caught.

The star was right there.

Not just a point of light anymore. An actual shape, bright and distinct, surrounded by the deep velvet black of the sky. It was bigger than I expected, more real than it had ever looked from my bedroom window or the garden where I used to sneak out at night when I was small.

“Oh,” I pressed closer to the viewfinder, afraid to look away in case it disappeared.

“It’s so clear,” I murmured. “I’ve never seen it this close before. I didn’t even know you could see it this close.”

I could hear Alexei shifting behind me.

When I finally straightened up, my eyes were stinging.

I turned to find Alexei watching me with that same strange expression from before.

“Thank you,” I said softly. “For letting me see it.”

His eyes moved from me to the telescope, then to the sky, then back to me. Something was working behind his gaze, something I couldn’t access.

Then he reached out and brushed a curl back from my face.

“You named it your hope star.”

I nodded.

“Why hope?”

I shrugged, suddenly shy again. “Because… I don’t know. Because when I couldn’t sleep, or when I was scared, or when things were hard, I would look at it and think… if that light can keep burning through all that dark, maybe I can too.”

I laughed nervously, embarrassed.

“It’s dumb. I know.”