Page 13 of Ghost Ribbon

But I was afraid of what he had awakened in me. I had grown far too comfortable with the silence inside my own chest and I was scared of what that boy could bring out of me.

But beneath that fear lived another.

That I would find him and discover he had become nothing more than a star.

I still carried the ribbon through high school.

I kept it in the inside pocket of whatever jacket I wore, pressed against my chest. After every psychological dismantling I performed, after every mind I methodically reduced to nothing, I would touch the frayed edge and remember.

Remember that for one night in Italy I had felt something else.

Remember hazel eyes.

Remember a gap-toothed smile.

Remember that stars were holes poked in the dark, so the light could breathe.

On certain nights, when the quiet got too big and the nothing threatened to swallow me whole, I would go outside and look at the eastern horizon. I would find the brightest star, the one that might be the hope star, and I would hold the ribbon in my closed fist, and I would remember.

There is light behind the dark.

Even for you.

***

When I was eighteen I enrolled at Bloodburn Academy.

It wasn’t called an academy anymore once you were inside. It was a college for the children of power. The students arrived in Bentleys and Lamborghinis, drivers in black suits standing beside the cars like armed guards waiting for orders. They laughed too loudly in the corridors and wore watches that cost more than most people’s houses. Bloodburn shaped the next generation of leaders, the ones who would inherit empires built on blood and pass them on to their own children in turn.

I kept to myself, the boy who spoke only when necessary, and even then in a voice like winter, flat and cold. No one tried very hard to know me, which was how I preferred it.

But the rumors started anyway.

Russian mafia trash. Probably fucks corpses because he is too cold to get it up for anything living.

The last one bothered me because it came closest to the truth, not of what I did to others, but of what I was. I didn’t care about sex. Bodies were meat. Warm or cold made no difference to me. The physical held no appeal. When I fucked, it was more like a duty. I felt nothing when I stuck my dick in someone; to be quite frank, it bored me to death.

There was only one thing I had ever wanted to touch.

And I was too scared to go find him.

Today was the evening of the Founders’ Gala.

It was an official event held every year at Bloodburn Academy, a showcase of philanthropy meaning a carefully staged production designed to convince the world that the families who ran it were capable of benevolence.

The guests were exactly what the academy wanted the world to see: it was full of politicians who smiled for the same cameras that would later capture their indictments.

The centerpiece was the official scholarship ceremony. Bloodburn’s founders had created the program decades ago, full rides for promising students from underprivileged backgrounds.

The dean spoke first, praising the vision of the founders. Then came the donors, each one taking their turn at the podium, each one praising “bright young minds” and “the power of education to change lives” while their eyes stayed fixed on the cameras, calculating the return on their investment in goodwill.

Then the recipients were called.

Nervous teenagers in their best clothes walked across the stage to receive oversized symbolic checks and leather portfolios with their names embossed in gold.

I didn’t really look at them.

I wasn’t interested.