Page 2 of Ghost Ribbon

One night, I slipped out through a side door after midnight and walked down the narrow road.

It smelled like the sea even though we were inland.

I found a garden behind a low wall, attached to what looked like a groundskeeper’s cottage that served the larger estates. The gate was unlocked. I pushed through and walked until I found a bench beneath a lemon tree.

I sat on the stone steps nearby.

I didn’t know how long I had been sitting there when I heard footsteps.

Small ones.

He came around the corner of the lemon tree.

He had dark curls falling across his forehead in wild spirals. Olive skin that seemed to hold the starlight. A thin white shirt too large for him, one shoulder slipping down every few seconds to expose the line of his collarbone. Brown trousers patched at one knee with fabric that didn’t quite match. Shoes worn nearly flat at the soles.

He sat with his back against the stone bench across from mine, knees pulled up to his chest, one hand pressed close to his stomach as though protecting something, or protecting himself.

For a moment I thought he was part of the garden.

Some forgotten thing left there by mistake, a piece of decoration that had somehow come alive.

Then he looked up.

His eyes were hazel, brown and gold and green all fighting for dominance, catching the light from stars that had no business being so bright. They were too alive for the hour. Too warm for the monster sitting across from him.

He smiled at me.

“Oh. Ciao,” he said softly.

I stopped breathing. My lungs simply forgot their purpose for half a second.

The word meant hello. I knew that much. My Italian was poor but not nonexistent. Still, I only looked at him. The void, usually so silent and complete, seemed to shift. Like water disturbed by a stone.

The boy tilted his head. A small movement of confusion, like an animal studying another animal through glass, trying to determine if it was predator or prey.

His smile widened, revealing a small gap between his front teeth.

“Oh,” he said, switching carefully into English. “You speak English? No Italian?”

“I speak some Italian.” My voice came out flat, as it always did, but something about the delivery felt off.

“Only some?”

“Yes.”

“That is okay.” He nodded seriously, as if forgiving me for a terrible flaw. “I speak some English. Only some.” That shouldn’t have amused me.

Nothing amused me.

But something in the way he said it, the conspiratorial tone, the little shrug, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, made the corner of my mouth move.

“You almost smiled,” he accused, pointing at my face.

“I didn’t.”

“You did.” He jabbed his finger more emphatically. “Right here. A little. I saw it.”

“No.”