Learning to Dance

taken when he graduated the Academy. A bugler played,
and words were said, but Taz hadn’t been listening. She sat
now, at the place they’d marked as his even though he
wasn’t there, and spoke words of her own, words of their
homeland, words her mama would say over her
grandfather’s grave when they’d bring flowers to brighten
the cracked summer earth. She was still alive, and the sky
was still blue. The grass was green.
Hesitant footsteps.
“It’s okay, Up,” she said, not looking up. “You can sit.”
He did, awkwardly in his blue dress uniform. He always
looked uncomfortable in it but he shouldn’t. He looked
good, like a soldier in one of those old war movies he liked
to watch.
“He’s a hero,” Up said quietly, looking at the picture.
The Ranger in the photograph had eyes full of life – he was
too young to be dead, blown to fiery pieces in space.
Pedro looked good in a dress uniform too.
“He always was,” she said. “But it should have been
me.”
“I will be eternally grateful,” said Up. “That it wasn’t.”
They sat in silence.
“He loved you, you know,” said Up, eventually. She
looked at him. His eyes were fixed on the clover he was
tearing nervously between his fingers.
She took it from him, and scattered the pieces in the
grass, over the place where Pedro’s body would never lie.
“I know,” she said. “But he shouldn’t have.”