Girls with Ribbons, or, the Official Death of My Dating Life
#48 Ribbon

-/-

It takes a special kind of girl to wear a pink ribbon in her hair to school. A special kind of girl named Gail, in this case, who just happens to sit two rows ahead of me in the sensory deprivation chamber they call a ninth grade history class.

Ribbons are a certain kind of feminine, the kind that says "please unravel this ribbon from my chestnut locks and run your strong, manly, ever-so-adept fingers through my hair as I shout your name, Marco, Marco, Marco". You'd never see Rachel wearing a ribbon, because if anyone ever tried to unravel it she'd rip his arms off at the sockets. And you'd never see Cassie wear a ribbon because that would imply that she knew what a hairstyle was. But the Gails of the world, the freshman girls outside the secret Animorphs lair of lies and body horror, they can wear ribbons.

And let's face it, once you look at her ribbon you just feel obliged to look at the rest of her.

So is it my fault if I got an F minus on my last history quiz, really? And come to think of it, what kind of rotten teacher hands out F minuses? Isn't there some rule against squishing a student's self-esteem beneath your red-inked, ironclad toe like that?

Sometimes she'll look over her shoulder at me and I swear she winks at me. And I mean, who wouldn't? I'm adorable. And she's adorable, so we'd make babies so adorable they'd have to pass zoning ordinances banning other cute babies from being in the same neighborhood, just because the adorability factor would kill people on sight.

She's looking me over and thinking "hmm, that Marco dude, he's so charming and witty, I bet he's got tons of beautiful girlfriends and I shouldn't even ask him out" and I'm giving her the stare-down trying to send a telepathic message to her of "dear Gail, I am actually currently without girlfriend, you should fix that for me" and she's thinking "he's so dreamy but his body would be too short to be an intimidating host-"

Wait.

I throw down my pencil. Jake shoots me a concerned look. I sigh, lean over and tell him "the stupid slugs just ruined my day without doing a damn thing" and immediately get a detention for whispering in class.

Figures.