The little girl that moved from France always wears a blue ribbon, a large royal blue ribbon, tied in her hair. Other kids at the school make fun of her behind her back. Nobody is friends with her. She sits alone in art class, on the other side of the room, directly across from you. So you always feel like you’re staring at her when you look up. But you aren’t trying to. You just keep looking at that ribbon.

You like the ribbon. Not because you like ribbons, necessarily. On the first day that she came to the school, you saw her out the window of your class. You weren’t looking for her. You didn’t even know she existed. You were waiting for your friend Matt when you saw her Mom, a tall woman with the kindest face, walk her up the block. As they reached the front of the school, her Mom pulled the ribbon out of her pocket and tied it in. It’s been there every day since.

You know that some day the French girl won’t have the ribbon her hair. Some day one of the mean kids will make fun of her for it, or her mom will do something different, or she’ll just get sick of it herself. But for now, you can’t keep your eyes off of it. There’s something really happy in that ribbon. Like with any superstition, you don’t tell her that you like it. You don’t want her to know. So you don’t talk to her at all. Because you think that the moment you talk to her, the moment that she knows that you like the ribbon, she’ll take it from her head and no one will ever see it again.