“She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love… That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don’t have enough of their own.” -Veronica Roth

I remember the first time I heard her laugh. I was twelve, walking through a hallway before I even knew the smiling girl. This infectious happiness danced through the hallways when she opened her mouth to let out the laughter. She was everything you worked so hard in hopes of becoming. She made living life look like an afternoon at the carnival, jumping in head first with all the excitement of the world.

I was twelve the first time I watched the smiling girl wrap her arms around a boy, with all the love and possibility in the world in the palms of her hands. She’d lift her locker open in the middle of the hallway, letting out her singing laugh. She had such a gleam of determination to be happy and to see the good in everything and everyone she touched.

I was twelve when I watched the smiling girls’ heart break. The first time I watched her crumble to her knees and beg. Her laugh fell silent amongst the hallways and emptied lockers that summer. She turned to her friends in her time of need, and they lifted her up as best that they could. She was too young to have her spirit broken by something so small in the grand scheme of it all.

I was fifteen when I realized the smiling girl was addicted to love. Fifteen years old when I realized that the only reason she smiled was for the people around her, and not for herself. She put her heart and her soul into everything and everyone and left so little to herself to come home to. She left her laugh tucked away in our middle school lockers, in her first love, and in her best friends.

I was twenty-one when I felt a real connection to the smiling girl. She worked so hard for the piece of mind of others. She worked so hard for that smile on her face, always deserved, never given. I was twenty-one when the smiling girl told me she still loved the boy she had laughed through the halls with. I was twenty-one when the smiling girl reminded me to be optimistic about love, and that it was never too late to try again.