Love is so much fun at first. Your days are filled with little love letters, little gifts, holding hands, kisses in the rain, text messages saying “I love you.” Yeah, love’s so great. Then everything just falls apart. You rip up all the love letters, erase the text messages, and you donate the gifts to charity (or burn them if the breakup was really bad). Then there is silence. An empty silence that fills your life while the rest of the world is loud and busy. There’s nothing left between the two of you. Only empty promises, hateful words, and broken hearts. It’s really over. Your world is dark and lonely. Welcome to my life.

This is all too familiar to me. I’m Maddy Carson. His name was Andrew Barker. He was the perfect person. He was the perfect athlete, son, student, and boyfriend. He was also the perfect heart breaker. We were happily in “love” for five years. I thought everything was great. We had our differences, but we rarely fought. It’s not like we broke up for some stupid fight about something ridiculous. Oh, no. We broke up because I found him in the library...Making out and feeling up my best friend, Anna Cole.

I still haven’t forgiven either of them. Instead of going back to my normal life, I decided to change. I went from being the popular cheer captain, to the quiet girl in the corner. I chose to isolate myself from the world. I had made up my mind about love. I hated it. Nobody could change my mind. You’d have to be someone really special, who could put up with a ton of stubbornness from me. I didn’t think anyone would ever attempt to change my mind. Then again, I didn’t really know Jackson Smith.