Sometimes, she wants nothing more than to simply have someone kiss her on the top of her head, lay a casual arm across her shoulders, tell her everything will be alright and mean it and not have the words come across as just something someone has to say.

She wants someone to say it in a way that would make her believe it, because it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be okay, and she could use a little morale, here.

She watches, feeling slightly lecherous, as some guy whom she doesn’t recognize cups the chin of some girl she’s never seen before and kisses her half on the cheek, half in her hair. The domesticity of the moment makes her wish she had one, one of those boyfriend-things, for flowers and balloons and candy and that look, that look that she sometimes needs so badly that when she closes her eyes, she can see it.

She’s lonely, and she’s scared as hell and it’s not all going to be all right and she wishes it could be. She’s confused and tired, tired of being confused, too old for this and too young at the same time. Naïve and innocent and world-weary, she trekked through her days wanting someone, anyone, to kiss her hair and tell her hey, smile, it’ll all be okay.

No one does, though. She misses it and she doesn’t know why, because she’s never had it, except in books and movies in dreams where situations are idyllic and everyone falls in love and no one ends up alone and sad and scared of their own shadow, like she fears she will.

All I want, she thinks decisively, is to be happy. All I want is to be happy. Is that really so much? I volunteer. I’m going to vote, when I can. I love my country, I make my bed, I’ve never had a cavity, and for what? Happiness. I always thought it would be there, since I was seven and the tooth fairy promised me rewards for a job well done and I thought, this sounds like a good deal.

And now she’s sixteen with no one who would voluntarily ask about her day. Now she’s sixteen and her idealism is fading fast and she’s thinking that jobs well done aren’t always rewarded so maybe she shouldn’t even bother, because really, all she wants is someone who loves her enough to drop a simple kiss onto her head and have it be nothing and everything in one moment. Maybe that’s too much to ask.

But she doesn’t think so.

And one day, maybe she’ll find it. In the meantime, she’ll keep flossing and cleaning her room and doing all her homework, hanging on a dream she once had where someone told her that it was all going to be okay, because, well, if she lost that, what was the point of all this, anyway?