A rush of cold air gave me goose bumps on my arms as the front door opened, my father coming through it, wearing a heavy black jacket that went all the way down to his knees with a grey and blue striped scarf. For two hours, I had been sitting patiently on the couch next to the window for him to come home, drawing tic-tac-toe boards onto its foggy glass.
“Dad! Dad!” I screamed, abandoning the game and running towards the front door.
My babysitter got up and smoothed out her long dress, the same style she wore every week, each with a new and different pattern. She followed me to the door, smiling really big at how I would run to my father every time he got home. I knew that she was probably thinking about the children she was going to have, the little kids that would run to her someday.
My babysitter told me that she was getting married very soon to a real man. His name was Brad and he had brown hair and blue eyes and he was very smart. She asked me when she arrived that morning if I would be the flower girl at her wedding.
“Being a flower girl is a very important responsibility” she said looking me very serious and her eyebrows were raised really high like Mrs. Drexler did when she was asking me about important school homework.
“I can do it” I nodded my head a lot making sure that she would know that I would be the best flower girl in the whole world.
“Good” she nodded her head back at me and resumed reading her big book which probably had more than one hundred pages.
The books that I read at school are usually very skinny and always filled with too many hard words. Last Thursday when we had silent reading I started reading a brand new book about a little bear and a little pig and a rabbit and I got real stuck on one of the words.
“Mrs. Drexler” I said going up to my teacher holding the book out of in front of me “What does this word mean?”
  Mrs. Drexler put on her small pink glasses and looked really hard at the word. “Oh, soul-mates?” she pointed at the word in my book and continued “It means that two people… or friends” she looked down at me and smiled “are perfect for each other in every way.”
I couldn’t wait one more second to use it.  
“Miss Hannah?” I pulled on her long dress “Are you and Brad soul-mates?”
For some reason she started to laugh and then she put down her big book without even marking the page. “Yes, of course we are” she said putting her long hair behind her ears “Just like your mom and dad.”
“Why are they soul-mates?”
“Well, think of it this way” she put her hands out and looked at my front door “When your dad comes home from work every day he gives your mom a big kiss, doesn’t he?”
I looked at my front door too and then thought hard about what she said. Never ever had I ever seen my mom and dad kiss each other.
Even I had gotten a kiss on the cheek by Jeremy Jones yesterday on the playground.
  I raised up my shoulders real high and got up off of my chair. I went to lay down on my favorite couch next to my window and I thought about the word soul-mates.
And I thought about it so hard that my brain started to ache from all of the thoughts.

Through the car window I saw the trees outside swirl together, like the finger paint pictures that I did last week at school. My mom had both of her hands on the driving wheel and one of my most favorite song started to play on the radio about a girl and a boy and love and beautifulness.
But I stopped listening.
My head was resting on the soft back seat chair and I closed my eyes so I could think more clearer, and I wouldn’t be distracted by the pretty trees. I started to think harder and harder about a certain word that I couldn’t get out of my brain. It was like the time I got caught taking candy from my pantry- a bad memory that you want to forget, but it stays stuck like glue inside of your mind.
“Sweetie?” my mom said looking back at me “Are you ok back there?”
Sweetie. That was the name that my mom called me for some reason. Was it because I taste sweet? Candy tastes sweet.
“Mom” I said, opening my eyes “Do you and daddy love each other?”
My daddy sitting in the seat next to my mom looked back at me and then to my mom, with his eyebrows really crinkled. Like he was confused.
“What?” my dad said smiling real big “Why do you ask that?”
“I don’t know. I‘m just thinking”
“Of course we do, sweetie’’ my mom held her driving wheel tighter.
There was no talking after my mom said that, and she only looked towards the road, not towards my daddy who was holding out his newspaper real quietly and flipping the pages so fastly that I couldn’t tell if he was even actually reading the words.
“A lot?” I said as my mom stopped the car when the little circle light turned to ren around her driving wheel in all different directions, real squeamy-like; and her face looked like it did when I told her that I drowned my pet goldfish. My daddy just kept reading his newspaper in silence without another look at me or my mom. 
I guess love isn’t anything special.
We rode the rest of the way without talking; not even a little, tiny peep from anyone in the car. And I just looked out of my window, at all of the stores and houses and flowers; and I didn’t think anymore. Not one bit.
When we got to my nana’s house, though, everyone was smiling real big, and laughing and making all of these weird jokes that everyone would laugh real hard at. And I looked up and saw my mom and my daddy having so much fun, and I knew that everything would be O.K. as long as we were together.

My parents got divorced the year after I left for College.
They said that they tried to make it work, they went to counseling, read books, and made time for each other every Sunday night; but it wasn’t enough.
My dad’s new wife has a nice, golden complexion and a fake smile. She wants me to call her ‘stepmom’ but I always just call her Maria; she smiles anyway, the big and toothy fake smile that she always uses. And, when my mom gets married this spring, I am never going to call her new husband ‘stepdad’ either.
Just last summer, my babysitter and her husband got divorced, and she just recently got up the courage to change her relationship status on Facebook to ‘single’ again.
However, if there was one thing I learned from my childhood, I think it’s pointless, to have a ‘status’ because it is constantly changing, one minute you are head over heels in love with someone and the next moment, you decide that you won’t be happy unless you never see them again. There is no such thing as undying love because love only exists in short doses, you get high off of it for a while, and then you come crashing back down into the real world, where you realize that you will never be satisfied with anything or anyone.
I heard a knock at the door and I got up from the small armchair from where I was sitting. I rushed over to the mirror and touched up my hair and lip gloss, then turned the shiny gold doorknob and pulled it open.
A handsome dark faced guy was on the other side of the door. “Hey” he smiled and pulled on the ends of his sleeves “Are you ready?”
“Yeah, let me just grab my jacket.” I snatched my thin black raincoat from the tall wooden coat rack.
I slung the jacket on and walked out the door, closing it with a satisfying click. Looking back at the boy in front of me, I smiled. “Let’s go.”
He held out his hand, waiting for me to take it.  
All of my childhood I had always dreamed about love and soul mates, wishing that one day I would find mine.
But now I know that soul mates don’t exist; that word was completely meaningless to me.             
I took his warm outstretched hand and held it as tight as I could as he led me down the brightly lit hallway.
I would never find real love or a soul mate.
But just like all of the lovestruck, super sappy fools and songs in the world, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.