My first love

“The Girl with the Bright Smile”

I was ten years old when I first learned what it meant to have your heart skip a beat.

She sat two rows ahead of me in class—always laughing, always surrounded by friends, like the sun in a small solar system of kids. I didn’t know what it was at first, that strange feeling in my chest every time she looked my way. But her smile—it had this way of pulling the whole room into focus.

We met during a group project. She had this energy, this way of making even the boring stuff feel like an adventure. She joked with the teacher, made the shy kids laugh, and could somehow talk about cartoons and the meaning of life in the same breath. I started looking forward to school in a way I never had before. Not for recess. Not for math. For her.

We’d hang out during lunch, sometimes after school. Just small things—drawing in notebooks, sharing chips, making fun of each other’s handwriting. She once called me weird for liking pineapple on pizza, and I told her she had terrible taste in music. It was perfect.

But feelings at that age are like paper airplanes—bright, hopeful, and easily caught by the wind.

We never really argued. Nothing dramatic happened. We just… slowly stopped sitting together. Different friends. Different classes. Different jokes. And one day, I realized I hadn’t thought about her smile in a while. That hurt a little. But it didn’t break me.

First love doesn’t end with fireworks or heartbreak. Sometimes, it just fades—like a favorite song that plays less and less on the radio, until it’s gone.

But even now, years later, when someone laughs in that same wide, open-hearted way… I remember her.