My parents got divorced when I was six years old. I hardly remember what it was like to have them together, a time when they weren't constantly complaining about one another.

"Stella," my mother would tell me "Love isn't what they tell you it is. It's not magical or mystical; it's not something to want."

"Things will never work out." My father told me. "People will tell you they love you and then they'll turn their backs. Nobody really cares. People are cold-hearted. They'll leave you behind."

Never fall in love. That's what they told me. All it can cause is pain. There is no joy in it. But I knew that wasn't true when I met Adrienne. She was a foreign exchange student from France, a girl with shining blue eyes that could tell an entire story with one glance. She moved into my English class my junior year of high school, and she smiled at me that morning when she was sat next to me. She stuck out her hand and introduced herself. She wasn't like me; shy or hiding in the corners. She was fearless.

She didn't care if I was different. If people snickered at me from across the hall or pointed at me or made fun of my lisp.

"Just ignore them." She would say. "They don't know anything about you."

She would laugh and push her long black hair out of her face and for once I finally felt like there was somebody to listen to me. She taught me how to ride a bike - I had never learned how. I taught her how to play pool when she came to the hotel that my cousin owned.

It was odd to me that we had grown so close in such a short period of time. I was oblivious - to what I had felt. But perhaps it was because my parents never preached anything but hate for each other. It was a toxic environment to grow up in; I was never encouraged to interact with other kids or to make friends.

And then somewhere along the line I figured it out. I figured out what I had been feeling the whole time and I hated it. It was a terrible thing, wasn't it? Something that could only lead to tears and heartbreak? I knew Adrienne had to go back to France at the end of the school year, and I didn't want to tell her. Or maybe I wanted to know how she would respond if I did, instead of going in blind.

So I never told her. And I never knew if she felt the same way. All we did was play our games and go around in circles and try to figure it out. But life was better because the sting was gone. I didn't care when people made fun of me. I didn't care when my parents argued. I didn't care about any of it, because there was something in my life that I had never experienced before.

And Adrienne left at the end of the year. She took with her the sun and the moon and the stars and left new ideas and a brand new outlook on life. The things my parents said stopped mattering because I realized that they were wrong about so much. That love wasn't pointless. And that even when it hurt, you have something left that will change the course of your life forever.

Sometimes I wonder what would've happened to me had I never met her. Would I be stuck where my parents still are? Deep underwater, not understanding the effect we all have on one another? I feel bad for them, because now I have something they don't.

Because even though Adrienne is gone, the world still shines a little bit brighter than before.