I was never prone to craziness. I wasn't your average rebellious teenager. No, I was the exact opposite. I was the model student. I was the perfect daughter, sister, empoyee. I was a pretty, pretty princess, but I gave it all up one day, for a complete stranger.

He had walked into my life as a customer at my after school job at The Gap. He told me he needed to buy a shirt for his sister's wedding, or something like that. It doesn't matter, it was a lie. Everything he said was a lie, and I believed it all. Like some lovesick puppy dog, I followed him down a path I never imagined I'd cross.

I had just turned eighteen and could taste the freedom of college just around the bend. It was early April and prom madness had reared it's ugly head. I have to admit that it had caught me as well. The reason I was working that very night was that I needed the money to finish paying off my dress, a barbie pink poofball of chiffon that my friends told me I had to wear to accept my crown as prom queen. That's right, I said prom queen. My longterm boyfriend, Chad and I were going to win. We were the power couple. He was captain of the football and basketball teams and student body president and I was number one in our class and head cheerleader. At that point, Chad and I had been together nearly three years. I'm sure that both our parents thought we would go to college and eventually end up married. We were The Perfect Couple. There's nothing I hate more than titles, but high school is full of them. And that's how it was. I knew I would be crowned queen. Just as I knew that no one in that school really cared about me. I was alone and I knew it.

It wasn't that Jack Turner was the most attractive man I had ever met. To tell you the truth, most girls would say that he doesn't hold a candle to Chad, but I've never been like most girls, really. All my so called friends would have turned their surgically enhanced noses up at him and they would have told me I was going through one of those phases, while laughing at me behind my back and trying to steal Chad away. He was tall and lean, with a rock star build. He was wearing a vintage Pacman shirt and baggy jeans. He had vivid green eyes and shaggy dark brown hair. But what really made me notice him, was his smile. It could light up a thousand dark nights. And my nights had been dark for as long as I could remember.