When Lauren Rousseau's boyfriend wakes up, he can smell her perfume.

Tony Lusardi opens his eyes and holds a tiny pillow that Rousseau, a Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher, used to lay her head on. And then he sobs.

He wants to touch her again. Laugh with her.

"I'm convinced that I'll see her again," he says.

Rousseau was teaching last Friday morning when a tall thin figure wearing black fatigues and a military vest burst into her classroom.

Adam Lanza, 20 years old, was armed with a Glock, a Sig Sauer and a rifle like the kind soldiers use in war.

Only 30, Rousseau had told her mother before she was even in kindergarten that she wanted to grow up to be a teacher.

Sandy Hook had hired her last month as a permanent substitute teacher.

That was extraordinary news. Rousseau had spent so many years working different jobs and taking substitute opportunities when she could, Teresa Rousseau told a local newspaper.

Lauren Rousseau, her mom said, was thrilled to finally be doing exactly what she always wanted.

A natural teacher

"I only got one year with her," Lusardi says. They celebrated a one-year anniversary on November 8.

He's been thinking a lot about time.

"It's kinda bad to say," he says, sobbing, "but I'm jealous of her friends that got more than one year with her. I only got one.

"But it was a really good year."

By every measure, Rousseau was a teacher of young children. She had that kind of special niceness about her.

"She didn't like to honk her horn at people that cut her off in traffic because she thought it would be mean," Lusardi says, smiling.

Rousseau gave him sweet cards that had silly jokes. One had bananas on it because she bananas about him.

When she ran into anyone she knew she reached out and hugged them.

She and Lusardi were planning to see the new movie "The Hobbit" Friday night, then go to a party.