Some Kind of Happiness

HE QUEEN’S MOTHER AND FATHER had returned to her at last, and though they were changed, they were still themselves in the ways that mattered.

They told her she would no longer have to hide herself, or face the darkness alone.

Most importantly, they told her they still loved her and always would—yes, even though she carried her sadness inside her.

Her sadness, they said, was not a thing they must look past to love her. It was a part of her, and therefore it was a part of them.

The queen brought them to the Everwood and introduced them to the trees, the river, the wind. She wore her crown. The fog had gone from the forest, leaving everything fresh and golden and new.

“This is where it happened,” she explained to her mother and father. “This is where I have been, all this time. This is where I came to know my friends.”

The artist. The lady knight. The champion and the two young squires, who were soon to be knighted for their bravery. The three pirates, and the wizard’s ghost.

The queen thought of them, and she knew that her sadness was now not the only thing she carried inside her heart, nor the most powerful.

Now everything would be different—for her, for her friends, for everyone in the Everwood—in ways she could not yet imagine.

Things would change, as they do.

But the Everwood would remain, and so would the bond among those who lived there.

She would make sure of that.

“Is it time?” asked the queen’s mother.

“Are you ready?” asked her father.

“I am,” said the queen, and she stepped with them out of the trees and into the sun.

• Right now is all that matters, because right now is what we know.

• The future is wide open, and the world is full of people who get scared and lie and are sad and happy.

■ That is how it is supposed to be.

I have only said these words out loud twice—to Grandma, to Mom and Dad.

And now to Jack.

“I have these things I call blue days,” I say. “When I get sad for no reason.”

Jack nods and waits. He hasn’t run away screaming yet.

“And I don’t mean normal sad. At all. I mean sad for no reason. Heavy sad. I wake up feeling happy and then anything can happen, or nothing can happen, and all of a sudden I’m sad, and I can’t stop being sad, even though I want to. Sometimes I freak out so bad I can’t breathe. Sometimes I pretend to be sick to stay home from school because it feels impossible to get out of bed. That’s how I came up with the Everwood. I started writing about it to make myself feel better.”

I stop, feeling dizzy. Each time I talk about this, each time I let out the words, I feel . . . lighter. Clear like the Everwood sky.

“So?” I say. “Do you still have a crush on me?”

“Yep,” says Jack.

“Why? How can you?”

“Too long to explain. But I do have a question.”

I sigh. He is exasperating. He needs to comb his hair. “What?”

“Were you happy in the Everwood? With all of us?”

“Yes.” I answer that without thinking.

“But you were still sad, too?”

This I answer more slowly, because it makes me angry to admit it. “Yes.”

“Well, okay. So that has to mean something. Right?”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe you have to really try and fix it now. The stuff that’s been bothering you. The blue days. Because if you’re sad even when you’re happy, even when you’re doing stuff you like doing, maybe you can’t just ignore it forever.”

This is one of the reasons why you keep going, I think.

Even after everything else has gone wrong, pancakes still smell the same.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HART

• Giving up is not an option.

• And if you have to keep going, you might as well smile while you’re doing it.

That says everything you need to know, really.

SOMETIMES BEFORE YOU CAN GIVE someone help, the person has to ask you for it, because they have gotten really good at hiding what hurts them.

I know, because I am good at that.

I know, because I am learning that it is okay to ask for help. Otherwise, how will you ever find it?

My eyes fill up. I am so tired of that feeling, but I cannot stop it. “Mom and Dad are getting a divorce, and I don’t know what will happen now.”

Grandma’s face goes soft. “Oh, Finley. None of us do, about any of it. But we have to keep going anyway. Giving up is not an option in this house. And if you have to keep going, you might as well smile while you’re doing it. Don’t you think that’s right?”

“Is that what you’ve been trying to tell me, Finley? All summer?”

Grandma clasps her hands tightly together and looks at me, waiting.

Everything around me—the whole world, my whole life—narrows down to this moment:

Grandma, in her peach-colored blouse, her pearls, her makeup not even smudged, even after everything that happened.

The clock, crashing away.

The soft light of the kitchen, the sky getting brighter outside, the hot chocolate steaming in front of me.

If I am a puzzle, this is the moment in which I find the first corner piece.

There is still a lot of work to do; I still have a thousand pieces of myself to fit into place. But everyone knows you’re supposed to find the corners first. They are the beginning.

My family has found theirs, and I have just found mine.

All it took was someone else asking a question, making me search for an answer I think I already knew.

Maybe we should not be talking about this. After everything I have learned in the past couple of days, don’t more important things need discussing?

What will happen to us, if Grandma decides to tell the world the truth?

“Finley?” Grandma folds her soft, warm hand around mine. “Are you all right?”

“Really? Like, honestly?”

“Yes.”

Then again, I have heard people say—Mom, when she’s stressed about work; Rhonda, when she’s trying to sound mature—that it is important to take life one day at a time, one moment at a time, one item on the great big list of life to-dos at a time.

This can be my moment—right now, between me and Grandma. One moment out of a billion ones yet to come.

It is okay for me to have that.

I take a deep breath.

(How many people have I told about this? Ever?)

(No one. Not a single living soul.)

(Only my notebook. The Everwood, of course, already knew. We are connected, me and those trees.)

Everything about this summer comes back to me like I am seeing it for the first time.

“I don’t think I’m okay.” I stare at the table. “I’m not very happy.”

A single knot inside me untangles.

Grandma waits, her hand on mine.

“I’m sad, a lot,” I say. “And I get afraid a lot. Really afraid. Like, panicky for no reason. And I don’t know why.”

Everyone at the kitchen table keeps talking, quietly, slowly. They are small, scared creatures trying to find their way.

I wonder if I will ever find mine.

Grandma sits back down. I sip my hot chocolate and watch her face, but she does not meet my eyes.

Every tick of the clock above the sunroom doors is a crash in this silence.

“Not everything is perfect,” Grandma says softly. “Not everything is happy.”

The world is not a sure place anymore. Maybe it has never been. Maybe it has always been a mess—some kind of twisted, cosmic mess we can’t possibly understand.