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.”