Ideally, Happy

by Natalie Ho, Del Norte High School, 26'

     That night’s crushing rainfall left the city in sodden rags, the radio music clumsily
punctuated by wide holes of scratching silence. The girl at the bar, however, did not mind. She
stepped surely, steadily, across the hard bar tables, half-finished glasses by her feet clinking
on-beat with the near impact. Somewhere in a corner, the radio blasted its unsure cadence, but
she filled the gaps with the stomp and clack of each heel, her movements a whirling mass of
chaos funneling itself into an erratic rhythm that, somehow, gave the music a vague sense of
completion. At some point, one would be able to recognize the song through all the scattered
notes, finally bringing to mind a familiar melody.
     A smile. The boy outside the window watched her like she was a daydream, a pocket of
warmth in the middle of the downpour that was pummeling his coat. He did not care for the cold.
The window framed the girl like a scene out of a movie, a reprieve from the reality that crashed
against the panes, trying to shove its way in. Watching her, the boy wondered if she was what it
looked like to be in love with life.

​

​

     He certainly didn’t feel that way for the three years that followed, though. Loving life
didn’t get the bills paid. Loving life didn’t stop the promotions from slipping away. He was sure
that settling for a nine-to-five office job would be good enough to pass time while he figured
things out, but things weren’t falling into place like he hoped they would. How much nudging into
place would it take for him to get his life together? He stared at the dumb printer—the most
reliable coworker in the office—pushing urgent alerts that something is wrong, which obviously I
know. Kicking might be more effective than waiting.
     The boy kicked the printer. It stuttered in indignation, but then its fans stopped huffing.
Still not turning on. He turned on his heel, leaving the problem for someone else to fix, and
nearly collided with a girl whose head barely met his shoulder.
     “So sorry–”
     “No, no, you’re good–”
     She stared. He stared. Sure, dark eyes met his, searching inside and finding nothing left
in him to examine. The scrutiny made him uncomfortable, like he had been caught in the act of
kicking a puppy. He had never seen this girl in his life. And the staring was getting awkward fast.
He turned away first, ears surely burning a visible red. “Again, so sorry about that.”
     “It’s fine–”
     But he was already out the door with his foot on the stairs, getting ready to make a run
for it, the printer forgotten. Dammit, he really could never talk to girls.

     It was only later, when he was lying around in bed, that he found himself trying to place
her from somewhere in his memories, her smile in his mind's grasp, but never fully forming into
a tangible picture.
     In his dreams, the boy saw a spinning halo of light, revolving around the head of
someone spinning round and round, never stopping, matching the music at every tempo as the

volume rose and rose, breaching the air with a grating, overbearing tune. She spun and spun,
dancing and twisting her limbs, until she looked so swept up in the whirlwind of the music that
she seemed to falter for a moment, and she cracked. A porcelain doll, shattered into a million
fragments. The boy tried to catch the falling pieces in his hands, but he only saw cuts of red
blossom onto his palms, spilling onto the floor with a renewed vigor. It was only after looking
down at the floor did he see the one responsible. A red, beating heart, beating furiously for life,
but slowly losing a grip on its pulse, slowing and slowing...and then stopped.

     But when the boy saw her again, she was far from the broken pieces of his dream. She
was whole (and intact), and she seemed very pissed.
     “Upper management is chewing me out because of you!” she was saying, jabbing a
finger in his direction. “You just had to kick the damn printer, and then it started burning up.
Smoking. And I just happened to be the last person seen near it. Hey—are you even listening
right now?”
     The boy stuttered out of his reverie, putting aside the fairy comparisons for later. “Yes,
yes, I’m listening, and I am so sorry, I really am, but can we please discuss this later? I have a
meeting in ten minutes, and I should really get going—”
     “Oh no, you don’t. I have a job to do too, a job I need to keep, actually, so if you don’t
mind, I think you need to clear this up with upper management. This is absolutely ridiculous.”
     “Ah, yes, I will do that. So sorry. I won’t do it again.”
She huffed, seeming to want to say something else, but deciding against it. She grabbed
his shoulder and wheeled him towards the office down the hall. “This way.”
The boy wanted to protest, but thought better of it. It really was his fault, anyways.

     “So, are you two dating or something?”
     The boy blinked. “What? Er, I mean...sir, I don’t understand. No...?” He trailed off,
uncertain and flustered, his eyes falling onto her as she calmly looked on beside him. She
looked emotionless, apathetic. But it usually takes experience to train one’s face into that kind of
expression.
     His boss chucked. Feet thudding off the desk, the desk chairs squeaked as he leaned
forward, steepling his fingers under his chin as he appraised the boy, then switched to her and
dragged his eyes up and down her figure. The boy felt a disturbing sensation in his chest, but he
tamped it down before it could show on his face. The boss gave them a smile that stretched
over his chipped teeth, wide and flat and lecherous.
     “Why else would you try to cover up for her, if she wasn’t your girlfriend?” The boss
emphasized the last word, drawing it out and watching her face for a reaction. She gave none,
eyes trained on the coffee cup on his desk that read out the nutritional facts of a boss. The boy
blindly grasped for a decent response, only plainly settling for, “She’s not.”
     “Oh my,” the boss drawled. “I get it, office romance spreads faster than wildfire here.”
     “It’s really nothing like that—”
     “Sure it isn’t.” The boss waved away any retort the boy had left, gesturing to the door.
     “See yourselves out.”

     She stepped out of the room, far more calmly than the boy felt. He hesitated, but
followed her out. He was certain that that mug should have had the nutritional value of a block
of salt.

     “Thanks for speaking up for me.”
     The boy startled. He had followed her all the way to the staff lounge, empty at this time,
and sat in absolute silence for minutes before she had spoken. She only stared at the wall
across from her, and the boy had looked over his shoulder (and had done so a few times to be
sure) to find that there was nothing there but dirty wallpaper.
     “It...was nothing.” Was nothing? You idiot, why would you say–
     She hummed in response. “Still, it was nice of you.”
     “Ah.” Anytime? No worries? I gotchu?? “...No problem.”
     “But,” she started, “I would really appreciate it if you didn’t try anything else from now
on?”
     The boy blinked. Blanked. “If this is about the printer, I swear I won’t do something so
stupid again—”
     “No, not that. I’ll be okay managing things on my own. I’d really rather not trouble you
with dealing with...stuff like that again.” She shifted her eyes to his, meeting his stare for the first
time they had sat down. “I’m sorry for dragging you into a situation like that.”
     The girl at the bar. He remembered now.
     “Yeah...it’s all good now, right?”
     She only gave him a weak smile. “Maybe.”
She pushed the chair back with a metallic screech, heading out without another word.
The boy only leaned back to stare at the ceiling. She’s grown up. But then who was the girl
whose freedom he looked up to all those years ago?

     He saw her multiple times after that. From playing with cats on the sidewalks, to helping
the elderly with their groceries, it seemed like she was everywhere in his head and in his world.
After the first incident, he was worried about embarrassing her if he interfered with the men
trying to harass her, but he would see her cutting them off mid-lecture with some biting comment
before walking off. The boy was confused. Why hadn’t she shown that to their boss earlier?
     “I need the job,” she would tell him later. She had lightheartedly called him out for being
a stalker, with how often he had shown up around the streets that she walked by. Somehow,
they had gotten ice cream together, and they sat on the curb of a quiet street as the sun filtered
in and out of the clouds.
     “But can’t you just find a different job?” He thought there were plenty of nice offices that
his female friends were happy at. The boy took a bite out of his ice cream, bright coffee flavor
blooming on his tongue. Maybe he could recommend those to her.
     “I can’t.” She quickly caught a drop of melting ice cream before it dripped onto her bag.
     “There actually used to be a much better boss in that man’s position, before she disappeared
from the company. I guess they replaced her with him. She was really good to me while she was
there, and she would encourage the rest of us girls to stick together and stay strong. Upper
management probably wasn’t very happy with that. So now she’s gone. Actually even happier

now, you know, at a different job in a different place. So I’m trying to stick it out here for as long
as I can, and then I’m going to book it to a place where I don’t need to deal with this bullshit.”
The boy was still confused. She could sense it, and spelled out the answer for him.
     “I can’t just leave my job. That would be so complicated, and quite frankly, I like the work
I do far too much to quit. Call it toxic, I know. It’s not always fun. But I’m happy with the work I
do. That doesn’t mean I like the culture tied to my job.”
     He stared at the sky for a while, absorbing what she said. He had a question for her. “Are
you happy where you are right now?”
     He didn’t really know why he wanted an answer so badly from her. Maybe it was
because the boy had been so lost for the last three years that he was scared that his ideal muse
of happiness in life was slipping out of his fingers, because here she was, so raw and close up
and battling very real problems that threatened his idea of true happiness.
     But she shocked him with a beautiful, beaming smile. And he remembered, now, where
he had seen that smile before.
     “Of course I am.”

​

     It took him a while before he understood why she said that.
     There was one conversation they had that the boy often returned to in his mind, on days
when he would sit by the window and the sun hit the panes at just the right angle, sending
sparks of light across the walls. He remembered how she would lean back onto the glass, letting
the orange light warm her face. For as long as her eyes were shut, the boy would sneak glances
in her direction. He wasn’t sure if he ever looked so peaceful in his own sleep.
     “Where do you plan to go, once you get out of here?”
     She paused, eyebrows scrunching in thought. “Someplace warm. With nice air, like by
the sea. And with a window facing the west, so I can see the sunset.”
     “But don’t you need a full plan? How are you gonna know what to do?”
     “I don’t need one,” she murmured softly, the corners of her lips upturned at the slightest
angle. “When I get there, it’ll feel right.”
     “I’m not sure if I get that.”
     “Me neither. But don’t you think life is better with a little chaos?”
     She hummed to herself, a song he knew he’d on the radio before. He leaned back to
mimic her, the sound of his head hitting the window making her turn to him.
     “Are you unhappy?”
     Her question shocked him. He met her eyes, and paused. “I’m not sure.”
     She watched him for a while. “I don’t think you are.”
     “Why?”
     She closed her eyes, thinking. “You worry too much. You can’t find everything out there
worth finding with a map, or a plan. It’s just sitting out there, waiting to be found.”
She opened her eyes again, saw he was listening, and closed them. “You would think a
map will get you everywhere you want to, but sometimes they lead us down the wrong paths,
and we get lost. And at that point, drop the map. Look around. Steady yourself. You can find
your own way better than anything else could ever tell you.”
     He blinked. “How do you know that?”

     She started humming again. “It’s how I find my way back to myself. It just feels right.”

     Months passed by. True to her word, she left the company without a glance back. That
day, the yelling from the boss’ office could be heard from two floors above and below. He didn’t
see her for a while, and for a long time he worried that she had moved away to somewhere like
California and left him all alone. He found it strange how much he missed her. But it felt different
this time, happy to know she was pursuing her dreams elsewhere. Before, he had thought of her
as some untouchable being, like a glimpse of what he should strive for, the kind of peace in life
that he would dream of having for himself. He felt more rooted now. Even when his boss threw
the papers at his feet and told him to redo it all, or when a car drives by a huge puddle when
he’s walking on the sidewalk, the misery doesn’t cling to him like it used to. Perhaps what he
needed all this time was the acknowledgement that it’s okay for his life to not be something out
of the movies, a timeless adventure or an incredible feat of triumph against all odds. Perhaps
she had been right—all he really needed was to find a sense of peace with himself.

     When the cherry blossoms came around for the fourth time since then, the man saw her
by the ocean. The woman clung to her hat as the wind whipped her hair out of her face, and he
saw the moment her eyes caught onto his.

     She gave him the most beautiful smile.