Marcy didn’t believe in happiness or love. They were foreign concepts to her. Of course, she believed once, but the happiness she felt as a child was crushed after what happened to her “loving” parents. When Marcy was just six years old, her mother began to drink. She drank constantly, the alcohol causing her to lose her mind. Her father followed soon after, turning to drugs. Marcy was lucky if her parents even remembered she existed. They were either away on what they called business trips or ignoring their daughter completely. There was no real reason for it other than the fact that alcohol and drugs can make anyone unstable. An unhappy marriage doesn’t help too much, either. Marcy had grown up to accept that she had to raise herself.

Marcy would get up, get dressed, eat whatever she could make for breakfast, and walk to school. She didn’t have any friends at her school and she was okay with that. She wasn’t a big fan of mingling anyways. She was never really a social butterfly and preferred to be alone. Sure, she talked to people. She just never really settled in with a group.

Of course, she did have her best friend, and neighbor, Bonnie. They had been friends since seventh grade when she had moved into the little white house next door. Bonnie came from a nice family. Her father was an engineer and her mother was a nurse. Her older brother was going to college for psychology. She had plenty of friends at school and made good grades. She had a decent life. With Bonnie, Marcy could relax and be herself. She had someone to talk to. Every day, after school, Marcy would come home from school and go to Bonnie’s. If her parents weren’t home, which didn’t happen too often, she would sit on the tattered swinging chair on her front porch and do homework while she waited for Bonnie to get home from school. They had sleepovers quite often, usually staying at Bonnie’s house because her parents loved Marcy like she was their second daughter. There was always something going on and the house was never silent. It was a nice change to Marcy’s dead, bleak bedroom with the torn, puke green curtains she hadn’t bothered to replace and the rotting wooden bookshelf that was beginning to break.

Marcy and Bonnie laid sprawled out on Bonnie’s bed, the light pink bedding tangled around them. Bonnie laughed as Marcy tried to undo the tiny braids she had done in her hair. Marcy jabbed her with her elbow. She pulled at the silky black strands, wincing when she pulled a knot too hard. As she ripped another little tangle out of her hair, Bonnie’s favorite song came on. She grinned, turning to Marcy. Marcy gave a small smile back.

“Remember this song?” Bonnie asked, giving Marcy a comb to brush out her hair.

“Not really, no.” Marcy said. “I remember you mentioning it the other day.” Bonnie nodded, tucking a part of her hair behind her ear. The auburn locks fell around her shoulders and curled slightly at her elbows. Marcy was envious of the strawberry blonde color Bonnie’s hair turned in the summer.

“It’s “Dear Happy” by Dodie Clark.” Bonnie chuckled. Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners. Her laugh was sweet and infectious. It filled Marcy with a warmth in her heart that she didn’t quite understand. “Do you like it?” Marcy listened to the lyrics, taking in every word. She clung to every letter, trying for Bonnie’s sake to understand what Dodie was singing about. Marcy could slightly grasp Dodie’s wish to feel happiness again, but she couldn’t remember what happiness was supposed to feel like. She shrugged.

“Yeah, it’s nice.” She said. “I just don’t really understand it.”

“What do you mean?” Bonnie asked, puzzled at her friend’s words. She knew everything about her situation with her parents but she didn’t think someone could become so numb as to not remember what happiness feels like.

“Happy. I don’t get what it’s like anymore. Or love.” Marcy explained. Bonnie patted the spot on the bed in front of her. Marcy crawled over and gave her the comb.

“Happiness is like…” Bonnie started as she ran the comb through Marcy’s hair. “When you’re content. When you get what you need in life. It’s like, feeling like everything in life is good. Perfect, in a way.” Marcy thought about what Bonnie had said. How could life feel perfect to her when her life wasn’t even good in general? “A lot of people will try to tell you happiness is when you get to go on a vacation or you get one hundred percent on a test, but it’s not. It has nothing to do with materialistic things. It’s a feeling of genuine comfort and content without the extremities.” Bonnie’s soft voice rang through Marcy’s mind as she began to understand what she meant. She had felt that before… hadn’t she? Her thoughts twisted in her head, taking her back to when she was younger.

When her dad would drive her to school and carry her on his shoulders and her mom would always have something fun for them to do when she got home. When her parents would invite the entire neighborhood over for Summer barbeques and Mr. Clark from down the street would tell her about the conspiracy theories he taught in his class at the local middle school. She remembered when she was important to someone other than Bonnie. She remembered when the world felt like it was perfect. It had always felt perfect when she was with Bonnie.

“So, what’s love then?” Marcy asked. Bonnie sighed.

“I have to teach you everything, don’t I?” She teased. She took a deep breath as she thought of a way to illustrate such a complex feeling. “Love is kind of like happiness in a way. Someone you love makes you happy.” Marcy turned to face Bonnie, staring intently as she listened. “You know you love someone when they give you butterflies. Like the kind you get when you’re nervous. But they’re more exciting than scary. Loving someone is wanting to spend the rest of your life with them. Wanting to take care of them. And you still care about them a lot even after a fight or something.” Bonnie tried her best to explain love to her curious companion but she had only felt it a few times herself.

“So, loving someone is always being happy around them.” Marcy started piecing together the feelings she thought she’d lost. The butterflies she felt when she first met Bonnie, the way she could always make her smile and laugh. She made Marcy feel content. Happy. Maybe she just didn’t realize how much she truly loved her friend.

Screams from Marcy’s house made the girls jump, turning to face Bonnie’s window that faced the guest bedroom’s boarded up hole that was once a window but was shattered by Marcy’s mother. Marcy leapt to her feet, running to the bedroom door, Bonnie following close behind. The girls ran out the front door, noticing Bonnie’s parents were already at the door to Marcy’s house. Bonnie’s father pounded on the door after finding it was locked, yelling for someone to open it. When he got no response from inside, he resorted to kicking the thing down. Marcy stood behind him, a look of worry on her face. All color in her once flushed cheeks faded when she saw the state of the living room.

Her mother was sprawled out on the floor, a large shard of glass from a windowpane sticking from her stomach. Crimson blood poured from her body, staining her lovely yellow sundress red. Her father was passed out on the couch, surrounded by beer bottles and bags of what ever was left of the drugs he had taken. Marcy screamed and Bonnie struggled to keep the bile forming in her throat down. Hot tears trickled down everyone’s faces as Marcy cried out for her parents, choking on her own sobs. She fell to the floor, screaming like it would make everything go back to normal. Why was she crying for them?

Bonnie grabbed her friend by the arms and led her out of the house while her mother called 9-1-1 and her father checked for any sign of life in the drugged man. Sure enough, he found a pulse. He had passed out after a bad trip, but not before flying into a fit of rage and ending his wife’s life. Marcy clung to Bonnie like she was her lifeline because, at that moment, she really was. Bonnie did whatever she could to comfort Marcy, but how well can you comfort a friend who just saw their mother’s own blood gushing from her stomach? There was no way to make it better. There was no way to take away what Marcy had seen.

As Marcy sat in the passenger seat of Bonnie’s car on the way to her father’s court case later that next year, she didn’t quite know how she felt. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel. Was she supposed to be sad that her parents were gone? How could she feel bad for losing her mother when, from an early age, she barely had a mother at all? How could she feel bad for her father when she thought of him as a stranger? A ghost? Her mouth became uncomfortably dry as she got lost in her morbid thoughts.

She didn’t feel grief, or pity. She felt free. She felt as though a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders after years of carrying it. It kind of scared her. But at the same time, Marcy felt like it was her fault. She felt that she had messed up somehow and made her parents hate her. No matter how many times Bonnie promised her she did nothing wrong, she still felt like it was. Bonnie wished she could take away her friend’s pain. She’d give anything to make her feel okay again. She loved her.

Her father was found guilty. Shocking. Bonnie’s parents let Marcy move in with them since she didn’t have any close family to go to and she was too old for foster care which was perfectly fine with both girls. Marcy was heartbroken for quite a while but she refused to let her past destroy her future. She slowly began to remember the familiar feeling of happiness. It was a feeling she’d unknowingly longed for for so many years. And, because of Bonnie, Marcy slowly began to remember the feeling of love. She eventually created a new name for her beloved Bonnie. She called her her “Happy”.