Sunny

Sunny is the cheerful one. It says so on the door, more or less.

When Sunny walks in, the room lifts. Sunny has a way of finding the good bit of any morning and holding it up so everybody can see it. "Here comes the sunshine!"

On Tuesday, Sunny woke up feeling like a wet flannel.

There was no reason. That was the worst part. Nothing had happened. Sunny simply woke up grey and heavy with a flat, dull feeling all the way through, and thought: nobody wants this. Not from me.

So Sunny smiled.

Sunny smiled through breakfast. Sunny smiled through the walk. Sunny said "here comes the sunshine!" and it came out with a crack in the middle, and Sunny smiled even harder to cover the crack.

By the afternoon, Sunny was exhausted. Pretending is the most tiring work there is.

Chatty caught up with Sunny by the gate and said, "You're doing the face."

"What face?"

"The one that isn't yours."

Sunny's smile stayed exactly where it was for about three seconds. Then it fell off.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," said Sunny. "Nothing happened. I've got nothing to be sad about. Which makes it worse, because I'm being sad for no reason and everybody's counting on me to be the—" Sunny stopped. "To be the sunny one."

Chatty sat down on the wall.

"Do you know what weather is?" said Chatty. "It's weather. Sometimes it's cloudy. Nobody asks the sky to explain itself."

"But I'm supposed to—"

"You're not supposed to anything. We don't like you because you're cheerful. We like you because you're you, and today you is a bit cloudy."

Sunny sat on the wall next to Chatty and did not smile, for about twenty minutes, which felt dangerous and then felt wonderful.

"It's all-weather feelings," said Sunny slowly, saying the thing Sunny has told everybody else a hundred times and never once applied. "Isn't it."

"It's all-weather feelings," Chatty agreed.

Sunny still brings the sunshine, and it is not an act: it is who Sunny is.

But on cloudy days, now, Sunny says so. And the room lifts anyway.