Riley tried her best to hide whatever it was she was feeling because she didn’t actually think she had a real reason to feel what she was feeling. She had parents who would go to the ends of the world for her, the best of friends anyone could ask for who loved her, a roof over her head and a warm bed to sleep in at night. Some people would call her lucky, yet an agonizing feeling of emptiness swallowed her whole. The feeling had first crept in weeks ago, and she just wanted it to go away. She wanted to stop pretending that she was still smiley Riley, but sometimes you need to fake it until you make it, right?

The group of friends is now months into their senior year, and no one had caught onto how Riley has truly been feeling. But, she couldn’t blame them—she was giving them a performance. Every day that they all met at Topanga’s after school to do homework she’d laugh like nothing was wrong, and every day at school she’d walk with a pep in her step and a smile on her face.

On the weekends, if her friends made plans, Riley would tag along. And, just like any other time, she would pretend she was happy, but, after a couple of hours, Riley would say she was tired and excuse herself for the rest of the night. And on the nights Riley didn’t feel like being fake happy, she’d make up an excuse and stay in her room.

Pretending to be happy was exhausting for Riley. Every night, after spending the day laughing and smiling, Riley cried. She didn’t know why she was crying, but when she started, she couldn’t stop. The only comfort she found was in a specific song that she played every night humming softly to it while she fell asleep.

♫ If I smile with my teeth Bet you believe me If I smile with my teeth I think I believe me ♫

♫ Oh please don't ask me how I've been Don't make me play pretend Oh no, oh what's the use Oh please, I bet everybody here is fake happy too ♫

The day of Riley’s eighteenth birthday finally came, but all she really wanted to do was stay in her room with her door shut, her window curtains draw closed, and her earphones in shutting out the outside world. However, she should have known that wasn’t what was going to happen when she heard a loud knock on her window early in the morning.

She slowly sits up on her bed facing away from the window. She takes a deep breath and tries her best to be happy. She’s supposed to be anyway, right? It’s her birthday, and she’s Riley.

Riley drags her feet across her bedroom floor to her window and draw opens her curtains, and she sees her blonde blue-eyed best friend smiling at her with happy birthday balloons.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RILES!” Maya yells as soon as she wiggles her way inside with the bundle of balloons struggling to fit through the window all at once.

Riley laughs, and for a second, she even has herself believing she is really happy. “Maya, shh!” Riley wonders if Maya had noticed that she hasn’t called her peaches in months. “It’s seven in the morning, and everyone is still asleep.”

Maya’s eyes widen. “How is everyone asleep?! It’s your-“

Before Maya can finish her sentence, Riley’s parents and her brother come rushing in. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RILEY!” Auggie, and Mr. and Mrs. Matthews shout, and again, Riley laughs—only she knows it isn’t real.

After everyone hugs Riley, they ask her what she wants to do for the day. “Actually, I was hoping that we could have a quiet night in, if possible.” She looks at them waiting for them to object, but they don’t. She thinks about asking if she could just spend the day alone, but she didn’t want to push it.

“If that’s what you want,” Riley’s mother says, and Riley nods.

Maya groans. “Fine, but I’m taking you out for breakfast then to the mall to buy you a new outfit, and before you say no, you don’t have a choice. So, get ready.”

Riley playfully rolls her eyes. “Okay, but can you all get out? I need to shower and get dressed.” She really just needed a minute to sulk to herself. She needed a minute on her birthday where she didn’t have to pretend.

Once the four of them leave the room, Mr. Matthews turns towards his wife. “Do you think we should cancel the party? She did just say she wanted a quiet evening in.”

Maya laughs. “Please. It’s Riley. She loves birthdays, and hers is no different. I’m sure she only said that because she didn’t want to feel like an inconvenience to us. Riley deserves this party, so it’s still on.”

After a day spent having Maya drag her from store to store, making her try on one outfit after another, and having to fake laugh and fake smile, Riley was happy the day was finally coming to an end. Riley still didn’t understand why Maya made her wear her outfit out of the store.

“I hope you had fun today, honey,” Maya says as they reach Riley’s front door.

“I did. Thank you, Maya.” Riley waits for a second and hopes Maya will finally catch on that she has once again used her name—the way she has the entire day, the way she has for months—instead, of the nickname that Riley had given Maya in the first few minutes of their friendship. But, Maya doesn’t say anything

Riley searches through her bag and pulls out her keys trying her best to ignore the sly smirk that crept on Maya’s lips. When the two girls walk inside, Riley is relieved to find the room dark hoping her parents and Auggie went out for a quick errand and that would give her enough time to try to get rid of Maya and run to the comforts and her room. She lets the smile that she’s been forced on her face fall letting the darkness shield her face.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Maya reaches for the switch by the front door, and Riley turns around to stop her, but before Riley can do so, she hears voices behind yell SURPRISE!

Riley sees Maya smiling at her, but the only thing going through Riley’s mind is the word pretend—and that is what she does. She turns to face everyone and laughs and covers her mouth with her hands in a surprised manner, and she sees everyone smiling at her. She should feel happy at this moment, and for a second, she does. However, it fades away, but she won’t let anyone in the room know that.

She skips around the room, and she understands why no one had noticed. She feels different on the inside, but the way she is acting like nothing has changed. Sometimes when she catches a glimpse of herself smiling or she hears her laughter it fools her into thinking she is truly happy, but the numbness and the sadness tell her otherwise.

“Happy birthday, Riley!” She hears as soon as she is surrounded by her close five friends, and each one of them takes a second to hug her as tightly possible.

The party continues. Everyone sings happy birthday to Riley. She opens her gifts. She chats with everyone who came to celebrate with her. Most importantly Riley makes sure the smile never falters from her lips.

Hours tick by, and now she was counting the minutes until she says goodbye to everyone. She was happy that Maya had an early shift at the bakery, and that meant she couldn’t stay the night. At least, she would have some time alone on her birthday the way she wanted.  

“Before the night is over, we have one final surprise for the birthday girl,” Maya starts. “So, Riles, will you come sit down?” Maya gestured to the sofa and Riley does what Maya asked. “We,” she gestures to Lucas, Zay, Farkle, and Smackle who were standing behind the couch, “went around and asked everyone to say something about you. Whether it was a memory, something nice, or whatever they felt like sharing. Anyways, we smashed everything together into a video.”

Maya looks at Farkle, Riley assumes signaling him to start the video. Farkle moves to the TV in front of the living room and pushes a couple of buttons on two different remotes. The video starts and Riley listens to all her parents and friends speak about her.

She listens to some of her classmates and coworkers speak mostly about her happiness and smile, and how she’s always skipping around making sure everyone around her is okay.

Her parents are next, and they talk about the day she was born and how proud they are of the person she is turning out to be. Zay speaks about the time he and Riley made cookies together after getting the recipe from his grandmother because she felt horrible for eating his cookie. Smackle speaks about Riley’s always bubbly personality, and how it can make anyone feel welcomed the way it made Smackle feel the first time she entered the group of friends.

Farkle addresses Riley as one of his two ex-wives, which earn laughs from the room. He speaks about her kindness for others, and her heart made of gold. He also shares a memory about the first time they went to the planetarium, and Riley couldn’t stop talking about Pluto. Maya starts by saying how much she loves Riley, and how it was Riley who brought the sunshine back into her world, and with that sunshine, it allowed hope to grow.

Finally, it’s Lucas. Everyone in the room can see how nervous he was in the video. He tells everyone how Riley skips through the halls, and how she can make anyone smile just by being herself. He finishes by saying that he’s lucky to have met Riley.

Riley is waiting to feel butterflies in her stomach, a feeling she misses more than anything, but they don’t come and she can’t understand why. He’s always been able to make the flutter come alive, and she knows how she feels about him. But nothing happens inside of her.

As the video comes to an end, it fades into a montage of friends and family saying happy birthday to Riley, and for the first time in a really long time, Riley feels truly happy—until pictures start to show.

At first, there are candid moments of Riley sincerely smiling and laughing, and she finds tears start to build in her eyes.

“Aw, Riles!” Maya plops herself next to Riley once Maya notices the tears.

Maya thinks the tears are from happiness, but Riley knows better—she feels it. She misses feeling happy she misses smiling. Riley is too scared to blink because she knows once she does that the tears will start to fall down her cheeks

She continues to watch the video, and Riley notices something that struck her to her very core. The pictures start becoming less candid moments of her smiling, and more moments of her posing in pictures with friends or family. She notices her smile in the newer pictures, and she notices that those smiles never once reaches her eyes.

She quickly glances around the room wondering if anyone noticed, but no one does. Everyone has smiles on their faces while watching the screen, so she does what she does best—smile and pretends to be happy.

After everyone leaves, Riley helps her parents clean up before rushing to her room. This is the place she really wanted to spend the entire day. She closes her door and changes out of her new outfit and quickly slides on a pair of sweats and an oversized sweatshirt.

She saunters to her desks and slowly opens her laptop ready to find comfort in her music, one song specifically. So, she hits play and walks to her dresser to grab her brush. She stares at herself running the brush through her hair and let the lyrics run through her body and starts to sing along.

♫ I love making you believe What you get is what you see But I'm so fake happy I feel so fake happy And I bet everybody here Is just as insincere We're all so fake happy And I know fake happy ♫

It begins soft and the voice is low, and anyone who first listens to the song will think it’s just another slow sad song, but it changes.  

♫ I been doing a good job of makin' 'em think I'm quite alright But I hope I don't blink You see its easy when I'm stomping on a beat But no one sees me when I crawl back underneath ♫

The message of the lyrics doesn’t change, but the tempo does. It’s no longer slow, and one might even find themselves dancing along to it forgetting the words and solely focusing on the music. Riley thinks it’s genius. The catchy sound of the music can distract someone from truly hearing the lyrics—just like her smile can distract everyone from knowing the truth about how she feels.

The chorus is just about to begin, but she stops herself when she hears a quiet tap on her window. She turns her head and sees Lucas staring at her. She places her brush on the dresser and moved to let him in.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” Riley asks once Lucas is inside her room.

He rubs the back of his neck. “I…I needed to talk to you about something.” He had noticed something at her party, and he had no idea how he missed it.

“Oh, okay. Let me just turn off my music, and we can talk.” Lucas nods, and Riley walks across her room hurrying to turn off the song, not that she’d think Lucas was actually listening to the lyrics. She just wanted to keep it to herself—but it was too late. He heard, and the words were ringing through his head.

Truth be told, he was outside Riley’s window for a minute before he tapped on her window. He listened to her sing. He saw the connection Riley felt with the song, and what he really noticed was she didn’t smile once.

“So, what did you need to talk about?” Riley turns to face him to see him sitting at the foot of her bed, so she slowly walks and takes the spot next to him.

Lucas looks down at his hands and slowly releases a deep breath before looking at Riley. His green eyes meet hers, and he’s looking for the brightness. But, he doesn’t see anything. How has he been so blind?

“Are you okay?” Riley can feel the caution in his voice. She hadn’t been asked that question in months. Her eyes scan his, and she can see them pleading with her to tell him the truth. Nevertheless, she doesn’t.

She laughs half-heartedly. “What? Of course, I’m okay. Why would you ask?”

His eyes don’t leave hers. “Because at your party…with the video and the pictures at the end…it just, it felt like something was off.” He had been the one to provide most of the candid pictures of Riley. Whenever she’d start laughing too hard or she’d get lost in her own thoughts a small smirk found its way to her lips, Lucas was there to capture the moment.

However, it wasn’t until Farkle asked for pictures of Riley for the video that he noticed he didn’t have any recent pictures of those candid moments. He’d been too busy with football and trying to improve his college applications to notice, and he was beating himself up for it.

The entire time the pictures were showing he saw the light slowly leave Riley’s bright eyes. It wasn’t until it was right in front of him that he noticed something was wrong. Lucas wanted to talk to Riley immediately after her party, but she was quick to politely push everyone out the door. He tried to go home and forget about it, telling himself he was overthinking things, but he couldn’t. Her eyes were haunting him every single time he closed his. He knew something was wrong.

“Really?” Riley looks away from his eyes and begins to wring her hands. “I thought the video was lovely.”

Lucas nods. “It was, but something was different. Riley, can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything, Lucas,” Riley says still looking away from him.

“Are you happy?” Her eyes shoot up to look at him, but she doesn’t say anything. So, he continues. “I know we decided to just be friends, but I want you to know that you can tell me anything. I’m here. I’ll listen.”

Riley takes a shaky breath, and she parts her lips but stops. She knows if she starts to talk she’ll cry. No one had asked her if she was happy, and she wanted to scream she wasn’t. But, she couldn’t. If she did, then she wouldn’t hold the image of smiley Riley, so she lies.

“O-of course, I’m happy.” Her voice breaks at first, and Lucas furrows his eyebrows.

“Really?” She nods. “So, the song you were listening to and singing along to didn’t mean anything to you?”

Her eyes widen. “Yo-you heard me singing?”

“I did, and I’ve known you long enough to know by the way you were singing that the song means something. So, please, Riley, talk to me. We’ve always been good at talking.”

Her eyes swell with tears, and she blinks trying to push them back, but that only sends them rushing down her cheek. Lucas waits for Riley to wipe her tears away, but when she doesn’t, he doesn’t hesitate to.

Lucas cups Riley’s face between his hands. “Riley, please talk to me. I’m begging you.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she sobs. “I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel happy. I don’t feel anxious. I don’t feel scared. I feel nothing. I feel empty.” Lucas slowly drops his hands from Riley’s face, and instead, takes her hands in his. “And when I do feel something, it’s this searing amount of sadness. It swallows me.”

Tears race down her cheeks, and Lucas releases his hands to wipe them away, but returns them to holding Riley’s hands.

“I-I sometimes don’t even want to leave my room let alone my bed. I shouldn’t be feeling like this, but I ca-can’t control it. I didn’t want to b-bother anyone. I’m supposed to be happy. I-I’m supposed to be the happy go lucky one in the group. I’m supposed to keep everyone’s spirit up. I-I’m supposed t-to be the one that smiles themselves to death, but it hurts to have to pretend to be happy when I haven’t been happy in months,” Riley stutters through her tears, but Lucas understands every word. He lets go of her hands and wraps his arms around Riley.

He can feel her trembling against his chest as she sobs. How did he not notice something was wrong with her? How did he not notice the smile that he saw every day was fake? Why did it take him so long to figure this out?

Riley slowly pulls away from Lucas. Her bloodshot red eyes meet his now glossy green ones. “What’s wrong with me, Lucas?” Riley cries.

Lucas tenderly brushes the hair covering Riley’s face behind her ears. He can see her eyes, and this time he’s studying them. Her brown eyes are pleading with him for answers, and he wished he had them for her. “I…I don’t know. I wish more than anything I had an answer for you, but we can get you help. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”