Jake has always felt like he's watching life happen from the other side of a window. Quiet, observant, and more comfortable inside his own head, he's spent most of his teenage years believing that maybe some people simply aren't meant to have the friendships, late nights, first loves, and stupid mistakes everyone else seems to experience so easily. Then he meets them. Eli. Sophie. Connor. Serena. A group of older kids who, for reasons Jake doesn't entirely understand, decide there's room for one more. Suddenly, Jake isn't watching anymore. He's crammed into cars with music turned too loud. He's staying out later than he should. He's laughing until his stomach hurts, sitting in kitchens long after midnight, going to parties he never thought he'd be invited to, and falling in love with a girl who makes him believe that maybe he isn't as difficult to love as he's always assumed. For the first time in his life, Jake is happy. Actually happy. And for a while, that's enough. But there are parts of Jake his friends can't see. Things he doesn't know how to explain. Thoughts he hides behind jokes, smiles, and I'm fine. As everyone around him begins believing they've watched Jake finally come out of his shell, something inside him is quietly moving in the opposite direction. The happier Jake appears, the easier it becomes for everyone to stop asking if he really is. For a While, I Was Happy is a raw coming-of-age story about friendship, first love, growing up, and the frightening distance that can exist between the person everyone thinks they know and the person staring back from the other side of the glass. Because sometimes the happiest chapter of someone's life isn't the beginning of their story getting better. Sometimes it's the chapter everyone wishes they could go back and read again.