It's going to be okay.

Casey skips along the sidewalk, her jumprope slung over one shoulder, her feet a blur as she dodges the cracks in the pavement ("step on a crack, break your mother's back) and leaps over the lines.

Once she gets to the corner, she looks both ways and crosses the streets. She's not supposed to go past the corner without her parents, but she's been here so many times before that she figures it's probably fine. Plus, she left a note, scribbled in her messy handwriting, explaining where she was going. There would be no reason for them to worry.

She prances down the next block, passing the blue house, with its paint the color of the sky and flowers in the window boxes, and then the house with the lemon tree, which she sometimes takes lemons from (usually with permission), and then the witch's house (her parents say that calling that is rude, but there's something cursed about that house) and finally to her best friend, Lucia's house.

She knocks on the door, and it's immediately thrown open, Lucia standing in the doorframe.

"Want to play?" Casey asks, showing Lucia the jumprope she brought. Lucia sighs.

"I can't write now. Maybe tomorrow," she says with a glum expression.

"Okay, that's fine!" Casey says, smiling. "See you then!"

"I'll have to wait all the way until tomorrow," Lucia answers. "Ugh."

"Don't worry, it will be okay," Casey says with a bright smile. She doesn't really understand why Lucia's upset, or why Lucia thinks that way, but she knows that everything will work out in the end.

She skips all the way home . . .

. . . and then she's ten, in fifth grade, playing with some friends in the field. They race across the grass, their legs pumping, their breath warm in the cold air, and then one of her friends, Alisa, trips.

She falls face first in the mud, blushing bright red amid the laughter. She gets up, brushing herself off, looking down at her skirt which is grass stained and covered in dirt and mud.

"Oh no! That's my favorite skirt!" she says, wiping her eyes.

"You can always wash it," Casey points out. It's meant to be reassuring, but Alisa doesn't seem to get that.

"You're so insensitive!" she says, glaring at Casey.

"'You can always mock it'," Tara, another one of Casey's friends, repeats, immitating Casey.

"I just meant-" Casey interjects.

"Whatever," Alisa says.

"It's going to be okay," Casey finishes. Alisa rolls her eyes and walks away.

"It's going to be okay," Casey whispers to herself. She starts to follow her friends down the field, repeating the words over and over in her mind.

They become her mantra, almost, until she's 13, in eighth grade, staring at the D- she got on a test.

"So, can we retake these?" she says. The class titters, and the teacher sighs.

"Up to the class average, which is a B," he says.

Casey nods, but her heart sinks. She's glad that she can retake it, but it feels like she's surrounded by people who are better than her.

It's just something I can work on. An opportunity to improve. She tells herself, and she almost believes it. I'll get that B. It's all going to be okay.

She goes into class at lunch to find that she's one of the only people there, and that two of them are just trying to improve from a C+. She retakes the test, and gets a C.

"It's better than a D-," she says to herself, as if saying those words will make it feel better. "It's all going to be okay."

It's all going to be okay.

A year passes. She's redecorated her room, covered the walls with sayings like, "Stay positive!" and "You can't know joy without pain!' She's written her own on a post-it note and stuck it to the wall next to the others.

"It's all going to work out in the end" it says, and she believes it. Well, sort of. She knows it won't be perfect, she's not delusional, but she will make it in the end. It will be okay.

Even as her grades drop despite her best efforts, even despite all her frustration, even when a boy she likes asks her out and then doesn't show up to the date, she knows it will work out.

She knows it will be okay.

Now she's packing for college. Her walls are still covered in inspirational quotes, but she isn't sure she believes them. Especially after:

Her parenst split.

Her boyfriend of two years cheated on her.

Her best friend got into a better college than her, and has found a new, "cooler" group of friends.

Her mom lost her job.

Her dad hasn't found a job yet.

She hesitates as she takes down the quotes.

"Ugh, who am I kidding?" she mutters to herself as she crumples one of the papers up, and then another. She looks at the post-it note that she herself wrote and wonders what she was thinking. "It's all going to work out in the end"? When has life ever worked out for anyone?

"Maybe the glass is half empty, after all."