Page 52 of Happiness for Beginners

“What? No!”

“I mean, like the night blindness. I worried about that when you were climbing. That you might miss a branch or something. Is that what happened? You didn’t see the branch?”

He stared at me while I talked, suddenly concentrating hard. Then he leaned in closer, and said, “I just slipped. That’s all.” Then he looked right into my eyes. “Please don’t mention the night blindness to anyone. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Why not?”

“Because we’re strangers,” he said. “So there’s no way you could possibly know.”

I nodded. “Good point.”

“And also,” he added, “because I didn’t exactly pass the medical.”

“What?”

He shrugged.

“How can you be here if you didn’t pass the medical?”

“I have a friend in med school who faked my report.”

I didn’t know what to say. I shook my head. “Why?”

He shrugged again. “So I could come on the trip.”

“But it’s dangerous!”

“Crossing the street is dangerous. Going swimming is dangerous. Eating a hamburger is dangerous.”

“Not the same!”

He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We don’t hike at night. I’ll be fine.”

There was no way I’d confess to the shiver of anxiety I felt right then at the prospect of him not being fine. But I did feel it. Maybe we were strangers now. Maybe he’d ruined my trip in ten different ways. But the fact remained whether I liked it or not: He was my favorite person here.

I shook my head at him. “What were you thinking?” I whispered back.

He looked down then, and said in a voice I could barely hear, “I just really needed to come out here and do this.”

And how could I argue with that?

***

Jake forced me to take off my boots and let him check the blister bandages at every stop. When Beckett saw the state of things with my feet, he said, “You have got to be kidding me. Weren’t you paying attention during Beware of Blisters?”

“She wasn’t just paying attention,” Jake said, readjusting the bandages. “She wastaking notes.”

Beckett looked flattered. “You took notes?”

I nodded.

“So how did you let yourself get like this?”

I took a breath. “I just felt I’d delayed the group one too many times yesterday.”

Beckett nodded. “Well, that’s certainly true.” He watched Jake working on my feet for a minute, before calling everybody over to make an example of me. Again. “Listen up, people. This is what happens when you ignore my instructions. Ellen’s got four blisters—ugly mofos—on her feet from one day of hiking.”

“It’s Helen, actually,” I corrected again. “With an H.”

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