Page 57 of Happiness for Beginners

But not us. We were building momentum. We were getting into it.

I also found a solution to my didn’t-bring-a-book problem. Beckett had the official BCSC handbook in his pack, and he let me borrow it. I read it cover to cover in two days. Then I read it again. Then I went back and took notes. It had a whole section on Certificates, and how to earn them. It felt a little bit like cheating to read the list, but Beckett insisted that anybody was free to read it—just nobody else had asked. I found the book comforting. It made it seem like earning a Certificate wouldn’t be impossible. The handbook stressed that it wasn’t necessarily the toughest people who earned them—or the fastest—but the people who tried the hardest. And that was something I knew I could do. Trying, I was good at. Even if succeeding was a different story.

We fell into a daily rhythm: wake up at six, get dressed, make breakfast, meet to plan the day, strike camp, and head out by nine. No lunch—we just noshed on trail food along the way. Hike until around two or three in the afternoon, stop, and set up camp again in the late afternoon. We always camped near water. It was the one thing we couldn’t do without. Then, dinner by five, and bed by seven, and nobody even thought about staying up late. We were exhausted by bedtime. NineP.M. was “hiker midnight.”

My cut and blisters healed up nicely, thanks to Jake’s bossy attention. Beckett continued to use me as his prime example of whatnotto do. I thought I could build up a tolerance to it, but I never did. There were so many other people doing things wrong, but he never called them out. Just me. My posture was too stiff. My sunglasses weren’t UV protected. My personal items were stowed incorrectly.

Aside from me, the group was bonding. Somehow, in such a short time, most people had acquired nicknames. Apparently, every guy in the group had a thing for Windy, and so she had become “Heartbreaker,” or “HB” for short. There were even “Heartbreaker points.” If she sat next to you, it was twenty points. If she talked to you, it was fifty points. If you managed to get a glimpse of some high-value body part, it was a hundred points. Everybody knew about it. The boys called the points out! If Windy tripped, for example, and stumbled into one of them, he’d shout, “Body contact! A thousand points!”

Windy thought it was mildly funny, but she didn’t seem to notice it much. I guess she was used to that kind of thing by now, after a lifetime of being amazing.

But even less amazing people wound up with nicknames. They evolved quickly and easily. The Sisters became “Sister One” and “Sister Two,” which turned into “Uno” and “Dosie.” The girl in the shorts withGo Gators!appliquéd over the butt had earned herself the nickname “Caboose,” and the best chef in the whole group had become “Cookie.” As for the boys, Mason, who had never learned how to slow down and hike with the rest of us, became “Flash,” as in “Wait up, Flash!” And the big guys had become “Hound Dog,” “Caveman,” and “Vegas.” Even Hugh, who never talked—except to me—had become “Huey Lewis.”

In fact, everybody had a nickname. Every single person. Except me. I was just Helen—or, just as often, “Ellen.”

A good nickname should say something about who you are. It hints at something profound. Or maybe it’s just funny. But it’s meaningful, no matter what. It shows that you areknown,that you have an identity other people recognize. But not me, apparently. I had the opposite of a nickname. They couldn’t even get my actual name right. It made me mad to think about it. I could have been snatched up by a hawk and carried away and nobody would have noticed.

It was the kind of thing I could really stew about. We had three uneventful days of hiking after I noticed the nickname situation, and I could easily have fixated on it every step of the route. But I kept thinking about what Windy had said. “The things you think about determine the things you think about”—meaning the more you focus on something, the more likely your brain is to focus on it.

So I made a choice not to focus on it, and to work, instead, on appreciating all the wonders the wilderness had to offer. Like the hidden waterfall we came across. And the elk scat we saw near the stream. And the salmon that flipped itself up out of a creek before disappearing back into the water. And the crazy sunset where we’d counted eight different colors. And the fact that my face had finally become so dirty that it didn’t feel dirty anymore.

Despite everything, and even though it wasn’t perfect, I was really starting to feel at home in the wilderness. In my lopsided way. And I also got the hang of pretending Jake wasn’t there. Except, of course, for the time I tripped sideways over a fallen branch walking back up a creek bed one night after dinner. The incline was so steep that I knew that if I didn’t catch myself, there’d be no way to stop myself tumbling all the way to the bottom, smacking my head on bread-loaf-sized rock after rock. I’d land in a mangled pulp and have no choice but to die.

But I didn’t fall, and I didn’t die, because an arm reached out, cinched my waist, and pulled me back, and when I angled around to gush thanks at whoever had saved me, it turned out to be Jake.

His face was all irritation. “Dammit, Helen—be careful! Could you try not to kill yourself for five straight minutes?” He let go so sharply it felt like a push.

Where was all that anger coming from? Aren’t you supposed to be nice to someone who almost just died? I straightened up to regain my balance. “I was being careful,” I insisted. I could still feel the memory of his arm around my middle.

He turned away. “No you weren’t.”

“Yes I was.”

“No,” he turned back. “And every time you do something stupid, I have to save you.”

“So don’t save me!” I said, angry now, too, just because he was. But he had already started walking away.

That stopped him, and he turned back around with a glare.

I stood my ground. “You don’t have to save me.”

But he just shook his head, and took in the sight of me head to toe for a long minute before saying, “Yes, I really do,” and then walking away.

***

One night, after a post-supper Basic First Aid class, Beckett made an announcement.

“I’m kind of going off-book here,” he said. “But I’m breaking us up tomorrow.”

Everybody looked around. What did that mean?

I’d just spent the last half hour taking first-aid notes on every injury or disaster that could befall us—from broken legs with bones sticking out to icy river drownings, so I guess my head was primed to worry, but something about Beckett leaving us to hike alone didn’t sit right with me. There certainly wasn’t anything about splitting up for day hikes in the manual I’d memorized. Not, at least, until the very end.

But Beckett was insistent. We needed a change. “You guys follow me like ducklings. You all suck at map skills. You’ll never master them before the Solos unless you get some practice.”

The Solos were the grand finale of the trip—the big event that would test our abilities to use everything we’d just learned. During the Solos, we’d go out for an overnight in groups of four with nothing to protect us but our new skills. Beckett used the idea of “the Solos” quite often to scare us into paying attention. It worked.

“So,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll split up. We’re hiking the same trail, but leaving thirty minutes apart, so you’re not just mindlessly following me.” In truth, we were mindlessly followingJake. But nobody pointed that out to Beckett.

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