Page 62 of Happiness for Beginners

“If he wants a bow tie, he’ll wear it with suspenders. Not a tux. But if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll wear a long tie. With a Windsor knot.”

“Why does it matter what kind of knot?” Uno asked.

Hugh stepped up on another trunk. “Why doesanythingmatter?”

The truth is, Isawhim stepping on those trunks, just as I saw the Sisters straddling behind him, and as I hurdled over them, myself. I saw him, but I never once thought to correct him. Who was I to tell Hugh what to do? He was making his choices, and the rest of us were making ours. I just didn’t realize yet how tangled together all our choices were.

Looking back, I’d wish over and over that I’d been feeling just a tiny bit bossier that day.

I glanced up at Hugh just as it happened, in fact.

I can see it all in slo-mo in my memory: He steps up on the next log, and in the half second that it would have taken to swing his other foot forward, the surface crumbles beneath his foot and he loses his balance, pitching forward and landing across a second one—this one not rotten at all—just ahead of him.

Hugh screamed like I have never heard anybody scream—in a way that seemed to shock the forest into silence. Then he fell silent and crumpled. He just lay collapsed over that second log in an upside-down V, pinned down by his pack.

I had my own pack off in seconds, trying to remember our first-aid class. But then I froze.

You didn’t move a head injury—but what about a leg injury?First things first,I kept thinking. But what were the first things? I had to pick something. The Sisters were utterly still, watching in shock as the moment unfolded. Somebody had to be in charge, and it looked like that somebody was going to be me.

Get his pack off,I decided. I unlatched his shoulder straps, but then, when I worked my hands under his hips to unbuckle his hip belt, Hugh woke up, screaming. “No, no! Don’t!”

I did it anyway.

His pack tumbled forward to the ground.

“Okay,” I said, stepping back, breathless. “Can you stand up?”

He pushed against the trunk with both hands for about one second before seizing in pain. “No.”

Here was the problem: He was the smallest of the guys, but he was still a lot bigger than I was. I pointed at the Sisters. “Take off your packs,” I said. “We have to move him.”

“No!” Hugh shouted.

His head was upside-down. “We can’t leave you like this,” I said.

“Do not touch me!” Hugh said.

“Are you supposed to move injured people?” one of the Sisters asked, frowning at Hugh, but taking her pack off, anyway.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I do know we can’t leave him bent in half like this.”

The girls nodded. They were with me.

“You two take the shoulders,” I said. “I’ll get the bottom half. We’re just going to flip him like a pancake and set him right there.” I pointed to a log-less part of the trail. Each girl took a shoulder, and I wrapped both arms around Hugh’s thighs—him screaming all the while. “On three!” I shouted. “One! Two! Three!”

I thought my eardrums would pop when we lifted him, he screamed so loud. And holy cow, was he heavy. But adrenaline saw us through, and we did manage to flip him back in one fairly coordinated motion to lay him as gently as possible on the flat ground.

Halfway through, Hugh stopped screaming. He’d passed out again.

“That must hurt like hell,” Dosie said.

I grabbed that moment to press my hands against his thigh and his hip. I wasn’t sure what I was even feeling for. Bones sticking out? Huge lumps of pooling blood? Not only did I have no idea what I was looking for, I had no idea what I would do when I found it, either. But I didn’t find anything. Just a regular-feeling leg. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.

That’s when one of the sisters, who had stepped back, said, “Does it look like one of his legs is longer than the other?”

I stood up to look. Yes. It did.

“That can’t be good,” the other sister said.

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