Page 77 of Happiness for Beginners

We were coming up on the camp. We could see flashes of Patagonia jackets up through the trees.

This was the halfway point of the trip. It was just as far to go back as it was to go forward. Something about that idea made me want to try again—even harder—to be a better person. So Jake and Windy had kissed. So he liked her better. I wasn’t going to resent her for it. I wasn’t going to waste time being bitter. I was going to grow from this experience and become a better person. I liked Windy. I wasrootingfor Windy. She’d had a tough time of it and she’d pulled herself together. She was an inspiration, dammit! She was exactly the inspiration I’d come here looking to find. She hadn’t gone all Chuck Norris on the world when things got tough. She hadn’t turned herself into a skin-tailed dachshund. She’d found a way to be brave in love, and to take care of herself as well as others. Was I going to punish her for being nice? Or resent her for being kind-hearted? Or hate her for being a better person than me?This is going to be my life if I don’t change it.

No. I was going to drag myself back to camp. And I was going to give Windy a hug and wish her well. Jake, too. And I was going to take a deep breath, shut the hell up, and do, at last, what I came here to do.

Chapter 12

The next day should have been a Zero Day, since you always follow a really tough day of hiking with a day of rest, but Beckett didn’t want to take a Zero Day so close to the trailhead and the people camping there, who he referred to as “the Ding Dongs.” He was itching to get us back deeper into the wilderness, far away from the affronts of civilization, and he had the perfect spot in mind—a place called Painted Meadow. It was a three-day hike from here, he explained, but it was the most beautiful spot in the whole range, so it would totally be worth it.

I looked around at our bedraggled group. Everybody who’d been on litter duty had blistered hands and hunched, sore shoulders. The pack-shuttlers didn’t look much better, with their scratched-up legs and bleary eyes. Not one person was sitting up straight.

“Aren’t you supposed to rest after a tough day of hiking, Boss?” Mason asked.

“You don’t even know what a tough day is,” Beckett said.

And so, we pushed on. If all went according to plan, we’d arrive at Painted Meadow just in time for the summer solstice. We’d take our Zero Day, rest and recharge, and have a solstice party. That night would also mark the end of our second week out, and the time when we’d turn our sights to gearing up for the grand finale of the trip—the Solos.

But I couldn’t even think about the Solos. All I could do, for the next three days, was put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t justwanta rest, Ineededone, and I thought Beckett was dead wrong to push us so hard. Wasn’t he the one always lecturing us to take care of ourselves out on the trail? I didn’t understand his thinking, and I confess I didn’t entirely trust him to be in charge, but there it was. He was the Boss. He called the shots, and he had the nickname to prove it.

Speaking of nicknames, it was on the first morning of this endless three-day hike to Painted Meadow that I finally got one of my own: “Holdup.” As in, “What’s the holdup?”

I was so tired on that first day after Hugh’s evac, and so generally demoralized, that I couldn’t get motivated for hiking, even as I dragged myself along the trail after the others.I want an evac,I kept thinking, wishing Hugh were here so I could give him hell for causing all that trouble.

Little things were bugging me. I’d get something in my boot. Or my pack would feel crooked. I kept stopping to adjust things. My ponytail needed reworking. My hat was too tight. Beckett was hiking at the back that day, and every time I stopped, or even slowed down, he’d shout, “What’s the holdup?”

“Sorry!” I’d call back. “Just fixing a wedgie!” Or whatever.

By midday, I’d been christened. He didn’t even have to ask anymore. Whatever it was, he already knew it was nonsense. “Holdup, get moving!” he’d shout. Or, “This is not a rest stop, Holdup!”

That afternoon, as we stopped to set up camp, Beckett reminded us as a group to fill our water bottles. “Camel up, people! Tomorrow’s another hot day!” Then he turned in front of everybody and pointed at me. “Holdup, that means you!”

That was it. It stuck. They loved it. The guys, especially, enjoyed coming up to me for no reason to say, “What’s the holdup, Holdup?”

So I got my wish for a nickname—but, as so often happens with wishes, it wasn’t at all what I’d hoped for.

“You could think of it differently,” Windy suggested. “You could make it a tough-guy thing, like, ‘This is a holdup.’” She made her hands into pistols and pointed them at me. Then she made shooting noises: “Pew! Pew!”

“But we all know that’s not what it is,” I said. “I’m not a bandit. I’m just a terrible hiker.”

“People are forgetful,” Windy said.

“Not that forgetful.”

“What if,” she started, in a run-with-me-on-this tone, “every time Caveman comes up to you and says ‘What’s the holdup, Holdup?’ you turn around and shoot at him?” She demonstrated again, “Pew! Pew!” Then she spun her guns around and set them back in their holsters.

I thought about it. “I could never pull that off,” I said.

“I bet you could.”

I shook my head and wrinkled my nose, like,Not really.

“Can I do it, then?” she asked. “Just to see? Just for an experiment?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

From that point on, Windy never said my nickname again without turning her hands into pistols. Sometimes she’d fire them into the air like Yosemite Sam, shouting, “Anybody seen Holdup?” Sometimes she’d pull them out of her imaginary holsters, point them hip-level at people, and say, “Where’s my girl Holdup?” Sometimes she’d straighten one arm and look down the barrel at somebody, and say, “Go get Holdup for me.”

And here’s the thing: It worked. Before we even reached Painted Meadow, Windy had turned me into a gunslinger. I became the Annie Oakley of our hiking group. People were throwing every Old West metaphor they could think of at me. When I served dinner one night, it was, “Nice grub, Holdup.” When I helped with the bear hang, it was amid shouts of, “Yeehaw, Holdup! Rope that sucker!” If I moved slow in the morning, Mason would walk by and call out, “Git along, Holdup! We’re movin’ out!” When we had to scramble up an extra-steep section of trail, and I managed to make it all the way without pausing, Beckett called out, “That’s the way, Holdup! Use your spurs!”

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