Page 74 of Happiness for Beginners

When I stood up, Jake was next to me. “Do this,” he said, bending my arm up and then down.

I stared at him.

“It’s your shoulders, right?”

I nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “This’ll help.”

I let him do it. I was too tired to refuse. In all my life, I’d never been so tired. I was past the point of protesting anything. I wondered if Jake was going to give me hell about the popped blisters all over my palms. But then I looked at his own hands, and they were the same. Everyone else, too. Even Beckett.

As if he could read my thoughts, Hugh said, “Thank you. For evac-ing me. By the way.”

Some of the guys had laid themselves out on the riverbank. Some were studying what Jake was doing to my shoulders and trying to copy. They all made murmurs of “No problem, man.”

Except for Beckett. “I’ve had a question in my head all day long,” he announced, and as we all turned to give him our attention, he shook his head. “Is anybody in this group ever in their lives going to step on a fallen log again?”

***

When we made it to the trailhead, the BCSC administrator had not made it yet. Nor had the ambulance. Beckett decided that some of us would stay with Hugh, and the rest of the group would go on ahead and start setting up camp and making dinner. Beckett announced that Jake, the EMT, should stay. I should stay, too, Beckett said, “Because Hugh likes you the best.”

I looked over at Hugh. “Do you?”

He smiled at me and winked. “I don’t really like anybody,” he said. “But I like you better than most.”

That was something.

“I’ll need one more volunteer,” Beckett said.

Windy’s hand shot up like lightning. Which was funny, because nobody else even raised one.

“And Windy’s the lucky winner,” Beckett said.

“Yes,” Windy cheered, turning that raised hand into a fist pump.

The trailhead was quite a sight. Unlike the one where we’d been dropped off, this one had a bathroom, and vending machines, and electrical hookups—which meant there were camper vans all around, families grilling burgers, and grandmas in muumuus.

And litter. Lots of litter. The minute we arrived, it was all I could see. Twinkie wrappers, beer cans, and empty potato chip bags everywhere. After a solid week in the pristine wilderness, it was shocking. What was wrong with people? Beckett had seemed so psychotic to me the other day, burning my list of self-improvements. But as I looked around the trailhead, I got it. Who the hell were these people, trespassing on the wilderness and making a mess? I wanted to set fire to every piece of trash I saw. Possibly every human being, too.

Jake and Beckett decided to leave Hugh strapped into the litter. We were to dismantle it once the ambulance arrived and carry the frames, along with our daypacks, to the campsite. They would move a half mile back into the wilderness—away from the circus of the trailhead—and we would meet up with them once Hugh was gone. Before the group left us, one of the Sisters asked if she could go use the indoor toilets.

“Hell, no,” Beckett said. “Go shit in the woods like a real hiker.”

I confess: He was growing on me.

We’d set Hugh down under an empty lean-to, and there we waited for the ambulance to arrive. After all the hauling ass we’d done to get him here, it seemed incalculably rude for the ambulance to make him wait any longer. Hadn’t he been through enough? I fed Hugh some crackers, and then, when he fell asleep, I announced to Windy and Jake that I was going to nap, too. I lay down to rest my head on my daypack, close my eyes, and drift off for a few minutes.

But I couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted, yes, after staying up way too late talking to Jake the night before. I wanted literally nothing more than to sink into a black, numbing state of unconsciousness, but everything hurt too much. Instead, with no other choice, I listened to Windy and Jake chat as they sat together on a nearby picnic table.

Windy was telling Jake all about a Russian scientist who had domesticated wild foxes in secret, and it was actually pretty fascinating stuff, and for a while there I couldn’t help but enjoy my eavesdropping—until Windy ran out of things to say about foxes and said, out of nowhere: “Jake. Kiss me.”

Jake didn’t seem all that surprised. “Now?”

“Now.”

“Do you really think it’s the best time?”

“I think it’s the perfect time.”

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