Happiness for Beginners (13 page)

The first topic for the morning was everybody's One Book. I guess it did say a lot about a person: If you could only have one book for three weeks, what book would it be? Most of the boys had brought thrillers, and they all agreed to trade. The girls showed more variety. One brought the Bible. One brought a workout manual. One brought a cupcake cookbook, of all things. One brought her favorite book from childhood,
Anne of Green Gables,
for the literary equivalent of comfort food. Windy brought a psychology textbook for a summer class she was taking.

She was also in the seat behind me—with Jake, by the way, who she had yanked in as he passed. “What book did you bring?” she asked me.

I turned around to find the whole bus looking at me. Waiting.

“I didn't bring a book,” I said.

“She forgot her book!” one of the boys shouted, like it was hilarious.

“I didn't forget it,” I said. “I chose not to bring a book.”

Another incomprehensible statement from me. One guy scratched his neck.

“I just wanted to, you know, really
be here
and soak up every single moment,” I said, realizing as I said it how stupid the idea sounded. “I didn't want to miss anything.” Just saying the words made me want to go right home and miss
everything
.

I turned back around and faced away, but Windy leaned over after me.

“I'm Windy, by the way,” she said.

“I remember that from yesterday,” I said.

“But with an ‘i.'”

It wasn't computing. “With an ‘i'?”

“It's not ‘Wendy,' like in
Peter Pan.
It's ‘Windy,' like”—here, she waved her arms around—“
whoosh
,
whoosh
.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Guess what my little sister's name is?” she said then, and before I could guess, she said, “Stormy.”

“With an ‘o'?” I couldn't help it.

“Yep,” Windy said, all cheer. “We're from California.”

She waited a second, to see if I'd add anything else, which I didn't, and so, at last, she rejoined the bigger conversation, and I was forgotten. My seatmate had fallen fast asleep, and I sat still with my hands folded on my lap. I could have pretended to listen, but I didn't feel like it. I didn't see how they could all be so nonchalant in the face of what we were about to do. Mike's words “you're not exactly a jock” ricocheted around in my head as we followed the winding two-lane highway farther from civilization. Soon we were cutting through angles of pushed-up earth and zooming past striped rock sediments. The colors were so different here. On the East Coast, the rocks were all shades of gray, but here the earth was red and purple and orange, and the greenery was sparser, and the earth was sandier. I watched it blur by out the window, and I decided it was the change of colors, more than anything, that made me feel so very far from home.

When Beckett stood with his clipboard to start making announcements, he opened with: “It's all uphill hiking today, people. The whole day. Every step. Let's get focused.” I gave him my full attention and even pulled out my journal to take notes. Focused, I could do. A whole day of uphill hiking? I wasn't so sure.

I wrote feverishly as Beckett gave us the plan for the day. We'd hike as a group of twelve, plus Beckett—splitting into our tent groups of four each afternoon as we reached our camps. We'd cook and sleep in our tent groups, and reconvene in the morning to hike together.

“So we get to sleep in tents?” a girl asked.

“Weren't you at Outfitting?” Beckett asked. “Did anybody here receive a tent?”

The girl looked around.

“No,” Beckett answered. “There are no tents. We sleep under tarps.”

“Why do they call it a tent group, then?” she asked.

Beckett looked up toward the heavens, like he'd had all he could take, and then said, “That's just what they call them.”

Beckett read the names of the tent groups. As soon as I crossed my fingers and thought
Not Jake,
I immediately overthought it and wondered if I should wish
for
him, instead. He was clearly the nicest person here, after all. But he was also Jake. Who I both wanted to be near and couldn't bear to be near. Of course, making that “not Jake” wish wouldn't necessarily lead to a “not Jake” tent situation. Sometimes I wondered if stating a preference to the universe just dared it to mess with me. It might have been a smarter idea, at this point, to try some reverse psychology.

Either way, Jake wound up in the first group, and I found myself in the last—with that guy Mason, and the girl Windy, and that sandy-haired boy who sat next to me on the bus, Hugh.

Tent groups settled, Beckett gave us his rules of the trail, including nonnegotiable commands to hydrate at every rest stop, to wear sunscreen, and to pay attention to our feet. “If you feel a hot spot rubbing inside your boot,” he said, “do not wait. Stop the group and deal with it. Blisters can become totally debilitating out here. At home, you get a blister, you curl up in front of the TV until it's better. Here, you walk five miles in agony.” He looked around. “Got it?”

“Got it,” the group said.

“Pop quiz! What do you do if you feel a hot spot?”

“Deal with it!”

I wrote that in my notebook.
Hot Spot
=
Deal With It.
But there was a chill of fear in my chest. I'd been so pleased with my three-mile-a-day jog. But it was on pavement—and flat pavement at that. I'd never in my life spent an entire day hiking uphill. What if I truly couldn't do this? What if I could only get halfway up whatever I needed to climb? What if I was the weakest link? Looking around, it seemed not just possible but likely. Forget earning a Certificate! What a delusional idea. I'd be lucky just to finish. Who was I to think that I could change my whole life just by announcing things were going to be different? I'd always been one of those kids who was picked last at PE and who came in last around the track. Before doing a Mile Swim at summer camp, I'd cried myself to sleep.

The top half of the bus window was open, and the wind cut in and fluttered my hair. I leaned my head against the seat back. Of course, in adult life, nobody forces you to swim a mile or run a track. You can escape all that. Unless, of course—for some reason you cannot honestly even fathom—you sign yourself back up.

*   *   *

We reached the trailhead and piled off the bus. It was literally the end of the road. From this point on, it was nothing but foot trails leading off in different directions marked by wooden signs with yellow writing. The pine trees stood tall, and you couldn't just see them, and smell them, but you could also feel them—a silent presence all around. This was it; I would walk into that forest today and wouldn't walk out again for three weeks.

Our packs were all strapped onto the roof, and Beckett climbed up top with a rope and some carabiners to lower them down. But before we had a chance to put them on, Beckett said, “Don't saddle up yet, people. Time to pee.”

I looked around for a bathroom.

“Where?” the tent girl finally asked.

“Out there!” he said, gesturing to the woods. “Go find a place! Scatter! Welcome to the giant, free-for-all toilet of the wilderness.”

We scattered. I walked until I couldn't see or hear anybody, thinking all the while this would be an easy way to get very lost. As I squatted, and tried not to splatter on my boots, I thought about how guys really had it better than girls in so many ways. Of course, the idea of boys peeing made me think of Jake, and how he'd almost peed in my car. It seemed like a hundred years ago now, but part of me wanted to be back in that car, and badly. Driving, I knew how to do.

All the guys were back before I was—in fact, most of them hadn't even left, just turned their backs and peed where they stood. The girls, of course, took longer, and by the time we returned, the guys were gunning to go. I found my pack again—it was the only green-and-orange one—and I kneeled carefully to put it on. I'd managed fine the day before, but this time, with all the boys tapping their watches and shouting, “Come on, ladies!” I must have rushed it a bit. Also, if I'm totally honest, I was so frightened at that moment, so humbled in the face of the four hours of uphill climbing I was about to do, so viscerally terrified at the prospect of the path that literally lay before me, that my whole body, I swear to God, was trembling. So, as I twisted around to hoist my pack up into place, the true weight of the pack hit harder than it had the day before, and my knees buckled under me.

I caught myself, but not before my knee dipped down to slice itself on a rock.

It hurt. I made an “oof” noise, but I slid my pack on anyway and tried to stand at attention. I bit my lip to keep from cursing. Blood ran down my leg. I didn't look, but I could feel the wetness. Oh, well. What would Chuck Norris do? Treat it like a scratch and keep going.

We were lining up to start hiking at last, and I could feel the blood soaking my sock, when Beckett noticed my knee.

“Hold up!” he said. “What the hell happened to you?”

I shook my head. “I'm fine.”

“You're not fine,” Beckett said, his tone all irritation. “How did you do that to yourself? We haven't even started yet.”

“I slipped while putting on my pack.”

“Who's got the medical kit?” Beckett called to the group.

“I'm fine, really,” I said.

“I've got it,” came a voice from behind. Jake's voice.

“Let's just go,” I pleaded to Beckett.

“You ignore a cut like that,” Beckett said, pointing at me like I was trying to be naughty, “before you know it, you've got an infection so bad you've got to be evacuated by helicopter. Or worse. Packs off, people,” he shouted to the group. “We've got an injury.”

Some of the guys at the back hadn't realized what was going on. “What?” Mason shouted. “We haven't even started yet!”

Beckett pointed at me. “She slipped putting on her pack!”

I stared at the ground as the guys in the back groaned with irritation.

When I looked up, Jake was in front of me. He was wearing what he'd be wearing every day for the next three weeks: dark green cargo shorts, a rich blue baseball tee with a navy collar, a blue plaid Western overshirt with pearl snaps, that crazy Gilligan hat with the fishing fly, and those heavy-rimmed gray glasses—now secured around the back of his head with a neoprene camo strap.

His eyes were kind. “Take off your pack,” he said.

I sat on a nearby rock, and he poured hydrogen peroxide over the cut, whistling at the size of it. As we watched it bubble, he said, “That's pretty deep. Right on the kneecap, too. If we were in town, I'd send you for stitches.”

“But we're not.”

“No,” he agreed. “You'll be okay, though,” he said, looking up. “You'll just have a scar. Think of it as a wilderness tattoo.”

Here he was again, being nice to me.

Under any other circumstances, we'd be nowhere near each other right now. I'd be off nursing my bruised ego, and he'd be off doing whatever it was he did. Instead, he was kneeling before me, asking me all kinds of questions about my body and touching the skin all around my knee in the most tender way.

I closed my eyes. “Why do you have the medical kit?”

“Because I'm an EMT.”

“Of course you are.”

His hands seemed awfully steady and sure of themselves. I sat completely rigid while he cut the Band-Aids into shapes and built a little scaffolding to help protect the cut while still allowing my knee to bend.

“Can we go yet?” Mason shouted in our direction.

“In a minute,” Jake replied, taking his time. Then, before he helped me up, he pulled out a roll of duct tape from his pack, ripped a piece off with his teeth, and covered the whole bandage with it. “What's that?” I asked.

He frowned to say
duh
. “Duct tape.”

At last we set off. I insisted on putting my pack on by myself again—still nervous, but this time distracted by the pain—and when we were all buckled, we started off, single file. I was relieved to get on the trail at last. The trek across this range might turn out to be torture, but at least every step I took was one less that lay ahead of me.

Did I just say I was relieved to get on the trail? That was true. For about ten minutes.

Then, those gross old rented boots started rubbing my feet. In several places. At first, I thought I was imagining it, but after a half hour, it was clearly happening: I was getting blisters. On the first day.

So I ignored them. I didn't want to be that girl who complains and makes everybody wait.

With blisters or without, I was still going to be one of the slowest hikers there. We'd barely started when I lost sight of the person in front of me, and then got passed, one by one, by almost everybody in the group. By the time we took our first break for water and snacks, about two hours in, I could not deny that there were only two girls slower than me. It probably would have been a great time to pull Jake off and surreptitiously tend to my hot spots, but I just didn't want to. Nobody else was getting blisters! As stupid as it was, I ignored them. I couldn't be slow
and
blistered. Slow was bad enough. Beckett lectured us about sticking together on the trail, and how we were only as fast as our weakest links. When he said the words, “weakest links,” he pointed right at me and the two girls at the back.

“I know it sucks to go slow,” Beckett said to the guys, “and you may feel that these out-of-shape girls are hampering you. But teamwork is a wilderness skill, too. Remember that.”

I wanted to believe that Beckett was more clueless than mean. But some of the other boys were both clueless and mean. And juvenile. And asinine. By lunchtime, I knew that guy Mason was going to be trouble, because he constantly picked on everybody and sniffed out weaknesses. When a guy named Ron asked one too many questions about how to read a topographical map, he nicknamed him “Mapron,” his own variation on “moron.” After Hugh tripped on a branch, Mason made sure to pelt branches at him at every stop, saying “Don't trip!” He'd insulted every girl in the group before lunchtime as well, passing them all one by one as we hiked, and saying, “Move it, heifers. Real hiker coming through.” He was a meanness overachiever. It almost made me glad to be way at the back.