Praise for
KATHERINE CENTER

“Serious Nora Ephron vibes”

Taylor Jenkins Reid

“A shot of pure joy”

Emily Henry

“Absolutely, unequivocally delightful”

Jodi Picoult

“Katherine Center writes about falling down, growing up, and finding love like nobody else”

Brené Brown

“Pure, unvarnished delight”

Christina Lauren

“Great, rollicking fun! A perfect feel-good romcom”

Helen Hoang

“Perfect for lovers of romance novels, witty banter and easy, breezy reads”

Reader’s Digest

For my husband, Gordon, on our twentieth year together.
Thanks for being so good at love.

Chapter 1

If you want to put me in Hell, plunk me down in the middle of a party where I don’t know anyone. If you want to be really thorough, fill the place with drunken college kids. And make sure every other one manages to spill a drink on me. Don’t tell me about the party in advance, so I show up in sweatpants and ponytails. While you’re at it, put a bubble-gum pink cat carrier under my arm. With a pissed-off mini dachshund inside.

Actually, don’t. Because then you’ll turn into my brother Duncan. And trust me: You don’t want to be Duncan.

Here’s what he did this time. He said he’d watch my dog, Pickle, while I was out of town for three weeks. I reminded him that she was a bit of an ankle-biter and not a huge fan of the human race. Or the canine one. Or living creatures in general. Still, Duncan swore he wanted to with such sincerity that even after knowing him for a lifetime, I said okay. He swore to devote himself to her comfort the whole time I was gone. He even teased me that he’d burn a meat-scented candle to help her feel at home.

We agreed I’d drop Pickle off the night before I left, but by the time it was time, Duncan had forgotten the whole plan as if it had never existed. Instead, he’d decided to host a “small gathering of good friends” with his roommate, Jake, bartending. Jake, for his part, had invented a drink called “the Lambada” mixed with homemade moonshine that he swore would get you laid if you even just sniffed it.

Suddenly a hundred people were crammed into an apartment the size of a refrigerator. And one of them was me.

The worst part wasn’t even that Duncan kept doing this kind of thing. It was that I kept falling for it. And now my emotionally challenged pet had to suffer.

Duncan, as always in these moments, was nowhere to be found.

I pushed my way through to his room, which was empty. Not empty of dirty boxers on the floor, or three-week-old Chinese takeout containers, or posters with girls in bikinis—just empty of Duncan. In the corner, the recliner he’d rescued from the heavy trash was piled taller than me with dirty laundry. A six-month-old tangle of Christmas lights hung from a sad nail, flashing on and off like Vegas.

I picked my way over to the unmade bed, set Pickle’s carrier down, and tilted it up to peer in at her face. Her top lip was caught on the teeth. The ears were drooping. The eyes were all betrayal.

“You don’t want to live here, do you?” I said.

To my surprise, a voice behind me answered back. “I don’t mind.”

It was Jake. Housemate, bartender, and Duncan’s best friend since tenth grade. But it took me a second to register, and not just because he was standing in a corner, somewhat out of sight. He looked different—radically different—than the last time I’d seen him. When had that been? I had no idea. Long enough for him to grow like a foot taller, and to fill out in all those good boy places, like shoulders and arms, and to get a vast improvement of a haircut that spiked up in the front. I knew it was him, of course—but he looked so unlike the person I pictured on the rare occasion that I thought of him, I couldn’t help but confirm: “Jake?”

He raised a hand. “Hi, Helen.”

“Were you hiding back there?”

“I wasn’t hiding,” he said with a frown. “I was in the nook.”

“The nook?”

“Yeah,” he said, turning to gesture behind him. “We turned the closet into a nook. Video games, music. I use it mostly for reading.”

“You and Duncan built a nook?”

“It’s awesome. It’s like a spaceship in there. Want to see?”

I gave him a look: really? I had never liked this kid. Everything that made me crazy about Duncan? Jake made it worse. After Duncan met Jake, he did half the dishes, half the homework, and twice the dope-smoking that he’d done before. I’d hoped they’d lose touch when they went off to college, but, instead, they became housemates. For four years. Now it was the summer after their senior year—though Duncan hadn’t quite graduated—and they were still living like idiots.

Apparently, Duncan didn’t have time to graduate, but he had time to build a spaceship nook. No, I did not want to see it. Nope.

Jake was staring at me in the way he always stared at me when we were in the same room: mouth slightly open, as if he were not just looking at me, but beholding me, somehow. From anyone else, it would have been flattering.

I finally had to say something. “You cut off your ponytail.”

He nodded, remembering. “Yep,” he said. “Yep. Grabbed a big pair of scissors and snipped it right off. Duncan keeps it in a coffee mug on the shelf and calls it our pet.”

There was a pause, while Jake kept nodding.

“Was that for graduation?” I finally asked.

“No,” he said, switching to head-shaking. “That was freshman year.”

That got my attention. “You’ve had your hair short since freshman year? Haven’t I seen you since then?”

“Oh, yeah. A bunch of times.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him. I’d certainly never noticed he’d cut off all that nasty hair and spiked it into a dark Speed Racer look. I guess sometimes you just get an idea of a person in your mind, and that’s what you see when you look at him, no matter what.

“It could be the glasses,” he offered.

I frowned.

“The new glasses,” he said, tapping them. “I never wore glasses before this year.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.” It was becoming quite clear to me—and likely to him, too—that I’d never really looked at him before. He might have insisted he’d always worn a pirate patch, and I couldn’t have argued.

“I like them,” I said then.

“They’re very Nixon administration,” he said. “Duncan’s started calling me Apollo Thirteen.”

So there we had it. Haircut, hipster glasses, and the mysterious addition of all kinds of muscles. Three was a magic number after all. “Well,” I said, looking away. “It’s a thousand times better.”

“Thanks.”

Another pause.

“Are you looking for Duncan?” Jake asked then.

“Yes!” I said, and it all came back—how mad I was. “He’s supposed to dog-sit for me.”

“That’s a dog in there?” He peered in. Pickle growled.

The music outside the bedroom seemed to get louder. “We were supposed to do a drop-off tonight,” I said. “Duncan was not supposed to be hosting Girls Gone Wild.”

Jake wrinkled his nose in apology. “He probably forgot.”

“Of course he forgot,” I said. “It’s Duncan. And that’s why I’m leaving. But first I want to thank him profusely for letting me down. Again.”

Jake nodded like he really got it. “He’s big on the offering, not so big on the actual doing.”

I shook my head at my own stupidity. “I never should have agreed.”

“It’s hard, though,” Jake said. “He really means it when he offers. You just have to train yourself to say no. I’ve got it on a tattoo: ALWAYS SAY NO TO DUNCAN.”

I tilted my head. “Really?”

He smiled like I was adorable. “Not really. I’m kidding.”

I sighed.

“Great ponytails, by the way,” he added.

Pickle started barking then—loudly, over and over. “Do you know where Duncan is?” I asked.

He nodded. “He’s in my room. That’s why I’m here.”

I shook my head. “Why aren’t either of you actually attending your own party?”

“Um,” Jake said, turning his eyes up to the ceiling to think. “Well, I’m in the middle of this great book, so I took a bartending break to see what happens next, but I’m pretty sure Duncan might be getting lucky.”

I put my hand over my eyes. “Please tell me you’re kidding again.”

“Nope,” he said. “I seem to be sexiled.”

I dropped my hand to look at him.

“That’s when you’re exiled from your room,” he explained, “because someone else is having sex there.”

“I know what sexiled is,” I said. “They had that word even way back when I was in college.”

Jake nodded approvingly.

“Why is he in your room?” I asked.

Jake gestured around like it was obvious. “You can’t bring a girl in here.”

I scanned the bikini posters. “But yours is okay?”

He shrugged. “My filth level is lower.”

I sighed again. There were very few things Duncan could be doing that I wouldn’t be willing to interrupt right now, but “getting lucky” was one of them. “Can you give him a message for me?” I asked.

“Sure,” Jake said. “Anything.”

“Tell him he’s a moron, and he can kiss my ass.”

Jake nodded as he committed it to memory. “Got it.”

“Don’t forget,” I said, as I bent down to lift Pickle’s carrier.

He crossed his heart. “I won’t forget,” he said. “Especially the part about your ass.”

Was he flirting with me? He was ten years younger than I was! Uppity behavior like that demanded an icy stare-down. But, in honor of the fact that he’d cut off that greasy ponytail, I let it slide.

I was at the door when he said something that stopped me. “Thanks for the ride, by the way.”

I turned back with my hand still on the knob. “What ride?”

Jake looked flummoxed for a second, then frowned. “The ride?” he said. “Tomorrow?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m actually going out of town tomorrow, so I can’t give you a ride anywhere.” Not that I would have, anyway. Had I ever given him a ride to anything? What was he thinking?

“I know,” he said. “You’re going to Wyoming. To go hiking. On a survival course.”

“That’s right,” I said, surprised that Duncan had conveyed so many details correctly.

“I’m also going to Wyoming tomorrow. To go hiking—”

And then, with dread, I knew what he was going to say.

“—on the same survival course.”

I set Pickle down. “I’m sorry. What?”

“We’re going to the same place,” he said, like it all made perfect sense. “Duncan said you wouldn’t mind giving me a ride.”

It didn’t make sense. Why would this kid Jake be going on the same trip as me? How could the universe even let that happen? This was something I was doing for myself, on my own. A Back Country Survival Company course, no less. BCSC courses were famously hard-core, invariably grueling, and occasionally life-threatening. It was a big deal for me. It was supposed to be a spiritual journey. It was supposed to signify my bouncing back after the worst year—or six—of my life. Duncan’s goofy friend could not be coming, too. He was not invited.

“But this is something I’m doing alone,” I said matter-of-factly, in a mind-melding tone that always worked beautifully on the first graders in my class.

“Well,” he said, “it’s twelve people plus the instructor, so you won’t exactly be alone.”

Not a first grader, then. “But, I mean, alone like on my own.”

“On your own with eleven other people,” he confirmed. “And me.”

This was crazy. “How can you be coming on my trip?”

“Technically, you are coming on my trip,” he said. “Duncan only knew about it because I was going.”

Duncan. This was all his fault. Again. As usual. “But he never said anything about you,” I said.

“I think at the time you signed up, I thought I couldn’t go. But now I can.” He shrugged, looking pleased.

This was not the plan. The plan, as I had fantasized for the last six months, was to drive out to Wyoming and have a brave adventure with a bunch of strangers that would totally change not just my life, but my entire personality. The plan was to set out alone into the world, conquer it, and return home a fiercer and more badass version of myself. The plan did not include anybody but me—especially not, of all people, Jake.

I made an apologetic face. “I’m so sorry,” I said, like this settled things, “but I’m supposed to stay with my grandmother on the trip out.”

“Grandma GiGi? She loves me.”

“She couldn’t,” I said. My grandma GiGi didn’t love anybody except me. And Duncan. On occasion.

“She does. I swear. Call her.”

“I’m not going to call her. I’ve got things to do. On the drive back, I have to go to a bar mitzvah to see some old friends.”

He nodded. “The son of your high school boyfriend and your high school best friend. Right? Why would you go to that?”

I gaped. This kid knew way too much about my life. “I’m going,” I said, “because we’re friends on Facebook now, and because they asked me to, and because it’s not healthy to hold a grudge.”

“You’re friends on Facebook?”

“Yeah. Except I never, ever go on Facebook.” I blinked. “Why do you even know about any of this?”

“Duncan told me,” he said with a shrug. “That’s fine. I don’t need a ride back. Just out.”

“You’re not coming back?” I said.

“Eventually I’m coming back,” he said. “But first I’m going to Baja. Like four days after the BCSC trip ends. I fly out of Denver.” He paused. I guess he expected me to ask him why he was going.

I didn’t.

He continued. “I snagged a research assistantship for a field study on whales.”

I stared at him.

“We’re going to row out to their breeding grounds in little fishing boats and study how they interact with humans.”

I gave in to curiosity. “Why?”

“Because it’s fascinating.”

“Is it?”

“It is. The whales swim up to the boats—voluntarily. People pet them.”

“Why?”

He frowned like he couldn’t imagine how I could ask that question. Like I should get it. Which in truth, I did. Why would you pet a whale? Because it wanted you to.

“It’s powerful,” he said. “People cry. People burst into show tunes.”

“Show tunes?”

“People say they are never the same again.”

“I don’t see what’s so great about petting a whale.”

He leveled his gaze at me. “Yes, you do.”

“No, I really don’t.”

We stared each other down.

After a minute, he went on, as if that tangent about whales had somehow settled the ride-to-Wyoming question.

“So it’s just the ride out. You won’t even know I’m there. I’ll even sit in the backseat, if you want. Or you can strap me to the roof rack. I thought about making a music mix—but then I was like, ‘No way, dude, she’s got her own music’—so I’ll just stay out of your way and not even make a sound and we’ll listen to whatever you want. Even Carly Simon, or whatever—”

“No!” I almost shouted. I felt a rising sense of panic. Here was my life, proceeding without my consent. Again. “Look, I don’t know what Duncan told you, or promised you, but I’m sorry: I cannot give you a ride. You’ll just have to go on a different trip.”

“But it’s non-refundable.”

I knew that, of course. “Then you’ll just have to take the bus. Or something.”

Jake studied my face. “Okay,” he said. “No problem.”

I exhaled. “Good. Great! I’ll see you in Wyoming.” I bent down to grab Pickle’s carrier.

“Except …?” he added.

I stood back up empty-handed. “Except what?”

“Except I’m pretty short on cash,” he said. “I don’t think I have enough for a bus ticket.”

I closed my eyes. “You’re short on cash?”

He shrugged. “We went over budget on the nook.”

I glanced at the nook for confirmation. Then I looked back like, Seriously? “What about your parents?” I asked.

“Parent,” he corrected. “Just my dad.”

“Can’t he help you out?”

“He’s in Texas,” he said, shrugging like he was on Mars. “And he doesn’t exactly know I’m going on this trip.”

I put my hands on my hips and tried to come up with another answer. Any other answer. Down at my ankles, Pickle was whimpering.

“It’s cool,” he said. “I can see it doesn’t work. I’ll just hitch.”

“You’re not hitching,” I said.

“No, I’ve done it before—”

“You are not hitching,” I said, in my teacher voice, and it felt for a second—before I realized the opposite was true—like I’d won.

“Okay,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll ride with you.” Then he gave me a half grin that I couldn’t help noticing made a very high-caliber dimple. “If you insist.”

Chapter 2

It’s a thousand and one miles from Boston to Evanston, give or take. You can drive it in a day, but it’s a long day. A fifteen-hour day, according to Google.

That’s why I’d wanted to leave early—before the sun was up. That’s why I’d wanted to get Pickle set up with Duncan the night before. If I made it home fast enough, I’d get a good visit with my grandmother. My grandmother who’d raised Duncan and me after our mother lost interest. My nothing-short-of-fabulous grandmother, who wore a bun with chopsticks in it, who I adored.

As it was, though, I had to wait for the vet to open so I could bring Pickle in for boarding.

Pickle was never happy about much, but going to the vet made her positively suicidal. As I waved a falsely cheerful good-bye, I felt a squeeze of regret and wondered if I should have left her at Duncan’s place after all. But I couldn’t have. That dog didn’t know how lucky she was. If nothing else, the party last night had likely saved her life. If I’d left her with Duncan, I’d no doubt have returned weeks later to a desiccated pile of fur and a befuddled-looking brother, scratching his head, saying, “I thought she got awfully quiet.”

Walking back to my Subaru after the drop-off, I realized I’d parked so hastily that I’d left one tire partway up on the curb. I hadn’t even noticed at the time, but, back out front, the wonky tire was the first thing I saw. The second thing I saw was Jake, standing right next to it, holding a Starbucks coffee.

“Nice parking job,” he said, handing me the cup.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Thought I’d save you the trouble of picking me up.”

“What if you’d missed me?”

“Well, that would have been the opposite of saving you trouble,” he admitted. “But that’s not what happened.”

I took in the sight of him: bed-head hair, cargo pants with no belt, and a surprisingly clingy T-shirt with Snoopy on it. His duffel bag leaned against the car.

“Worried I’d skip town without you?” I asked.

That made him smile. “You bet,” he said.

“I thought about it,” I said.

He rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a book with a whale on the cover. “I’ll read the whole time,” he said. “You won’t even know I’m here.”

I gave him a look. “Right.”

“Ready to go?”

“Not really,” I said, but I unlocked the door anyway.

As I watched him shove his bag into the way back, I wondered how he’d known where to find me, but then I remembered the Pickle packet I’d assembled for Duncan, with a highlighted map to the vet’s.

“Duncan showed you the packet,” I said.

Jake nodded and slammed the hatchback closed. “You’re very thorough.”

I was. In fact, I’d truly gone overboard. Letters of explanation to the vet. Letters of explanation to Duncan. More information than anybody needed. I felt a sting of shame that swung right over to resentment at Duncan for forcing me to be that way. “When it comes to Duncan, I am.”

“Want me to drive?”

“No.”

No, I did not want him to drive. If it were up to me, he’d be crammed back there with his duffel, and I’d be up front, alone with all the music I’d collected for the journey: Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, Indigo Girls. The plan had been to sing my lungs out on the drive west, to team up with everybody from Annie Lennox to James Brown and belt out every emotion in the human repertoire. And then, hopefully, by the time I hit Wyoming, to be done with them all.

Of course, I wouldn’t be belting anything out in front of Jake. That’s not the kind of singing you do with a stranger. Or a friend of your brother’s. I glanced over at him. Driving a thousand and one miles today in songless silence while this kid played video games on his phone was not what I’d signed up for.

But there it was. Life never gives you exactly what you want. That didn’t change the fact that it was time to go. We buckled up and I edged us out into the street.

“So,” I said, as we joined the flow of cars. “It’s one thousand and one miles from here to Evanston.”

“One thousand and one?”

“Roughly.” I nodded. “Google says it’ll take fifteen hours and twenty-two minutes,” I went on, glancing at the clock on the dashboard, “and it’s eleven minutes after nine now, thanks to Duncan, so we won’t make it in time for dinner. We should arrive at my grandma’s house—”

“After midnight,” he finished.

“Right,” I said, giving a little sigh. I wondered if I should call and tell Grandma GiGi not to wait up. She was a night owl, but she wasn’t literally nocturnal.

“I bet we can still get you there for dinner,” Jake said. “A late one, anyway.” I could see him thinking. “Google’s assuming we’re driving sixty-five miles an hour. But we’ll be doing eighty or ninety, at least.”

“Seventy,” I corrected. “Or whatever the speed limit is.”

“Okay,” he said, still calculating. “You’ll be driving the speed limit, and I’ll be driving whatever gets us up to an average of eighty.” He turned and checked the backseat. “Yup. Duncan predicted you’d pack a cooler of snacks.”

I felt like I was being teased, but I wasn’t quite sure about what.

“So,” he went on, “we won’t have to stop for meals, which’ll save some time.” He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling while he did the math. “Eighty miles an hour into a thousand—and one—is more like twelve hours. Ish. Fewer if we pee in bottles.”

“Girls can’t pee in bottles,” I said.

He glanced over. “I bet you could. If you tried.”

Was he complimenting or insulting me? I shook my head. “That’s where I draw the line,” I said. “At peeing in bottles.”

He gave in with a nod. “Probably a good place for it.”

“But the rest of the plan,” I said, adding a tiny shrug as I realized it was true, “I love.”

He looked pleased with himself. “Thanks.”

So he had a can-do attitude. So he’d brought me a cappuccino. So he was willing to pee in a bottle to get me to my grandma’s on time. Also: I had to admit the morning sunshine around us was insistently cheery. Maybe the drive wouldn’t be so bad, after all. I lifted my coffee and took a sip just as he decided to strike up some more conversation:

“So,” he said. “How’s life without your dickhead ex-husband?”

My response was to choke on that coffee so violently that Jake had to take my cup in one hand and grab the wheel with the other.

“Sorry,” he said, when I’d resumed command of the wheel. “Guess that’s a tender subject.”

“No,” I said, defiantly pawing at my watering eyes. “It’s not a tender subject.”

Here, to underscore the point, I used another favorite teacher voice—the Mary Poppins. This one implied that every problem had a solution, that the world deep down made perfect, comforting, and pleasant sense, and that if you carefully maintained the right spoonful-of-sugar attitude, you might even one day find yourself traveling over London by the stem of your parasol.

The Mary Poppins was the only voice I ever used to talk about my failed marriage, and I sat up straighter to execute it properly. “The guy I happened to marry,” I went on, channeling Julie Andrews so hard that I almost went British, “later turned into a raging alcoholic. When his problem began to impact our marriage, I gave him several chances to pull it together. Unfortunately for everyone, he just couldn’t manage it.”

In conclusion, I took a successful sip of coffee, as if to say, End of story! Spit spot! And now I am enjoying a delicious hot beverage.

“So you divorced him,” Jake said.

“So I divorced him,” I confirmed. I did not add: After I lost our first baby at thirteen weeks pregnant. And he was nowhere to be found.

“A year ago,” he added, as if to say he was already up on all the details.

“A year ago,” I confirmed. Almost to the day. And I was fine now. Ish.

“And how that’s going?” he asked.

“How’s what going?”

“Being single.”

“Fine,” I said. “Great.” But I was hardly anything as adorable as “single.” I was just alone.

“You’re okay?” He was frowning at me.

“I’m always okay,” I said.

“Nobody’s always okay.”

“I am,” I declared. This conversation was beyond useless. Of course I wasn’t okay—not “always,” or, lately, “often.” But even if I had wanted to discuss the infinite ways I’d felt utterly broken this year—which I frigging did not—Jake the bartender, inventor of “the forbidden drink of love,” would be the very last person I’d turn to.

I could feel his gaze traveling along my face.

I sat up even straighter. I kept my eyes on the road. I imagined the angle of Julie Andrews’s chin and lifted mine to the very spot.

“Okay,” he said at last, unconvinced but willing to drop it. “If you say so.”

“I do say so,” I said.

“ ’Cause I was wondering if you might want to kill yourself.”

I coughed. “Kill myself?”

“What were you thinking, anyway? Signing up for a BCSC course?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Probably the same thing you were.”

“You weren’t thinking what I was,” he said, as if the idea were ridiculous.

I let it slide. “I want a challenge. I want to do something really hard. I want to push myself beyond my limitations.”

“Or maybe you just want to kill yourself.”

I looked over. “I do not want to kill myself.”

“People die on these trips all the time.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Of all the outdoor adventure courses you could have chosen, you picked the most terrifying, the most reckless, the most lethal of them all. What’s that about?”

“Duncan suggested it,” I said.

“Duncan suggested a course. Not this course.”

“He showed me the catalog.”

“You never do anything Duncan suggests.” Jake shook his head. “Why start now?”

It was true. But the fact that Duncan had suggested it was incidental. What got me hooked on the idea was a People magazine human interest story I stumbled on a few restless nights later about a guy who had lost a leg in Afghanistan and brought himself back to life by completing this very course. With one leg! He did it—and did it well enough to earn one of their prized “Certificates,” which were only given out to the top three participants. The article had echoed in my head for days afterwards: “I was lost,” the guy had said, “but I found myself out there.”

Was I lost? Not technically. But I had lost something that I couldn’t even articulate—and I’d gone far too long without finding it. Was it waiting for me in the Wyoming wilderness? Probably not. But I had to start somewhere.

Clearly, Duncan also thought I never did anything he suggested. When I’d told him I’d signed up, he’d coughed in disbelief and tried to talk me out of it, insisting a course like this was no place for someone like me. In his view, it was both pretty extreme and kind of phony. It attracted the worst of the worst. Real hard-core hikers, Duncan had argued, knew what they were doing and organized their own trips. BCSC was for hard-core wannabes. They didn’t want to study the terrain or buy the proper gear or actually take the time to know what they were doing—they just wanted to sign up and do it. Which made them not just daredevils, but lazy daredevils.

I glanced at Jake. “You signed up for it, too.”

“I’ve gone camping every year with my dad since I was three. I have tons of experience. Plus, I’m coordinated.”

“You’re saying I’m not coordinated?”

He tilted his head. Yes. That’s what he was saying. And he wasn’t wrong, either.

“I’ve been camping,” I said at last.

“When?” he demanded.

“I drove to Colorado with my high school boyfriend.”

“That’s not camping. That’s a slumber party. I bet you ate fluffer-nutters on white bread.”

“We did not!” I said. We’d eaten beef jerky. And Oreos.

“The point is,” Jake went on, “this is totally over your head.”

“They took my application. They let me in.”

“That’s because they don’t care if you die.”

In truth, several people had died—or at least been maimed—on trips with this group. Duncan had Googled it hoping to convince me to do Outward Bound, instead—or something more sane and reasonable. But I didn’t want sane and reasonable. I wanted crazy and unreasonable. I wanted to amaze everybody, including myself. My own personal campaign of shock and awe.

“They’re under new management now,” I said.

“I think they like it when people die,” Jake said. “These guys have cornered the market on hard-core nut-job wannabes, and a clear-and-present threat of death just improves their appeal. To crazy people.”

Was that me? Maybe.

I had signed about fifty waivers, declaring BCSC blameless for every possible life-threatening, or life-ending, situation I might encounter out there, including bear attacks, avalanches, hypothermia, and “fatal diarrhea.”

Nothing about this course should have appealed to me. BCSC was notorious for taking the steepest slopes, following the rockiest paths, and exploring the most remote locations. Google “BCSC,” and there’s article after article of broken collarbones, rockslides, bear attacks, missing hikers, and hypothermia. That’s how they’d become the patron saints of crazies, thrill-seekers, and people with nothing left to lose. Which, needless to say, wasn’t me. I was a first-grade teacher, for Pete’s sake!

I couldn’t believe the tone in Jake’s voice. “Why are you asking me about this? This has nothing to do with you.”

“Well,” he said, “it kind of does. Since I’m here.”

“I didn’t ask you to be here!”

He closed his mouth and looked away.

“I’m going to get a Certificate,” I said.

“You think you’re going to be one of the top three on this trip?” he said, in a tone like, Come on.

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t. I think you’ll be lucky to survive.”

“That’s because you’re looking at the old me. This,” I patted myself on the head, “is the former me. The me I’m about to become is someone else entirely. You wouldn’t dare patronize her. She’d claw out your eyeballs and feed them to her dog.”

“I can’t wait to meet her.”

“She’s going to ruin your life, man.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said.

And despite the unabashed mockery in his voice, a quieter, raspier sound had crept in, too. One that made me wonder if he maybe, really, actually thought she would.