Summary
They wake at 4:30 and break the camp in the dark. Beckett appoints Helen to lead the group to Hugh and the Sisters, to Mason’s chagrin. Helen hikes faster than usual, putting her map reading skills into practice. Windy talks about neurological plasticity, and how happiness is “more about appreciation than acquisition.” Helen realizes she’d always assumed happiness was getting what you wanted. They reach Hugh in three hours; he is sipping soup the Sisters made. Jake assesses that Hugh may have fractured and dislocated his hip. He tells the group Helen is a hero. Beckett concedes that she got something right.
To carry Hugh, they build a “litter” out of aluminum backpack frames and ropes and a sleeping bag. Helen is one of the six assigned to carry Hugh in the makeshift stretcher. They walk the three miles to the trail head where Hugh will be passed off to another BCSC employee and taken to a hospital. Helen’s shoulder hurts. To keep up morale and get everyone walking in step, Jake begins a military chant, complete with lyrics about being miserable. They cross an ice-cold river, which comes up to Helen’s hip. At the trail head, the administrator isn’t there yet. Beckett says Jake, Helen, and Windy should stay with Hugh while the others go to set up camp. While waiting around, Windy suddenly tells Jake to kiss her. He suggests that he is too smelly, but she insists. Helen tries to ignore it as they make out. Hugh tells her it’s too bad, because he thought Helen was the one Jake liked.
The ambulance arrives and takes Hugh away. Helen kisses his cheek. They hike back in to join the larger group. Windy talks of her and Jake as “we,” insisting that they slow down so Helen can hike with them. Even though she resents Windy, Helen can’t help but root for her as she hears Windy talk about how she got into positive psychology after her mother’s breast cancer and her sister’s addiction issues. She is “an inspiration, dammit!” She decides she will let it go and wish them well as she commits to doing what she came there to do.
Instead of taking a “Zero Day” of rest after the grueling evac hiking, Beckett makes the group push on to make it in three days to Painted Meadow, where they will have a solstice party. Helen earns the nickname Holdup, as in what’s the holdup? Windy changes it to the old-timey bandit meaning of holdup, firing fake pistols when she says it. The others follow her lead, and Helen becomes associated with Wild West gunslinging caricatures. When they arrive, Helen appreciates the beauty of the Painted Meadow, which is full of grass, wildflowers, and white butterflies. Beckett says it gets its name from a massacre of Shoshone Native Americans whose blood “painted” the meadow. He tells them it is supposedly haunted. Helen sleeps well and spends the rest day lying on a sun-warmed rock. She thinks about how much Nathan would have loved it there.
Helen’s tranquility is disrupted by three girls who join her and begin gossiping about how Jake is going to propose to Windy in the meadow that night. To get away from the gossips, Helen asks Beckett for tasks she can do. He tells her it's Certificate-worthy behavior. She collects dandelions for a salad, and joins the group as Cookie grills three mouthwatering fish caught in the stream. Helen commits herself to enjoying the party and ignoring Jake and Windy. The group sings songs and dance, Beckett pulling Helen up to make her join in. She has so much fun that she loses track of Jake and Windy, receiving a jolt of anxiety when she realizes they aren’t in sight. While looking around for them, she sees snowflakes falling.
Surprised by the snow, Beckett makes a plan quickly, telling everyone to clean up the cook site, but make cocoa for everyone with a spoonful of butter for extra calories to stay warm through the night. They make one big tarp to sleep together and conserve warmth. He makes them put on everything that isn’t wet. Helen ends up wedged between two of the biggest guys in the group, but is head to head with Jake and Windy. Helen is the first awake, and she pushes up the low-hanging tarp, which is heavy with snow. They hike to Elk Ridge, stopping to check the map often because the ground is hidden by snow. The snow melts by the time they arrive that night.
Three days later, after hiking a pass called the Devil’s Crotch, Beckett announces who will go with who for the Solos—twenty-four hours in which groups are sent out on their own to survive. Beckett asks people to write down who they want to be with. Later, he says he doesn’t care who they want or don’t want to be with: he is pairing them with the people they need. Helen is with Mason, one of the Sisters, and Jake. Beckett won’t change it when Windy and Helen ask if they can trade spots. Helen confronts him about why she is with Jake when she wrote down “anybody but Jake.” Beckett says she is accident-prone and he is a medic; she is also a good map reader, and he is nearly blind. He adds, “And I gave you Jake because you absolutely never believe in yourself—and he finds a way to believe in you every damn day.”
When they set out, Mason pushes ahead restlessly, Dosie falls to the back, and Helen and Jake take the middle at a conversational pace. She enjoys talking with him. By noon, Mason confesses that they aren’t on the right trail. Two or three hours back, Mason led them onto a game trail and now they’ve hit a hill. Helen takes over, leading with her compass as she tries to find a stream to camp near. However, it is down a steep ravine. Jake offers to go get a pot of water.
When she has a worried feeling, Helen goes down and finds Jake on his hands and knees searching for his glasses. He is breathing hard. When she reaches him, Jake holds on to Helen tight and breathes into her neck. She reassures him. He admits that his bad news was that he has a vision disorder called retinitis pigmentosa and is going to lose his sight entirely in the next few years. The rods and cones in his eyes are dying quickly. There is no treatment, he insists. Helen confirms this is why he faked his medical report, and why he isn’t going to med school. She hears a snap and realizes she has been kneeling on his glasses. Luckily only the arm broke off, and the lenses are okay. He puts them on and hugs Helen, soon kissing her passionately. Helen enjoy it until she pushes away, remembering Windy. They agree not to talk about it. Jake adds that they do a lot of things that never happened.
That night, the sound of a rutting elk wakes them. Jake and Helen talk about Duncan recently being dumped by his girlfriend of two years. Helen never knew about her. Jake says he has a list of sights he wants to see before losing his vision, including petting whales. He and Helen speculate that he could have a career interpreting the sounds whales make. He invites her to join him on the Baja trip rather than go to her old friend’s kid’s bar mitzvah. The next day, Helen leads the solo group back to the main group camp. Everyone has miraculously survived. Beckett tells them about the democratic Certificate voting process. Everyone gets one vote—aside from Beckett, who gets two votes—to nominate someone who has demonstrated leadership, compassion, commitment, and virtue. Beckett says he knows who both of his votes are going to. As the participants bend their heads to fill out their ballots, Beckett meets Helen’s eye, points his finger like a pistol, and pulls the trigger.
Analysis
In Chapter 11, Center builds on the major theme of support. Having fractured and dislocated his hip because he stepped through a rotten log, Hugh relies on the material assistance of the entire hiking group as they figure out how to evacuate him from the woods. Led by Beckett and Jake, the group comes together to create a makeshift “litter” stretcher out of their gear. Once Hugh is strapped in, they carry him for several miles out of the woods. Jake keeps the group’s morale up while simultaneously keeping them coordinated by calling out marching chants as they move in step.
The theme of resentment arises when Helen observes Windy and Jake’s relationship deepening. Jealous seeing them kiss and hearing Windy speak of them as a couple, using the pronoun “we,” Helen can’t help but feel resentment toward Windy. However, in an instance of situational irony, Helen concludes that Windy’s personal history is too inspiring for her to truly resent her. Deciding she will refocus her efforts on attaining a Certificate, Helen tries to accept that there is nothing she can do to intervene; she believes she is powerless to stop Jake and Windy’s intimacy.
Helen’s sense of humiliation deepens when she receives the nickname Holdup from Beckett, which he gives her because she is always holding up the group by lagging at the back. However, Windy once again wins favor with Helen by turning the insult into a positive nickname. Helen, still unable to resent Windy fully, appreciates that Windy looks out for her in this way. The theme of appreciation continues once the group arrives at the Painted Meadow. Though the story behind its name references colonialist violence, the area possesses a rare beauty. In this environment, Helen slips into a reverie about Nathan, moving through her grief to a place of acceptance.
Center returns to the theme of support when Beckett divides the twelve hikers into groups of four for the solo hikes. Though Helen requests to be paired with anyone but Jake, in an instance of situational irony, Beckett puts Jake in her group. Helen is resentful, but Beckett’s pairings are not arbitrary or punitive, but based on compatibility. He explains that Helen and Jake need to support each other, as she is a skilled map reader and Jake can barely see. But beyond this material support, Helen needs Jake because she is always doubting herself while Jake never ceases to believe in her.
Just as Beckett’s explanation foreshadowed, Jake depends on Helen to help him when his eyesight becomes a problem. Having sacrificed his glasses strap for Hugh’s litter, Jake loses his glasses while fetching water from the bottom of a steep ravine. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Jake, while shaking with fear, reveals the secret of his eye disorder. While he had hoped to conceal from people because of his denial about the condition, Jake explains now that he will soon be legally blind. The moment of emotional intimacy between Helen and Jake turns romantic when he kisses her again. Although Helen enjoys kissing him, she believes it to be wrong because she thinks Jake is with Windy now.
