Six months before
Jim squinted at his mother and father as they lovingly argued with each other. It was one of those arguments that only happens between people who care for each other, where they are both vehemently against what the other is saying but as soon as it's finished they'll not care that it happened and carry on organising the washing. Jim stood to the side of the loving argument.
"There's no way I'll allow my boy to run off to Oregon with some strangers to go camping for three months!" Lou-Anne said, her hands straining and swinging as her Creole accent peaked through. She was getting irritated.
"What's the worst that happens, he dies?" Jim's father, Martin asked jokingly. Lou-Anne glared. "Alright, but he asked to go, shouldn't that mean anything? You've always - always - said that you wanted him out the house more, and now he's offering to go two-and-a-half thousand miles away from home. He's 19, Lou, let him become a man."
The newspaper clipping was still held ever so gently between Jim's thumb and forefinger, as if pressing to hard would let the sweat gushing from his pores run the ink off the page and ruin his chance forever. He really wished he could see what his mother looked like right now, but this was too tense of a situation to go into the next room and collect his glasses. He also thought she was staring at him.
"Get your glasses, Jim. You look like a doofus giving me that look," she said. Jim grabbed his glasses and returned to the kitchen. Everything was crystal clear now; the exasperated look of unhappy guilt on Lou-Anne's face in contrast to the hopeful look of glee carving its way across Martin's skull. "Fuck! Fine!" Lou-Anne stormed out the back into the garden and slammed the door shut. She walked to the bushes at the back and sat down on the bench in the middle of them, as if being caged by the rhododendrons meant she was safe for the time being. Martin ruffled Jim's hair.
"Listen, kid. You're special. You cook, you cry, and you play that stupid damn board game about the dragons. I ain't sure if you know what you volunteered for, but I'm not gonna tell you neither. This lookout gig, it isn't gonna make you a man. You're gonna 'come a man as soon as you're capable of it. And I don't think neither of us know what it is to be a man, but it sure ain't fixin' cars or saving wenches. I got a good reckoning you're gonna learn what it is to be a man up in Oregon. You ain't just up there for yourself," Martin said. The word 'man' was being highlighted specifically here. He had a solemn look in his eye, years of questioning and a growing resentment to his effeminate son finally coming to a saddened head. He had had to convince his beautiful wife to ship off their son for the summer so that he may have some chance at not being secretly embarrassed by their son, and publicly held to account for the total lack of boyishness.
"I know, pop, thanks. I know mom ain't too impressed neither. Avoid the whisky while I'm out saving forests, you know what she's like when one of us are gone."

One week before
Lou-Anne howled at the bus depot and all of the waiting passengers were ripped from their daydreams as they tried to find the baby being shredded. Another mother sending their kid away to camp, Christ.
"Mom, God, will you go easy? I ain't got spare eardrums," Jim muttered, looking apologetically at the loiterers around the bus stances.
"Watch your attitude. I'm sending my only child away to live with bears and malaria for three months. Show some sympathy," Lou-Anne managed between gasps. A resounding thwack echoed as her tired finger slapped Jim at the rear of the head. He nodded.
Greyhound bus number 758 headed for Milwaukee is leaving in five minutes. Greyhound bus number 758 headed for Milwaukee is leaving in five minutes. Thank you.
"That's me," the youngest said after a few seconds, unsure of how to break the weighing silence.
"Yep," his parents said in sync. Jim reached around and hugged both at the same time, then let them go and grabbed his bags. Martin melancholically slapped his son on the shoulder while Lou-Anne held back to avoid raining snotters on her departing child. Jim climbed up the steps and let the driver punch his ticket, and found a seat near the front next to the window. The bus filled up quickly, but the seat remained empty. Right up until Memphis, when it was filled by an obese man who farted as he sat down and his food over Jim as he slept, the young man only realising as he was awoken by his next passenger, a girl slightly younger than himself, trying to dust off the seat while sitting in it. Jim struggled awake.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
She looked up, eyes wide in frustrated horror and looked back down, muttering something meant for him but not realising the roar of the engines was drowning it out.
"I'm sorry, I missed that," Jim said a little louder, trying to drop a hint.
"I said you spilled your packet of chips everywhere, you grubby fuck," she said in a monotone voice. Jim repeated the look of frustrated horror and turned back to the window, closing his eyes. "I can feel the Cheeto dust through my tights. What are you gonna do about it?"
"Lick it off," Jim replied without carefully considering his response.
"Lick it off my tights?" she asked.
"What? No. The seat. It was a joke. Can you please stop being so loud?"
"They wouldn't know what it's like to have Cheeto dust in their ass crack."
"You haven't seen the state of some of them," Jim replied. The girl, with her glare of contempt, broke it for a split second and grinned.
"To be fair, it was probably that fat guy who was sitting here before me. fairly sure he had orange dust on his shirt as he got off," she said, sitting herself down, unhappy with the current state of the fabric.
"And yet you still gave me all that?" Jim queried.
"Yeah, well, I'm a girl, we're supposed to give the inferior genders a hard time," she said with a wink and a giggle. Jim laughed and the old woman behind him kicked his seat. Jim laughed quieter.
"So where you headed?" Jim asked. He looked at the girl a little closer, sleep dust not obscuring his vision. She was quite a bit younger than he it seemed, probably about 16. She was way invested in the punk lifestyle, he guessed. Her hair was ratty and died black, the grease making the black blacker. Her tights were ripped and on top of them were ripped jeans: the rips aligned at one point to pass right through to bare skin. Jim looked away. Her shirt hadn't been cleaned in a week or two, but had been worn every second of it. She was more than likely a runaway.
"Puerto Rico," she said. There was no sign of a joke, but that didn't mean much with her.
"What's down there?" Jim asked.
"Nothing that's here. A whole different set of anything."
Jim looked at her for a moment, considering what she was saying. It rang true, and he knew what he was leaving was everything he knew. Enter this new, short life of anything except what he had. Jim nodded and turned back to the window. "What are you running from?"
"Honey, we don't have the time," and suddenly this young punk was a thirty-year-old accountant with financial issues and a failing marriage, problems Jim's feeble 19-year-old brain couldn't understand. He shut up again.
"And where you going?" she asked.
"Oregon. I've got a job up there," Jim said. She sounded excited when she pursued the line of questioning, and Jim was happy to answer. He was excited, and wanted to discuss it after all. They talked for hours, well into the early morning when the sun was climbing over the distant mountains, eager for a breath of fresh air. The last stop was Milwaukee. The bus pulled into the depot and everyone climbed off.
"I guess I better wish you luck in Oregon. Save those forests, tiger," she said.
Jim paused a moment. "If you ever reach Puerto Rico and you find the same set of stuff that you were leaving, find me. I won't be home until September, but I'll give you my details. The name's Jim," he said. He stretched out a hand and she took it and pulled it to her stomach.
"Sadie," she whispered, her long eye lashes sweeping his cheek. She grabbed the slip of paper in his free hand and ran to the next bus, looking behind and waving child-like as she leapt on and handed her ticket to the bus driver. All the while Jim was trying to think.
"Wait!" he finally shouted out. It was too late though as the doors closed and Sadie looked down at the paper in her hands, lip between her teeth. Her jaw relaxed but her brow furrowed as she looked out the window as Jim waived his hands. She shook her head, and he shrugged his shoulder sorrowfully, giving a single wave of his hand as her greyhound sped off onto the intersection. The last of Sadie he saw was the slip of paper slammed against the window, clean as fresh snow, untouched by pen nor pencil.

Three days before
Jim slammed his fist against the wall next to the tellers booth. "What the fuck do you mean you don't have a service going through to Santiam National Park? You've just got that whole section of the I5 not on a service?"
"Listen kid, no-one travels that way, the service ain't gonna fund a bus to do the run if nobody uses it. Hitchike like every other idiot kid," the teller said. He did not have an Oregon accent. It sounded like the Yat accent in New Orleans, or the New York accent. It made Jim hate the teller more.
Jim walked away and headed towards the I5, his rucksack strapped tight across his chest and the Oregon sun already causing rivers of sweat to streak down the concave in his back, his shirt becoming a wet rag in mere minutes. Only another 115 miles to go.
The sun never relented, but people passing by obviously saw the condition of the poor boy. Five or six cars pulled over, all eager for him to jump in and let them drive him, but he was either too scared of being murdered and sold to a butchers as a cheap replacement for pork, or he was still trying to figure something out. Something, of what he wasn't sure, but definitely something. He took their water and food, guiltily and then happily, and would use their vehicles as respite from the sun, but he never took so much as a meter from his walk in a car. A cute girl pulled up and offered him a nap in the back seat while she could take them to Santiam, but he said he had enough time to sleep later. The fact she was very pretty made Jim more determined to continue walking. Was he a man yet?

The Day of
It wasn't until he had realised he wasn't squinting anymore that he knew he had hit a forest. Hopefully Santiam, he thought, but it was soon confirmed by a large wooden hand-carved sign by a gravel road. The boy followed the curve of the road around, sliding feet rifting up tornadoes around his ankles. His body leaned forward as if he were about to break into sprint, and his arms were fixed at the elbows but broken at the wrists like a caricature of a tyrannosaurus rex. The road wound up and through and down the trees of Santiam National Forest, but Jim followed reluctantly, eager to comply. His face was brown from sun burn on sun burn, all turning into sun tan. At the end of the last little hill, a monumental effort that included crawling at one point, James found the parking lot mentioned in the information packet. There were no cars, and no signs of humans. Maybe he had chosen a great posting, far away from human idiocy and their tendency to light things on fire, thought the guy who had walked 120 miles through blazing heat for a desperate attempt at understanding manliness. At a far corner of the gravel lot, under plenty of shade but well within view of the road, Jim set up his tent and crawled inside, finishing off one collected bottle of water and settling down for a nap with the other pressed tight against his burning chest.
It wasn't until considerably later, or only ten minutes, that Jim was awoken by a noise outside the tent. He couldn't even tell if it was tires or human steps, but he unzipped the fabric door nonetheless and peeked outside, the blinding sunlight forcing his eyes having to readjust ever so slowly.

At first, ditching the baseball scholarship to pursue a more stable career had seemed like a great idea. As much as Garrett loved the sport, it seemed more logical to major in something that proved to be a steady source of income rather than take his chances playing a game that may or may not be successful. Naturally, his father was delighted and was confident that his son would one day join him in the political arena that was the Georgian government. It was a very secure and sure future that was rather appealing in the heat of the moment. However, by Christmas time, he had come to the realization the economics and pre-law was not for him. Try as he might, he was struggling to keep his grades at passing, and by Easter, he was failing half of his courses. Granted, part of this was owed to the fact that skipping class was all too easy and it was much more fun to stay out late with friends rather than study for exams. By the end of the year, he had given up and was starting to worry about what the future held for him. In the midst of crummy professors, failed tests, and the spring midterms, all anyone could talk about was summer vacation and their plans for next year. Now that they were responsible adults, most of that entailed internships and working. It was then that a friend of Garrett's recommended a unique opportunity deep in the Oregon wilderness. "Maybe some time away to get your head straight and your feet planted will do you some good," he had said. The only reason he didn't go himself is because his health wouldn't allow it.

In the beginning, Garrett had been a bit skeptical at first for a couple reason. The first was that it was terribly far away from home, on the exact opposite side of the United States, the farthest corners of the northern wilderness. While he had always enjoyed camping with his friends, he wasn't exactly sure how he would like doing it for months with complete strangers. Although, the more he thought about it, the more appealing it became. His parents had been hounding after his grades all year, and when he went home, he would never hear the end of it. This could be a chance to escape their wrath and enjoy some peaceful time to himself, something he had painfully little of lately. Moreover, they would have no way of coming after him even if they wanted to. Yes, maybe a summer away from the place he had lived his whole life would do him some good, not just for the experience, but for the calm he could imagine it bringing to his worried mind.

His application was accepted in early April, much to his delight, and he wasted no time in setting about preparing for his "firewatch" among the serene pines of Santiam National Park. From what he had gathered from his friend and researched on his own, it was basically camping with a hint of survival mode thrown in, should the need arise. Much to his relief, the park services seemed to be pretty good at providing basic essentials, but he was one to over prepare as it was, spending the rest of the school year reading up on the park and brushing up on some survival skills while collecting gear here and there. He hadn't told anyone that he was going yet, because if his parents found out about this before he left, they would never let him go without chewing him out first, and he wanted to avoid that if he could help it. So he spent the next two months being as sneaky about his summer plans as possible to prevent discovery. And he had done a pretty good job until his sister paid him a surprise visit during finals week.

Ellie was about two and a half years younger than him or so, entering her senior year of high school and enjoying the freedom that came with a car and the impending age of 18. She had taken this liberty to drive herself and her friends into Atlanta to see the sights and use Garrett and his roommates' apartment as home base, unbeknownst to him. He had been sitting on the floor of his room trying to figure out the most efficient way to pack everything when a tawny haired girl with narrowed brown eyes burst into the room flanked by two brunettes, two one way plane tickets held up in her right hand and she stared at him suspiciously. She must have picked up the tickets off of the counter where he had foolishly left them a little over an hour ago.


Well, that wasn’t necessarily true. The fire was an obvious threat, but there were also other dangers that took the form of bears and wolves, as well as dumb campers who might not want to follow the rules and would be angry at being told to do so. Those were the most prevalent, but there were countless other things that could occur that made this much more than a mere walk in the park. Far from it. But he was ready and confident, and wasn’t particularly bothered about those things. He just didn’t want to worry Ellie with those possibilities. As much as they hadn’t gotten along as kids, after his graduation, the petty sibling rivalry had dissipated and they had been on much friendlier terms as of late. Their older sister, Maddy, was five years their senior, so they had always butted heads with each other.


Tommy just shook his head with a smile of amusement as she shut the door and returned to what he was doing before he had been rudely interrupted. As far as he could tell, he was pretty squared away in terms of gear, so now he just had to wait for the day to arrive. His excitement was only growing now, and he was anxious to be away from the stresses of college and the unknown for a while, at least. Sure, his parents were going to be angry with him, but he could deal with that when he got home. His patience was short, and he was sure theirs was too, and he knew that if he went home now there would be a lot of yelling.

A week and a half after Ellie’s surprise visit, he was in a taxi at 9 pm heading for the airport, drumming his fingers against his knees and sitting on the edge of his seat. The driver glanced at him occasionally, but said nothing until they pulled up to the curb at the Atlanta Airport to announce the total that the youth owed him. Tommy handed the cabbie a few bills and thanked him before stepping out and retrieving his stuffed backpack from the trunk, then turning and striding towards the front doors. The wait to board the flight to Chicago felt longer than the entire school year, much to his displeasure. However, when they finally announced his flight and he boarded the plane, it was a whirlwind. The hours between Georgia and Illinois felt like minutes as he stared through the window at the land below before it disappeared under the cloud cover. He refrained from reading any of the books he had brought since he wanted to save them for the summer months ahead, napping instead.

When the plane touched down at the Chicago airport around one in the morning, he had a mere thirty minutes until his connection to Salem, so he had to make his call home fast. He was supposed to have arrived at the white washed house in Douglasville a hours ago, and no doubt they were wondering what was keeping him. He used a pay phone in the airport to dial his home phone, waiting patiently as it rang.


Once again, he slept for most of the flight, waking up when the plane touched down for the final time at 8am and released him into Salem. As far as he could tell, there weren’t any buses to Santiam, and it was a 25 mile walk from the edge of the city and he had no intention of accomplishing that marathon on foot. He had to be there today anyway, and he wasn’t sure he could make it if he walked the whole way.

Before starting the trek toward the park, he went to a café for breakfast, trying to debate his next move when he noticed a few truckers sharing coffee in a booth off to the side. He hesitated for a moment, mustering up his courage before getting up and asking them where they were headed. Unfortunately, none of them were going that way, but they seemed happy to help him find a ride out that way. A couple sitting behind the truckers overheard the conversation and volunteered their vehicle, saying they were heading out that way in an hour or two. He gladly accepted the offer and finished breakfast with them, his shyness slowly disappearing as he got to know the kind pair better and listened to their story before telling his.

Apparently they were newly weds, and had decided to cross the entire United States as a honeymoon, no particular destination in mind. They met while roller-skating when he had tripped and fell right into her and she had teased him for being clumsy but he claimed it was on purpose. They were both from Washington state, but had grown up in different towns so they had never seen each other before their little roller-skating accident. The rest was history. Their warmth and openness helped Tommy to relax a bit and explain why he was hitch hiking out to the national park, and they both commended him for the decision, much to his pleasure.

They all got in the car at around 10:45 and it took a little over an hour drive before they reached the gravel entrance, a wooden sign proudly carved above it displaying the name. He thanked the two profusely and wished them all the best, waving as they drove off before turning and walking down the rocky path. By Georgia standards, it was quite pleasant out, the sun warm, but not overbearing and it made the hike up quite pleasant for him. It didn’t take him too long to reach the parking lot mentioned in the information he was given, and there was no sign of life save for a tent and what looked to be a girl standing in front of it. He hesitated a moment, looking back over his shoulder before swallowing any social anxiety he was starting to feel before approaching, now noting that there was a boy around his age poking his face out of the tent. The girl had said something, but he wasn’t close enough to hear yet, pausing a few yards away from them.

Jim looked up at the girl as she approached. His head peeked out of the tent like a cartoon of a baby experiencing the world for the first time. She spoke and he listened.
"Water?" he gasped, suddenly realising the drought occurring in his body. He shook his head and slipped back inside the cloth house, grabbed his own bottle, then unzipped the door and looked back outside. She was tall and pretty, with the ruffled hair that was becoming more and more commonplace. Jim nodded his head and returned to the dark recesses of the tent.

"I can only imagine what this guy's thinking, I look like a disaster." Lori's light gray tank top was drenched in sweat making it feel twice as heavy as it actually was. "I'm half tempted to take this thing off. Whatever, focus Lori." Deciding that she should follow the young man into the tent and seek refuge from the sun Lori fetched a spare water bottle from the bag and headed inside. Inside the tent was still hot from the blistering sun but the shade felt nice, and Lori needed to rest. Now that she was no longer focused on walking she noticed that her leg was throbbing in pain, causing her to tremble slightly. "Here you look like you need this." Lori offered up her spare water bottle to the equally exhausted figure in the tent.

Jim tried to speak the first time, but was rebuffed by his dusty and failing vocal chords. He took a long drink from his own bottle and licked his lips. "I'm good thanks, but you'll need that. We're getting some sun today," he said, his voice thick and gravelly. He took another drink and studied the girl, but he couldn't think of anything. He must've been pretty dried out as Jim didn't normally have much issue with wondering about another's life before their meeting.

"Are you sure? If you change your mind let me know." Jim nodded his thanks. Instead of placing the water bottle back into her bag Lori kept a hold of it, deciding that she could probably use a drink as well Lori unscrewed the cap and took a long swig before placing the cap back on the bottle. Wiping the excess water off her lips Lori offloaded her pack onto the floor before sitting down alongside it with her arms out behind her, and her legs spread out in front of her bent at the knees. Taking this as an opportunity to relax Lori untied and removed her boots sitting them outside to dry out along with her socks. Her feet didn't stink or anything they just needed to dry off otherwise she'd end up with blisters. She also undid her belt to take some of the strain off her waist before realising that she never fully introduced herself. "I'm sorry I came in here and acted like we've always known each other, how rude of me. I'm Lori, Lori Gosse. And you are?"

Jim just watched silently as the girl made herself at home. He wasn't bothered by it, just a little taken aback. What an unusual situation. He noticed as she moved her leg trembled, and when she sat still the shaking died down to very unnoticeable. It's one thing to take your boots off, another to point out they were losing control of limbs. He sipped at his water every 10 seconds or so to allow his body to absorb all the nutrients it could without flooding it. Something he had picked up somewhere. Her voice broke the silence and Jim jumped without the last physical hurdle of actually jerking. His brain got a fright though. "What? Oh, no don't worry." They used to talk about people experiencing the monsoon season in Vietnam and bonding over that. Maybe this brutal sun was the Oregon equivalent. "Well hello Lori, Lori Gosse. I'm Jim, Jim Réchar," he said. She looked a lot like Sadie - except maybe cleaner and a lot closer to his age - which was maybe why he was carrying on the openness from the bus trip. In situations like these, he tended to clamp up like a verbal vice, and was anxiously not looking forward to the next meeting of their group. Each second announced another reason why this was all one big, bad idea. "I can understand the short hair, it's excellent for letting the breeze cool you off on ridiculous days like this. I can understand the tank top, again, for the breeze. But I am a little curious why you're wearing BDU's that are a couple body widths too big for you. It seems like those are very anti... whatever you're going for here," Jim said, totally unsure of where he was trying to take that last sentence.

While Lori understood where Jim was coming from with the clothing that wasn't going to stop her from having a go at him. So in the most serious tone she could muster she answered him. "If you're unhappy with the clothes I can always undress for you."

"Normally when a girl gets naked for me, they're happy about it," Jim said after sensing the dramatic shift in tone. What had he said that was so bad?

In a more sarcastic tone Lori responded with. "Something tells me those girls were stripping for someone else and you were hiding in the background somewhere. But who am I to judge, whatever makes you happy."

The skinny boy knew he had been beaten down. He now knew how to approach this girl though; self-deprecation. "If by background, you mean her cupboard, then I won't argue with you. Never been caught though, and that's the part that does make me happy."

"I imagine you fit pretty well into a cupboard, but that's beside the point. I'm privy to hiding away in people's cupboards as well."

Jim laughed and replied, "The joys of being this stick-like."

Lori took a minute to compose herself from the grade school mudslinging that just ensued and got back to Jim's question. "No offence meant towards you Jim but unrelenting smartass is my natural state. As far as the clothing is concerned they were my fathers. I figured even though it's hot as hell outside it's bound to get cold, and if I'm wearing them then there's less things taking up space in my bag."

Jim feigned a hurt look on his face. "If you've claimed the unrelenting smartass, what does that leave me, the good looks? In all seriousness though, it's good. I think you're hiding more from me though, and I think I know what it is, but you can tell me in your own time. I may well be wrong," he said as his finger slowly and subtly rubbed up and down the line that her dogtags traced from the back of her neck, across her clavicle, and down to her chest. "A more important question though, what brings you to a fire lookout tower in Oregon?"

Lori felt a little unnerved for a brief second, but tried her best not to focus on it too much. "I just needed to see some different sites for a change you know how it is. What about you?" Even after Lori answered Jim's question she still couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling that came over her. Jim was right, she was hiding something and this was a prime example. Underneath her snide tomboy persona, Lori was soft, too soft and it was starting to show.

The awful, awful lie struck a chord with Jim. When Damian Holloway gave him the beatdown of a century, Jim told his dad a lie that was basically the exact same. 'No dad, I hit him back, don't worry. It was just one of those arguments that everybody has,' Jim said as his father frisked him for injuries, doubled over from the pain of the broken ribs. He knew pressing her for anything else would be a bad idea. Experience had proven that, and she seemed nice enough to not piss off. "I won't annoy you about it any more, but if there's one person you ain't gotta hide dad issues with, it's this guy," he said, sticking his thumbs out at himself. "I came here because I'm trying to prove something. Don't ask me what, I'll just tell you when I know."

Lori sighed heavily while she debated whether or not she should answer Jim honestly or not at all. "Maybe it would be for the best if we just didn't talk about it. Okay? Nothing against you Jim, honestly." Lori wasn't happy with the sombre tone the conversation took and she was feeling more uncomfortable now than she was just a few moments ago. It didn't help things any that her tank top was still soaked in sweat making her even more uncomfortable. "I apologise if this bothers you but I need to get this thing off. Soaked, smelly clothes don't really do much to improve your mood." Without waiting for a response from Jim. Lori untied her dads fatigue top from her waist and sat it next to her sea bag before then removing her tank top and placing it outside to dry. Relieved Lori stretched her arms up into the air and took a deep breath as the unrelenting heat evaporated the sweat from her body only for it to pour out of her pores mere seconds later. "I hope Jim doesn't pass out when I go back in there, lord knows I'm about to." Lori took a minute to appreciate herself and headed back inside the tent.

He knew he had pushed her too far. It had been an issue of his for years at school, annoying kids to the point of physical retaliation. And now he had annoyed Lori, Lori Gosse to the point of verbal rebuffs. "Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take it so far," he muttered guilty. Guilt was soon replaced by confusion, and then surprise as she started to undress in the little tent. Not a care in the world as she pulled her tank top off over her head and dropped it outside, where the sun no doubt dried it out in mere seconds. The tent was dim, but Jim could see everything fairly clearly. He wasn't unused to women, but they weren't a very common occurrence for him. A nice change. Lori had a tight stomach, one that showed care but was fairly criss-crossed with scars. Like a work of art that had been scuffed in a delivery. It may not have reduced the value, but if you didn't know what had happened it certainly added a little extra je ne sais quoi. The dogtags that Jim had implied to earlier swung in the air and bounced back off of her black sports bra, and Jim could almost make out a name as she bent near him. Lori seemed extremely comfortable in her skin, and wasn't at all troubled by Jim watching her as she moved, almost seemingly the air parting for her as she wiggled around. Jim had a small affliction for beautiful things. It didn't matter if it were a photograph of a dog, the smell of coffee on a warm, relaxed Sunday morning, or the sight of a girl, stunning anyway but with the added perfection of having the knowledge she was alive, being confident with her actions. Jim loved them all because they were beautiful, and they were works of art.

By now, Tommy was within a few yards of the tent, and could hear the sounds of disscussion from inside. He was a bit unsure of what to do at first, as one couldn't really knock on a tent, but he suspected that they were here for the same reason that he was, so he took the liberty of stepping up to the flap and peeking in at the two people as he said, "Um, hey, I-" Although, he stopped short, because it was about then that he realized that the girl had removed her shirt and quickly stepped back. "Oh, sorry, my bad," he quickly apologized, not quite sure what he had just walked into. He wasn't exactly sure where these two where hailing from, but in the south, at least, in his home town, it wasn't everyday you introduced yourself to coworkers in such a fashion. Not that he was one to judge, but needless to say, he was a little bit confused at this point.

Jim, with the already unusual feeling of baring witness to extravagance, shit himself upon the strangers entrance. Jim was going to die of shock before the snakes or bears got to him.

"Oh shit." Lori cursed under her breath as she blushed. Not because she was embarassed at being caught in the state she was currently in but because she caught the stranger offguard. So Lori quickly picked up her dad's shirt from off the floor and put it on, buttoning it up as far as she could before following the stranger outside the tent. "Hey, I'm sorry about that. That was sort of a bad time to come in. I should of waited until I had a bit more privacy to do that. Are you okay?"

Tommy had turned away from the tent, his face a shade redder, with one hand on his hip and the other awkwardly scratching the back of his head as he debated on what he should do next. He turned around when the girl emerged apologizing and asking if he was okay. As she spoke, he took a brief moment to study her face and her general appearance, now that she actually had clothes on. Her short hair suited her, he decided, and he could tell by a glance that she either played a sport or worked out, maybe both. He laughed a bit nervously, shaking his head with a smile as he replied, "Uh, yeah, I just- wasn't expecting that. My bad, really." He paused for a moment, dropping his arms to his side before extending one hand toward her as he said, "I'm Garrett, by the way, but everyone calls me Tommy." He figured the best way to put this awkward business behind them was to move on.

Lori accepted the handshake and grasped Tommy's hand firmly, squeezing his knuckles together ever so lightly. "Pleasure to meet you Tommy, I'm Lori. Before we move on..." Lori pulled Tommy a little closer to her and leaned in to whisper into his ear. "That wasn't anything you thought it was. I'm not like that." Lori pushed Tommy back away from her and let go of his hand. "Anyway! You here for the fire watch too? I seem to be outnumbered at the moment, interesting."

Jim peaked out of the tent and decided it was worth his time to chat or fraternise or whatever it was that these nerds were doing. He took the few steps towards the new man and stuck his hand out. "I'm Jim, Jim Réchar. I'm guessing since we haven't been murdered with a fire-axe yet that you're with the Tower Duniway crew too. Welcome to HQ," Jim said, nodding his head backwards to the flimsy tent, and then stuck out his hand.

Tommy was pleasantly surprised by her firm handshake, nodding in acknowledgement once she had introduced herself. He furrowed his brow slightly when she pulled him close, but a look of realization accompanied with a knowing smile crossed his face in response once she had explained herself. Her accent suggested she was from farther north than he was, which, although he didn't want to stereotype, made sense in his mind. "Yeah, there's supposed to be one other person, right?" he asked, although he turned to look at the boy when he emerged from the tent and spoke. He smiled and nodded politely, gaving his extended hand a firm shake when it was offered. "Garret, but you can call me Tommy. Nice to meet you both. Quite a set up we've got here," he noted, glancing back at the tent baking in the afternoon sun. Jim sounded like he was more from his neck of the woods, which was slightly comforting. Not from Georgia though, maybe a little further west? The accent sounded familiar but he couldn't quite match it to a specific region yet.

Lori cracked a half baked smile after hearing Tommy and Jim's description of their tent, before chimming in herself and take a moment to tease the two of them even more. "Lover you call that sun baked tent a headquarters? You could hand out towels at the entrance and charge admittion for a sauna. Not saying that the tower itself would be any better but maybe we should set up tents in the shade?" Lori took a moment to let what she just said sink in before explaining that she was yet again kidding. "Alright I promise I'm done teasing you guys, for now. This isn't normally how I act but I have to admit that you guys are bringing out the worst in me." Feeling sweat pooling underneath the band of her hat Lori removed it and shook her hair out with her hands, before wiping the grease and sweat off on her pants and placing the hat back on her head. "How about we head up to the tree-line there if we're going to socialize some more, otherwise I think I'm going to have to lose more layers." Lori realized she was doing 'it' again but decided to go with it regardless. It was helping keep her mind off of the pain that was afflecting her body. Lori quickly headed inside the tent and grabbed her sea bag and then drug it off towards the shade, not even waiting for a response. "Come on southern boys. I need to sit."

"Excuse me sunshine, tent, under trees, shade. Ain't my fault the sun's hotter than a Playboy model on a Mexico beach. You're just being horrible to us boys now, and I don't know if I'm gonna stand for it," Jim said, his face half twisted into a grin and the other half pretending to be serious. He watched her stomp off to collect her bag, and then headed for another treeline where the sun was less obnoxious. "Set that shitty damn tent up for me to be bossed around by another woman, hot damn," the scrawny boy complained, kind of for Tommy but mainly to appease the minor tantrum he may have been throwing. Jim returned to his tent and started to pack it up, thinking they would be underway for the tower soon enough anyway. The tent went in a small musette bag hanging from his rucksack, and carried the hulking bag to the shady spot Lori had picked out. "Yeah, you can sit all you please. Nothing we could've been doing in that nice tent, huh," Jim said, placing the bag down and using it as a pillow as he laid down, closing his eyes and enjoying the dry warmth and the noise of the bugs and birds floating between nests and trees, a whole other world totally unaffected by the moving of his tent.

Tommy held up both hands innocently as he looked between the two, "Hey, I just got here," he protested, an amused half smile gracing his features as he observed the pair's banter. While Lori was certianly not conventional, both youths seemed to be friendly enough, much to his relief, so he wasn't too worried about getting along with either of them. He glanced up at the blazing sun before following them into the shade. Unlike his two peers, he hadn't been out int he sun for very long at all and had yet to feel its effects. From the looks of it, they had most definitely made the walk to get here. he had gotten lucky with his friendly ride. He didn't really interject into their banter, more content to listen and observe rather than actively participate. He set down his overstuffed backpack on the ground, then leaned against the rough trunk of a tree with his arms cross over his chest, taking a moment to get a better handle on his surroundings.

"Hey I'm sorry Jim I didn't mean for you to move the whole tent. I just wanted to get out of the sun." Lori felt really bab for upsetting Jim but wasn't sure how to approach the situation to resolve it, so she tip-toed around it. Literally because she had forgotten her socks and boots down by where the tent used to be placed. "Oh damn it." Lori went to get up from where she was sitting when a sharp pain from her leg shot up her back like a hot iron before radiating across her chest. She let out the intital stages of a moan before she stopped herself and moaned through her teeth before falling flat on her back. Now that she was flat on the ground all she could feel was a throbbing pain throughout her entire body originating from her leg. Trying her best to act like nothing happened although something obviously did. Lori tried to mask the pain in her voice. "Uhm.. I left my boots down there. Could one of you guys get them for me?" Lori sat up slightly and help herself up with her arms that were now trembling with pain like the rest of her body. It didn't help that she was getting scared now on top of everything else.

Upon hearing Lori's whimper of pain, Tommy turned his head to looked down at the dark haired girl, his brow suddenly furrowed with concern. She was favoring her leg, which led him to believe that the pain origninated there. Maybe she had strained a tendon in the walk and the muscles were spasming because of the heat, or something along those lines. His teammates in baseball sometimes suffered form such things after long runs in the heat. He looked back out at the sizzling asphalt of the parking lot at where her boots lay, about to go fetch them, but Jim beat him to it, the slender boy's expression a mirror of his own as Jim dropped his things at the base of a tree and turned to stride across the lot to where the shoes sat. Tommy walked over to kneel down beside her and tilted his head as he asked, "You alright there, missy? Your leg bothering you?"

Luckily for Lori the sweat covering her face helped hide her tears a little bit, but her eyes were still red and irratated. "Thanks Tommy, but I'm fine honestly. Just a cramp." Lori went to stand up again to prove that she was fine but this time the pain was even more severe. Lori fell back down practically landing on Tommy, after she recovered her breath Lori sat up and placed her arm around Tommy to help steady herself. The way the two were sitting seemed rather intimate but that was the furthest thing from Lori's mind at this point, her head hung exhausted alongside Tommy. "It's this heat. It's got to be, don't you guys worry about me." Lori tried to fake a smile but the pain just caused her to clench her teeth in agony, she was doing a very poor job at hiding her condition.

"Hey, hey, don't try to get up, just sit tight," Tommy said, holding out his arms and catching her when she fell back on him, one hand on her waist and the other catching a hold of her upper arm to help her sit up. He moved so that he could help her rest her back against a tree, standing up to retrieve her water from her bag before sitting down cross legged beside her again and handing the plastic bottle to her.

Jim picked up the two boots, gritting his teeth because they were hot to touch after sitting in the sun. He had noticed Lori's leg trembling earlier, and he was sure that was undoubtedly connected to the pain she was currently experiencing. Hopefully this was something that he and the other boy would be capable of helping her with and she wouldn't have to sit there and suffer. He jogged back over the the treeline, partly because he was eager to get out of the sun, but mostly because he wanted to get Lori's things to her. He returned just in time to see Lori collapse again, instinct causing him to lurch forward slightly as she did so, but Tommy had caught her, thankfully. "She okay? You okay?" he asked, first asking Tommy, then asking her, his mind briefly flashing back to his bus ride with Sadie as he set the boots down on the ground and stood in front of the two, looking between the worriedly.

It was a struggle for Lori to get sat up but as soon as she did the pain left just as soons as it came on. There was still a faint burning in Lori's right leg and she felt like she had just tumbled out of the backside of a brawl but she was counting her blessings regardless. With the two men standing around her Lori tried her best to deflect their concern. "Guys it's fine honestly. I know the pains I get and I more than likely pulled a muscle, trust me I can handle it. We wouldn't be here if we couldn't handle something like this." Lori still felt awful though so she laid down on her back and unbuttoned her shirt, letting it lay open on the ground alongside her. She also unbuttoned and pulled her pants down just a tad to let the air cool her off. "Hey, I know how this looks but don't get your hopes up. That whole ordeal got my blood pressure up, I'm going to need to cool off otherwise I'm going to burn through more water than I want to." She tried to pass it off as nothing but Lori carried an uneasy tone in her words, she knew there was something more serious going on but if the others found out then she would become a liability. They wouldn't trust her to pull her weight, and she'd find herself on a train back to Pennsylvania and there was no way in hell she was going back there if she could help it. "I know no one asked me for my input but I think it would be wise if we just relaxed for a few hours until the sun starts to go down before we headed up to the tower. The less time we spend in direct sunlight the better."

Jim and Tommy exchanged a look, the latter saying nothing, simply setting the water bottle down beside her. "Well, it seems like we've got a bit of a wait for the others, so hopefully that'll be plenty of time for you to rest," Jim said, taking a seat in the grass beside his things. Tommy checked his watch, the clock reading 1:00pm. This was the hottest time of day, in his opinion, so it would only get cooler from here. He just wanted to reach the tower before nightfall, knowing that all manner of wild beasts would be roaming the woods after dark. The last thing he wanted was to be swallowed by a bear on day one. What a phone call that would be back home. His parents would never let his younger sister leave the house again. As it seemed like they would be there for a while, Tommy leaned back against his tree and dug through his bag to find one of his books to maybe pass the time. His shyness had crept up on him again, and he wasn't necessarily in the mood now to make any conversation.

As everyone settled back down, and a somber unease blanketed the trio, Jim tilted his head to the girl. He knew she was obviously having some kind of trouble, and with it being so early into the undoubtedly draining three month escapade, Jim wanted to know the extent of what could go wrong. "Hey, Lori, how are you feeling now?" he asked in his best attempted caring voice. Of course Jim cared, but right now that was not his priority; his priority was ensuring that her illness would not cause the death of him.

"I'm fine Jim, just tired. Once we get settled in somewhere permanent I need to rest and regain my strength. It's been awhile since I got the chance to rest in this heat so I'm probably just exhausted. Thanks for asking though." Lori was hoping that she deflected Jim's question well enough that he would leave her alone, she was afraid of prying eyes at this point and was trying her best to hide from them. It didn't help that her condition was making that difficult. Lori pulled the brim of her hat down over her eyes like she was resting but she was fully aware of what was going on around her, and Jim looked back up at the kaleidoscopic canopy above him, the fluttering of bird wings causing a new spectrum to birth before his eyes. Even if she wanted to sleep the faint burning in her leg would certainly prevent her from doing so. "Wake me up when we're moving."

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