NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS over the next week. That’s the beauty of the Out of the Wild program. You hike and sleep and hike and sleep and you’re tired and sore and hungry all the time and every day just fades into the next.
The Pack hikes through the rain forest and they camp every night, and aside from a few more blisters and bug bites, nothing much changes.
Dawn hikes with Lucas, most of the time. They linger toward the back, but usually Kyla’s behind them and sometimes Brandon and Evan. Amber usually brings up the rear, to make sure nobody gets lost or, you know, tries to escape.
Warden is always at the front of the Pack. He’s tall and muscular and capable, and Brandon and Evan seem drawn to him. They’re always in his orbit, and since Dawn’s kind of weirded out by Brandon and Evan, she never goes near Warden.
Warden doesn’t say much around the campfire.
He broods.
He knows what he’s doing out here, though; that’s for certain.
And he’s pretty cute.
But Dawn doesn’t think about Warden much. She’s too busy enjoying hanging with Lucas.
Lucas is goofy. He has funny stories to tell Dawn about life back home in Fort Collins, and he likes country music and sings songs in a terrible cowboy yodel until Dawn’s ears are nearly bleeding and she’s begging him to stop, but she’s laughing while she does it because he’s so freaking into it—and she’d never tell him, but he’s actually a pretty good singer, when he’s being serious.
(And even when he’s not being serious, his terrible singing takes her mind off her blisters and her aching muscles and her empty stomach, and it feels good to, you know, laugh every now and then.)
Among Lucas’s talents is he does a pretty good imitation of Christian’s ghoul voice. “Bear Cub,” he tells Dawn when she’s slacking. “Pick up the pace, you’re falling behind.” It’s exactly what Christian would say, and how Christian would say it, and Lucas even gets this look on his face like Christian, like he’s got a stick so far up his ass it’s propping his head up.
It doesn’t make Dawn walk any faster, but it does make her laugh.
It’s good to laugh out here.
It makes Dawn almost feel almost normal.