Chapter 6

Eventually she would need to go to the bookstore (which she guessed was going to be appropriately tiny), but first she wanted to figure out where her classes were around the campus. There was a small quad closed in by the math, science, humanities, and communication buildings. Most of her courses would be in those buildings.

Out of a spurt of randomness based on some of the college's more eclectic courses, she had signed up for one of the park service classes about wildlife identification. It seemed like a good idea at the time seeing how she was going to be living in the woods, but now she was considering changing it since it would just give Ryker more hiker-related fuel.

The National Park Service had a training center at the little community college, the newest one to be added to the original three centers. It was smaller and lesser known, but it was supposed to be pretty good. Maybe Ryker was in that section of the college. Even more reason for her to drop that class. Still, she wasn't one for quitting after she had made up her mind to do something.

Wandering through the quad and the buildings surrounding it, she found each of the rooms her classes would be in. So many introductory classes, but she was planning on eventually transferring and that's what her advisor here had suggested. She was toying with eventually moving back east and going to UNC-Wilmington, which was almost as far from the mountains as you could go and still attend college. A lot of her friends had gone there, and she had planned on applying too, after her gap year. But yeah...

After finding most of the places on her schedule, Jo went over to the training center on the far side of the campus. It was closer to the woods, and as she rounded the building, she could see trailhead signs and a few students heading off into the forest. Someone had carved a bear statue and put it in front of the building, and the bear was holding a 'Welcome Future Rangers!" sign. She wondered if they usually dressed it up or anything quirky.

The center only had a handful of people roaming around it at the moment, and most of them seemed like official rangers. Made sense considering classes hadn't started yet. A receptionist asked if she needed help, and Jo smiled politely before telling her she was making sure she knew where her class was.

Apparently her class was in a small auditorium, the only one in the center, but the receptionist confided she likely wouldn't be spending a whole lot of time in the auditorium. The rangers were big believers in hands-on learning. Well, it might be nice to have some built-in walking time in her day.

Ryker really was going to have fuel to accuse her of being a hiker.

But that was fine. Jo wasn't going to let Rkyer influence her decisions. She had signed up for this class for a practical reason, and some grumpy, overzealous local wasn't going to sway her choices.

It was a good thing she'd just made up her mind on that, because as she stepped back out of the auditorium, it was of course inevitable that at the same time, Ryker and his posse walked up one of the hallways. Charlie was waving goodbye to a ranger as if they were old friends, so either that was just Charlie's personality (she was really starting to think so), or Ryker and his group really were gung-ho future rangers.

She was hoping to escape unnoticed, but no such luck. "Jo! You're taking classes here too?" Curse Charlie and his extrovert tendencies.

Jo turned around with a smile pasted on her face, trying to ignore the glint of humor and 'I-told-you-so' in Ryker's eyes.

"Just one," Jo said, crossing her arms. "Thought it'd be a good idea since I'm moving here from the city." She didn't know why she was explaining herself to them. Anyone could take this course. And really, anyone could hike. What was the big deal anyway?

"Which city?" Hannah asked, her smile a little less poisonous this time.

"Charlotte," Jo responded, returning the smile at the same level of neutral.

"Oh, you are a little out of your comfort zone, aren't ya?" Charlie teased, but he didn't sound nasty about it. It wasn't the way she thought Ryker would've said it, if he had got to it first. "If you ever need someone to show you around, I've lived here forever." Out of her peripheral vision, she thought she saw Ryker bunch his hands into fists, but when she glanced at him, he was standing normally. If he had, it was probably at the idea of her staying any length of time here.

"Eighteen whole years of forever," Hannah said, a hand on her hip. Jo's attention was drawn back to the rest of the group.

"It's not like I've never stepped out of the city before," Jo said. Her family liked camping sometimes, and it wasn't as if they barricaded themselves inside the city, despising the outdoors like a bunch of futuristic city-dwellers, spurning anything fresh and green.

"Right, but you've never been to Jackson's Hollow," Charlie countered, his smile too genuine to be teasing or mean. "I know all the trails."

"She probably likes going off on her own," Ryker said, "Probably to places she's not wanted."

His hazel eyes were half-amused, half-daring as she glared up at him. "Do you have a problem with me?" she asked sharply, "Because I literally just moved here and we met yesterday, and I don't think that's enough time for me to have properly annoyed you."

Ryker shrugged. "We don't have a problem. I just have this feeling you're going to stick your nose in places where it doesn't belong."

"You don't even know me, so I don't know where you got that assumption, unless you're going off of your misconstrued hiker image of me, which is, I'll remind you, incorrect."

He looked down at her for a long moment, and she was reminded of just how tall he was. His tallness seemed to be taking up a lot of her time lately. Reaching up, he tapped the top of the doorframe of the auditorium she had just walked out of and gave her a meaningful stare.

"This is where they do the nature walk classes, isn't it?" he asked, looking over her head at Charlie.

"It's plant and animal identification, thank you," Jo said, lifting her chin. "It's not Advanced Hiking, and even if it was, drop it."

Charlie whistled at Jo's tone while Ryker blinked slowly, as if he could care less about her opinion. Which was probably accurate.

"Well, you'll probably meet Ryker's dad at some point then," Hannah said. "He usually does several guest lectures for these classes since he knows these woods so well."

Jo glanced at Ryker and was surprised to see how closed-off his expression was after all that taunting humour. She wondered what was going on between him and his dad. If she was really pissed at him, she might poke at that, but even if he irritated her, she wasn't ready to cross that line. You didn't mess with peoples' families. So she decided on a neutral reply instead.

"Guess I will then." She glanced at the trail leading into the woods, changing the topic. "Do the trails from here go pretty far or just loop around the campus?"

Both Hannah and Charlie looked at Ryker--of course--and he did the shrugging thing again. "Both. Your class will probably stay on the loop, only the advanced classes usually go farther, and even then mostly only for their solos." He frowned at that, like he personally thought this solo thing was a bad idea.

"What's a solo?"

"They let you go fend for yourself overnight in the woods," Hannah said, "and it's usually around winter time too, so it can be extra hard."

"It's fun to sneak up on them in the dark," Charlie said, grinning, "give 'em a little bit of a scare." She had a feeling he did that on a regular basis. She actually kind of liked the sound of a solo--she'd always been the type of person to embrace a challenge. But no way was she telling super anti-hiker that.

Ryker rolled his eyes and actually laughed, a surprisingly genuine laugh that made him seem like a whole other person. Well then. "I'm pretty sure solo day is like Christmas to you," he said, shoving Charlie in the shoulder.

"Better," Charlie said, winking at Jo.

"I bet the solo people don't feel the same way," Jo said with a smirk.

"Nah, probably not," Charlie said. He reached behind his head and stretched. "But I'm just giving them a little extra training, you know? You never know when you'll meet a bear or a mountain lion out there."

Jo frowned. "Are there a lot of those?"

"What, mountain lions and bears?" Charlie laughed and shook his head. "Not around here, they're not, but in other places, like over toward Mount Mitchell you'll find some."

"Then I guess they shouldn't be worried about the wildlife." She cut her eyes over at Ryker, remembering Seth's comment about how his family dealt with or handled the local wildlife. He narrowed his eyes at her.

"I think anyone who goes into the woods should be careful," he said, "It's not a playground."

"Good thing I'm not a little kid," Jo said with a brassy smile. Wow, someone must've spit in his grits this morning, judging by the way he was acting. Or maybe this really was how he was all of the time. What a miserable way to live.

"Guys, we should probably go," Hannah said, glancing at her phone, "We're supposed to meet Evan and Virginia for lunch, remember?"

For a second, Charlie gave Jo a look that made her think he was about to ask her to go, but she widened her eyes, hoping he got the hint that she absolutely didn't want to go if Ryker was going. She would rather eat alone then have to deal with him glowering at her and making hiking jabs with no basis for an entire meal. Charlie's eyes flicked to Ryker, and then he gave her a weak smile as he stuck his hands in his pockets.

"Guess we'll see you around, Jo?"

"Seems like we keep running into each other, so I'm guessing you're not wrong," she said. Maybe Ryker wouldn't be around that much. Charlie seemed okay on his own, and Hannah might be too, if she was away from Ryker. Not a great influence, that one.

Ryker gave her a long, searching look, as if he was trying to decide something, but right about when Jo was going to demand what he wanted, he turned and left. As if he'd given up on deciding.Well, she was going to give up on figuring him out. About the only obvious thing when it came to Ryker, as far as she could tell, was that he had a serious vendetta against people going places they weren't wanted.