In all fairness, Carla Jean should probably be paying more attention to where she's going, too. Though she may not be much for letting her mind wander, the heat and the light, glinting off windows, make it easy to do so. Summer in Darrow, she's found, is nothing at all like summer in Sanderson, where everything's dry and dusty and open, not too unlike it is the rest of the year. Here, the air is heavy with humidity, and the buildings, the structure of it, all the people lining the sidewalks, make it a different beast altogether. She doesn't mind it, but she's still dressed accordingly, her hair pulled off the back of her neck in a messy bun, wearing the kind of loose t-shirt and denim shorts that she'd have worn around the trailer back home. It feels a little more familiar, a little more manageable, than the cooler months they get here.

Whatever the reason, she doesn't see Newt until he's walking straight into her, then nearly falling over, while she takes a couple steps back to stay upright. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," she says, letting out a breathless, flustered laugh. "Are you? Not gonna topple over, are you?"