The amount of looks people kept shooting me was unnerving. I nearly wanted to scream out every time a new stranger passed, eying my stance. What was it to the common passerby whether or not I felt like moving? I wasn't blocking any aisles or giving any of them dirty looks. Why should it matter if I chose to guard my plywood dolly? It was filled with a significant amount of wooden cuts, so should I not be allowed to watch them?

Perhaps it was a bit unusual to spot an eighteen year old simply protecting a dolly in the midst of Lowe's, but did that really give any and all strangers the right to look at her and mutter under their breaths as if she were scum? Some fetid stench to grace their senses? I would surely hope not.

I did not need their scrutinizing. My ears stung from the sharp sun and the inescapable burn; my skin was laced with patches of slowly growing pink burns from the same light source; the band in my hair was sagging and in a near constant need of tightening. I did not want to feel these stares as well. Not when my hands were mastered with small cuts and whispered sighs of pain from shingle remnants.

Crinkling the flimsy sheet of folded paper held in my fisting right hand, I glanced again at its contents. It was marked with my father's miniature scrawl, more a scribble than anything else, and took a moment for deciphering. He'd only listed four items along the lines, all letters capitalized in accordance to his handwriting: nails, staples, plywood, and tar. I kept my eyes on the list, reading and rereading its diminutive contents, as well as the specifications for the cuts of plywood, so I wouldn't have to see the glances. But I could still feel them, and I want so horribly to snap.

That was just it, though. I never would. No matter how much I might imagine something, I could never blow my lid at a person, no matter how badly they might deserve it. I was weak. Weak and pathetic; courage-less. I could only content myself to continuously read the muddled and mis-construable list within my hand.

It wasn't even a very specific list, not really. Anyone who wasn't on this particular roofing job with us would be lost. An outsider would probably pick up any set of staples in sight, without first being sure they had the proper measurements for our staple guns, or 'hammer bangers'. Another would probably find the cheapest brand instead of the good ones, the ABC Staples. A person who had ever done a roof or any construction before would probably not even know of pneumatic tools and nails and would find a few hand nails as opposed to sleeves. Let alone the right style of nail.

Maybe that was why I was simply holding my stance and guarding the dolly: hardly an outsider but also not the person who wrote the list. I suppose the role of experienced daughter still leaves a fair bit of room for a screw up. So instead, my father was roaming the aisles somewhere, going admittedly faster than he could pulling a dolly with twenty-four cuts of plywood and three boxes of staples.

I was trying, rather futilely, to understand why I birthed so many stares. Sure, my pants were splattered with grime and torn at the left knee; capillary action had water soaking halfway up my calves as well. The fact of the matter was that this appearance was no different than half the men roaming this store. My grey camisole was streaked with dirt and even bright oranges and purples from constantly tossing chalk-lines about. My less than stellar appearance, however, was hardly out of the ordinary here. Most all of the men passing by were at least dressed slightly similar to myself. The only difference between us was my sex, a fact I was intransigent not to mark down as the reasoning.

There was no telling when my father would be reappearing, having already trailed the store twice and see no sign for pneumatic nails. He was now probably traipsing slowly along an aisle, searching for them. If we had been at our home store we could have found them easily. Alas, we were in Canadaigua, working on our most recent piece of torture, and were too stubborn to ask for help.

The roof was torture, too: 30 by 111 feet and swarming with nests of bees which were only outnumbered by the bits of glass surrounding the place. The shards were everywhere, and of multiple colors due to the fire that had shut the previous owners out of business. Sharp and insidious they were, iniquitous, one already having sliced my leg and caught in my uncle's finger. I'm still unsure which was worse, the pain of my own bloody cut or watching a glinting fragment dangle from the tip of his index finger.

Still, if my father was to be gone for a while, I would need some greater form of entertainment. Or at least some way to occupy myself and avoid the glances for being unmoving.

Eventually, after fiddling with the strips of plywood so that they were perfectly aligned, I set my gaze on the staple boxes. They were something of amusement, at least. Plucking the box at my very right and setting it next to the opposite end, I slid the entire chain of boxes to the right. I was about to do it again, already holding the end box, when something fell into my side.

Any semblance of balance I had ever claimed left me on contact, sending me stumbling and grasping for the dolly with my left hand. The contraption, much to my vexation, simply rolled with me as I tripped forward, black hair swinging in its band to whip at my face. I braced myself for the ground, holding out my forearms and fisting my hands, but it was an impact that never came.

Two hands grasped my upper-arms, stabilizing both myself and the person who'd crashed into me. It was an awkward pose for me, leaning towards the ground, one foot crossed before the other, only to have someone pulling me slowly backwards. It was all the more unsettling not to be able to see the person doing this, as they were behind me.

My foot was aching when I had steadied once more: the combined pressure of constantly climbing a ladder and being on a gradient catching up to me. Of course, it was doubled in my left foot, since I'd been so stupid as to lace it too tightly this morning and then trip on it just now.

I ignored the searing in my foot, however, despite how very painful in was, and circles to face both my savior and assailant. I knew not whether to thank him or smite him. It was a scenario I had never been placed into before and so I found myself ill at ease, settling for silence.

The box of forgotten staples was still confined to my hand, the cardboard now wrinkled and lacerated, a fair few lies of the the metal clearly snapped into smaller pieces due to my fisted hand. The cold metal of the dolly graced half of my other hand, reminding me of the list crinkled in its depths. I felt remarkably stupid in that moment. For the first time in my six years of roofing I'd managed to ruin a box of staples--of anything, for that matter. And before they'd even been bought.

Alas, my attention was called elsewhere before I could see what other damage I'd done by the same man waving a hand before my face, both hands having dropped to his sides when I turned. Now that I actually looked at him, I realized how foolish it was for me to have wanted to face him while he was helping me: I still would not have seen him. He appeared intrusive enough to be a thief. Dark sunglasses covered his eyes beneath the rim of a hat, despite the dim lighting. Even on top of that he had pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up, leaving me to suppose him either extremely sensitive to light forms, or up to something.

"I'm sorry, are you okay?" he questioned after having procured my attention.

"I smiled warily in return, "No worse than I was before."

I was itching for my father to come back and this man to leave. If anything, he only made me all the more aware of the people around me. If I caused glares and glances by myself, then what would he do? A man decked out like a criminal. And do I honestly want people to recall seeing me with him?

Glancing back at the torn box in my right hand, I created an excuse as I saw him opening his mouth to speak, "I really should replace these staples, though."

The needed section wasn't far from me, I was already in the proper aisle for it, but I trailed the dolly along behind me in the hopes that he would not know that. That he would be new here, newer than me, and would leave. Perhaps to search for them, or else just to be gone. Any hopes of that, though, were shot when he caught up to my side, smiling at me and grabbing a box from the shelves before me. To my dismay, it was the exact box I wanted.

"No offense," he started, scrutinizing me from behind his dark glasses, "but you look a bit odd. I mean, you don't see many girls willing to get so dirty around here, as far as I can tell."

"You don't see many guys dressed to rob a bank, either, so I guess we're even," I snapped back, ignoring the perplexed look gracing his features.

"Fair enough," he responded, offering no more explanation for his attire than I had.

Regretfully, I placed his staple box on my dolly with a glowering look, shifting the plywood back into place to occupy my hands. He merely stood over me, grinning now, with his arms crossed. So utterly self-assured and philodox that I wished for nothing more than to wipe the grin from his face. If I only had the courage.

When I could adjust the wood no more, I settled myself on the dolly, happy to take some weight off of my aching. The man was smiling expectantly at me, which I spitefully ignored until he sat uninvited beside myself on my dolly. "Alright then, I dress this way so I'm unrecognizable."

"Which is so important, why?" I bit back, both in avoidance of a proper response and a small bout of curiosity.

"Well, what would you say if I told you that I was Scott Martin?" he asked, smirking at me as if in anticipation of a rather large reaction.

"...good for you?" I failed to see the importance of this, shrugging before continuing, "What's so great about him?"

He stared at me incredulously, mouth agape, "Well, he's a singer in a band..."

"Anything else?"

"Well, no," he answered, sliding off his sunglasses, "but most people find that highly significant." His eyes, now that they were exposed, were staring at me questioningly.

"I listen to music, if that's what you're wondering," I spoke in return to his gaze, leaning against a metal bar on the dolly. "I listen to Queen, Train, Supertramp, and bands like that. Or mostly, at least. And, I'm dressed this way because I'm on a roofing job."

Laughing a bit as he caught on as to why I was telling him this information, he tugged his hat lower, exposing a light lock of hair. "I could never limit myself like that, I listen to everything. And, you forgot your name. If this is to be a fair exchange, at least."

Flicking a stone from my palm, I swiveled my grey eyes towards him, "Yoora. Yoora Tirimo."

"That's a bit... strange," he lifted his hand to his head in a scratching gesture, as if pondering whether I was duping him.

I rolled my eyes a bit before expanding, "My grandmother came here from Korea with my mother. I was named after her, though my father is American."

My father was still not to be seen, but I found that I cared less about being seen with this stranger. When he asked for my number upon departure, I gave it easily. I knew little of him then as I waited to return to the roof. I knew not what band he played in nor his hometown. I knew not his favorite thing to do or why he ended up in a band. I knew not that I would eventually become nothing more than another infamous notch in his bedpost and a distant memory post only in song.

I knew not what happens when you trust too easily; the end of one life and the beginning of another.

A/N: As far as I know, there are no singers gracing the Earth named Scott Martin, so yes, everyone here is mine. There's a different version of it with an actual singer on my mibba--I fear that's the only way to draw people there--but other than that, this is the only version. Hopefully it's not too wretched.

This idea found me working on the roofing job described (hardly original, I know), so I figured I might as well attempt to write it out. Tell me what you think if you read it.

Oh, and according to my greatest friend (and editor and I'm adamantly not using) my stories have a pattern: "It's the whole... girl is alone. Girl meets boy. Boy attempts to speak. Girl attempts to ignore. Ending: never very happy, either kind of... slightly changed, or bad." Sadly, I can't say my defense is very good.