Free In the Shadow of Satellites by Amanda Dick Page B

he stays in sight.
    “How long does it take?” he asks after a few minutes. “From one end of the track to the other, I mean.”
    “It takes me about an hour, give or take, but I’m not exactly fit.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    He’s clearly being polite because he’s hardly broken a sweat.
    “You’re doing demo all day,” I say. “From what I’ve seen, I’m sure you could walk this in well under an hour. You could probably run it. I used to.”
    “Maybe, but where’s the fun in that? There’s something to be said for taking your time, stopping to smell the roses – or admiring the view, in this case.”
    I’m not sure if he’s just humouring me or if he really believes this. I guess if I was walking this track to admire the view, I’d think the same way. As it is, I’m walking it to kill time, because that’s something I have in abundance these days.
    “Geezer!” he calls, as the track narrows to the point where we can’t walk side by side anymore.
    Geezer appears again from out of the undergrowth and waits for us. Luke falls back and I’m obliged to take the lead, which is mildly annoying. Now I feel like I need to pick up the pace, which is the opposite of what I really want to do. I’m tiring fast, not used to exerting this much energy. Geezer waits until we’re almost to him, then trots off ahead again.
    “How old is he?” I ask, trying not to breathe too heavily.
    “Who, Geezer? I have no idea. He kind of adopted me, not the other way around.”
    “Really?”
    “Absolutely. I was out at the Blue Lake, at the campground there, and he just rocked up one day and sat beside my tent, like he was waiting for something. It was weird. He didn’t have a collar or any kind of identification at all. I went to the office and asked if anyone had lost their dog, but no one had. When I left, he came with me. He’s been with me ever since.”
    Geezer stopped for a moment, as if he was listening, then turned and continued walking.
    “So how did he get his name?” I ask.
    “Well, we’re in Rotorua, famous for its bubbling mud and geysers, so…”
    It takes me a moment to understand.
    “Oh,” I say, as the penny drops. “ Geyser . I get it now.”
    “You guys pronounce it –“
    “ Guy ser, not gee zer.”
    He chuckles.
    “Over here, geezer means something else entirely,” I say, by way of explanation. “I think it’s an English thing. Over there, they say ‘that geezer’ like we’d say ‘that bloke’ or ‘that guy’. Part of our colonial heritage.”
    “I guess, either way, it works for him.”
    We fall silent once again, as the track begins its gentle decline down to the end, and the lake.
     

Chapter 9
     
     
    I can’t find my pen. It’s not where I’m sure I left it, where I always leave it. I make sure I put things away, and everything has a home. Otherwise I lose things and that gets really bloody annoying. My pen was definitely here yesterday morning, and now it’s gone. I search all over, but it’s nowhere to be found.
    Sometimes things go missing here, and this time I’m sure it has nothing to do with me. My pen is the latest item in a grocery list of mysterious disappearances. I stand in front of the calendar, Wednesday mocking me.
    “Okay,” I say to the empty house. “Alright. I get it. I know you’re here, but can you please stop stealing my stuff?”
    They say that some spirits feel the need to remind you that they’re watching over you, so they take your things, and then they give them back to you later. I usually find the things I’ve lost – granted, not where I thought they’d be, but I find them. That’s how I know I put them somewhere strange. Keys in the fridge, milk in the pantry, my favourite shirt in the tea towel drawer.
    But when things disappear altogether, that’s when I know it’s not me.
    It’s James and Kieran, playing games. I can almost hear them giggling together. For the first time in a while, it doesn’t hurt. Instead, it