Free Coming Home by Audrey Stover

a
few up in the La Jolla area that I thought would be fun to look for." He
pressed a couple more buttons. "See?"
    She looked at the screen on his phone and just saw a few
dots on a geographical map. "I'm not really sure what I am looking at
here."
    "These dots are where some geocaches are hidden."
    "Huh."
    He smiled at her, "I'll explain it better when we get
out of the car," he said as he pulled the car into a parking spot.
    He opened her door for her and as they walked he held his
phone so she could see it. "See, this dot is a geocache. We are walking
toward it and when we get close it will look like we are on it. We just need to
find where the person hid it."
    "What is the purpose of this?"
    "To have fun," he said with a smile.
    As they got close to where the first one was hidden he gave
her some tips about how to look for the geocache. "Try to be as
inconspicuous as possible," he said as they searched around a park bench.
    "Inconspicuous? We are in the middle of a public park,
a busy public park, mind you, looking at a park bench like it is a work of art.
I don't think you can make that look inconspicuous."
    He chuckled, "Well, okay, you have a point, just don't
yell, 'Eureka' when you find it, then."
    "I don't even know what I'm looking for," she
said, enjoying herself in spite of the fact that she actually had no clue what
she was doing.
    "Susan, come here," Craig whispered.
    She walked toward him looking around. "Why are you
whispering?" She asked in a whisper herself.
    "I think I found it," he said softly motioning
with his head toward the bench.
    "It?" She hissed back.
    "Yes, it," he said with a little jerk of his head
and eyes toward the bench.
    Susan looked at the bench.
    "Look for something out of place," he whispered
while shielding her from a couple of people passing by.
    She searched the part of the bench that she thought he had
indicated and just when she was about ready to tell him she couldn't see
anything out of place, she saw it. There was a third "screw" where
there should have only been two. She looked at him, "I think I see
it," she whispered. "What do we do now?"
    "Take it off the bench."
    "Take it off?" She asked in surprise.
    He nodded his head.
    As discreetly as possible she placed her hand on the extra
"screw" and pulled. It was actually a magnet and it came off easily.
She handed it to Craig and watched as he opened it and pulled out a tiny piece
of rolled up paper.
    "What is that?" Susan asked looking over his
shoulder.
    "This is the log where we put our initials and the
date," he said as he wrote KR & SJ and the date in writing so tiny it
was difficult to read. Then he placed the piece of paper back into the fake
magnetized screw-head and placed it back on the bench.
    They walked away from the bench and Susan glanced over her
shoulder back at it. She looked back at Craig, "So there are things like
this all over the place?"
    Craig nodded his head as he did something with his phone.
"I'm logging in on my account that we found this one," he explained
as he put his phone back in his pocket. "They are hidden all over the
place, but they have to be at least five hundred feet apart."
    "Oh. Why?"
    He shrugged, "I'm not really sure."
    "Oh, so where are the other ones we were going to look
for?"
    He smiled at her, "You do like it, don't you?"
    She nodded her head, "I think it is fascinating that
people would go to the trouble to hide a piece of paper so other people can
find it and write their initials on it."
    Craig gave a shout of laughter, "Yes, I guess that is
fascinating."
    "And the people who find it can walk away with a sense
that they accomplished something."
    "Yes, that's true. Don't you feel like you
accomplished something?"
    "Of course I do," she said with a smile.
    They walked around the park for a couple more hours and
found three more geocaches. One was a fairly large tin with little trinkets
inside it. Craig explained to her that some people put travel bugs in the
geocaches and these travel