Free Are You Seeing Me? by Darren Groth Page B

rubber band on her wrist and releases so it whips her skin. I don’t like it when she does that, but it seems to be part of her routine. Her face loosens up and she smiles. It’s not a proper smile, though—it doesn’t show any teeth. Justine had that face a lot when we were in school. Whenever Dad saw it, he would say, Lost your dentures, tree frog? or That’s your grin-and-bury-it look, tree frog. She points at the seismometer in my lap.
    “I just had a little rumble, that’s all,” she says. “Take more than that to shake our happy holiday.”
    I nod because I know Justine would like me to agree with her, but I don’t really believe what she says. She is not happy. And I don’t think she was joking when she said she would like me to drive. But I can’t drive. One lesson per year is not enough.
    Perry Richter saves the day.
    That is the future.
    But not today.
    As we leave the small parking lot and accelerate back onto the Coquihalla Highway, I put the seismometer on the floor, holding it between my feet. I will keep it there from now on.

    THERE ARE NO OTHER RUMBLES for the remaining 161 kilometers of our journey. There are only interesting and beautiful sights for us to see. In my head, I make a separate list for each. By the time we reach the Peachland Welcomes You and Historic Peachland signs, they are as follows:
    Interesting
The abandoned Coquihalla Highway tollbooth
Signs for putting chains on your tires (they don’t spell
it tyres here) in winter
Overhead bridges that make sure moose and deer and
bears are safe crossing the highway
Fences that make sure the animals use the
overhead bridges
The change from forest mountains to desert hills
Large sections of forest that have died and gone brown
because of a pest called the pine beetle
    Beautiful
The snow on the tips of the mountains beside the
Coquihalla Highway
A tiny waterfall running down the side of one of
the mountains
The jade color of the Coquihalla River
A hawk that flew in the sky above our car when we
turned onto Highway 97C
An orange Lamborghini that raced past our car at the
Okanagan Highway turnoff
    The final part of the trip—down the long road that runs beside Okanagan Lake and flattens at the town of Peachland—could make it onto both lists. The lake is more like an ocean, calm and blue and reaching for the horizon. The whole town is positioned on the hillside to the right; rows of houses overlook the water, no one missing out on the scenery. It’s like a movie theater—whether you’re front row or at the back, everyone has a good seat for the show. And the movie doesn’t have the thrills and spills of Rumble in the Bronx or Shanghai Knights . Just three sailboats and a water-skier and quite a few swimmers and several people riding Jet Skis. But it does have Ogopogo, a mystery better than any movie because it is real and not fiction.
    “Wow,” says Justine. “Never seen anything like this.”
    “Wow,” I repeat.
    We find our rental house—it is halfway up the hill, on Beatrice Road. It belongs to a stranger— Friend of a friend, with maybe another friend thrown in there as well is what Justine told me. She said the friend’s friend’s friend travels to Las Vegas at this time every year to earn her children’s inheritance and escape the tourists. She showed me photos of the house, outside and in, so I would be prepared. Looking around it now, I’m glad she did. Almost everything is where I expect it to be—kitchen, bedrooms, toilet, the downstairs room with gym equipment, the big glass doors. It doesn’t feel like home—that makes me slightly anxious—but it doesn’t feel incorrect either. I don’t see myself as a burglar or a trespasser or a squatter like the one they kicked out of our neighbor Mrs. McGuire’s house after she died of a stroke. This is good practice for Fair Go.
    After we’ve brought the bags in, Justine wipes her brow and puts her hands on her hips. “I need to go shopping,” she says. “Gotta