Golden

by Mary Victoria Johnson

  “Excuse me?” I was tapped on the shoulder. “It’s half past eleven.”

  “There are still people arriving!” I exclaimed.

  The lady thrust a watch at my face. “See?”

  From the driver’s seat, Sergio smirked at me.

  Yeah, because only in this industry would the persistence of the guests be considered my fault.

  The last couple hobbled up the stairs onto the bus, and I got Sergio to close the luggage compartment. Then, already feeling exhausted, I climbed on board, the doors closed, and we rolled out of the parking lot. The chattering stopped, and I was faced with a busload of eyes staring directly at me, waiting, judging, some kind, others narrowed, and some so mottled with age I couldn’t tell the difference.

  And that was when I saw her. One earbud in place and the other hanging loose like a necklace, long legs stretched over the empty seat next to her, and head resting against the window. Her hair had been dyed navy blue, scraped back into a ponytail, and she wore no makeup aside from a sweep of eyeliner. A girl about my age. Alone, on a bus full of seniors. How had I not seen her before? I must’ve checked her ticket. Had I really been so distracted?

  She was avoiding looking at me. Nobody was giving her a second glance, like her being here wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. If she’d been here with someone, it wouldn’t have been. But there was something about the way she sat, staring out of the window with her jaw set like she was on the way to war, that made me intensely curious.

  There was a cough, and I jolted back to reality. Right.

  “Hello, everyone,” I said, giving a wave. “I’m Lewis Crake, from Golden Tours, and I’ll be your guide for the next five days.” I spoke in an upbeat, jovial way, sticking to a script I’d rehearsed and maintaining a confidence that was trained rather than natural. “I’m from Port Augusta, Australia, which is about six hundred and fifty kilometers west of Sydney. Our driver, Sergio Macari, is originally from Florence, Italy. According to my list, we’ve got people from six different countries here today, which is awesome, although I’m sorry, I do only speak English.” A couple of smiles widened. I continued, “Today we’ll be driving from Vancouver to Lillooet, which will take around three and a half hours. It’s probably the most scenic leg of the trip, as we’ll be going along the world-famous Sea-to-Sky Highway and crossing almost all the way through the coastal mountain range. Um . . . yes, so feel free to ask questions, enjoy the views, and I’ll touch base again as we reach different points in the trip.”

  A couple of wizened hands raised.

  “Will we see bears?”

  “Ah, maybe. Nothing is guaranteed.”

  “Apparently you always see bears,” another tourist said, confidently.

  “And deer.”

  “I didn’t come all the way from Minnesota to see deer!”

  “You will see a bear. They’re almost tame nowadays.”

  I interjected then, pointing out that they most certainly weren’t. The man glared at me, then rolled his eyes and began muttering to his wife, who appeared to be playing Candy Crush on her phone.

  Eventually, as we shifted from the snail-paced crawl past identical bridges and buildings and into the mountains, everyone grew too distracted by the view and stopped asking questions. The muscles in my jaw aching from maintaining a smile, I took a seat right in the front row and exhaled. I considered going to sit next to the girl, but thought better of it.

  It really was quite spectacular. On our left, there was the ocean, the same brilliant shade of blue as the summer sky, wrapping around the dozens of treed islands drifting in and out of a haze settled on the horizon. On our right, there was the mountain range itself, composed of lush cedar forests and sheer rock faces sliced by the highway.

  This isn’t supposed to be a vacation for us too, remember? The boss doesn’t want us to forget that.

  Part of my application profile had claimed I never felt traffic sickness, so despite hating the sensation of reading in a moving vehicle, I took all my paperwork from my bag and thumbed through it. The hotel in Lillooet was confirmed, as was the local guide, and I’d compiled a list of restaurants to check out. The weather was looking good, traffic report was all clear, and I’d pretty much memorized the tourism leaflet for the region already . . .

  I stopped flipping through when I came to the guest list. It had all the names, ages, addresses, phone numbers, contacts, and health and dietary concerns for everyone on the bus.

  Wilson, Hera (F). Home address: North Vancouver (no street name provided). Phone number: not provided. No allergies, no medication, no dietary restrictions. Emergency contact: not provided. Amount paid in full, July 3. Age 17.

  That was her, all right. Hera Wilson. It was typical of Swierenga—or, technically, Rachelle—to allow a client to register without filling out all the information as well as being underage. I knew that as a general rule, no one under eighteen was supposed to be on these trips without an accompanying adult. And, perhaps more interestingly, she’d only paid three days ago. Considering she lived in Vancouver, it looked like a very last-minute decision.

  As discretely as possible, I turned to peer at her again. Both earbuds were in now, her eyes glued on the scenery. It was, without question, odd.

  “What are you running away from?” Chrissy had asked me when I announced my plans to fly halfway across the world instead of attending university.

  “Nothing,” I’d said. “Stop reading into everything.”

  She’d raised an eyebrow, glaring. “Please. You don’t just decide on a whim to do mad things like that.”

  Arguably, this trip wasn’t “mad,” but there was one glaring similarity: it wasn’t the type of activity young people just woke up and decided to do. Not alone, anyway.

  “Hello.” A woman who could’ve easily been born in the 1800s tapped me on my shoulder from the row behind me. She was wearing an old-fashioned poodle skirt and war-era blouse, her white hair in curls so tight they pressed right into her skull—a real mismatch of decades.

  I blinked, wracking my brain to try and recall her name.

  “Jess Cartwright,” she said, helpfully. “You may recognize me from James Bond. Have you ever heard of Washington? Not the capital, the state. That’s where I’m from. Not Hollywood, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be famous. You look like you might be famous.”

  Her companion was a woman in her late sixties, dressed to blend in, and carried enough facial similarities that I took her to be Jess’s daughter. She gave me an apologetic wince.

  Smile function: on.

  “Which film were you in?” I asked, putting away my papers.

  “Are you deaf, boy?” She smirked at her daughter. “James Bond. I already told you.”

  And so went the next several hours.

  SWIERENGA NEEDN’T HAVE WORRIED THAT I’D END up on a holiday myself. The only thing that freed me from Jess’s ridiculous nattering was pressure from other passengers to share my attention with the entire bus. I was asked questions about things so obscure even Google couldn’t be of help, and I nearly lost my temper with a woman who was adamant we’d taken a slow route on purpose.

  “I live right here! I’m a local!” she insisted. “Born and raised in the valley. And I’d bet, well, my life, that it would’ve been faster to head east first! This is ridiculous!”

  I brought up MapQuest on my phone. “See, ma’am, there’s a fifty-minute—”

  She nearly hit the phone out of my hand. “I don’t deal with any of that technology garbage. It’s always wrong. I get terrible backaches if I sit down too long, you see, and I’m not happy to have a guide who clearly doesn’t know basic things like which highways to take!”

  Start walking the other way if you think it’d be faster then, you soggy old badger.

  “Ma’am,” I said, courteously, “going east would’ve meant driving straight through several cities in Greater Vancouver, as well as having to head too far in the wrong direction by account of the valley—”


  “Which is where I live.”

  “—and I can absolutely, one hundred percent guarantee you, the northbound highway is far faster. And more scenic.”

  She snorted, rolling her eyes at me like I was a stupid child who still thought the world was flat. “You’ve probably never even come up here before, have you? You just tap away into your phone, shuffle your papers, and expect us to go along with it. Well, I tell you what—”

  “A bear! A bear! A bear!”

  Thank God.

  I gave the woman, Grace Schatz, an apologetic smile that didn’t reach my eyes and left to see what the fuss was about.

  We were in the thick of the coastal mountain range by now, peaks—some of which were still capped in snow—looming up at all sides and making the bus feel like a toy. To our left there was a river, glacial green, crashing over rocks, fallen trees, and around the bases of mountains alongside the road. That was where several fingers were pointing as the shouts grew in excitement.

  “A bear! Look, look, can’t you see it?”

  “No? Wait, yes, yes, I do!”

  People were rising from their seats and fishing for cameras in a total and utter panic. I nodded for Sergio to stop. There were no other cars on this stretch of highway, at least. The woods here weren’t ancient like the ones flanking the ocean; these were the logging forests. This, at least, made it easier to see through the minimal undergrowth and search for the bear.

  I hesitated around the fringe of the group. Having lived in several cities throughout my life, I knew how to be aggressive when the crowds required it. However, the elbows-out rule seemed unethical when applied to a swarm of seniors.

  “Can you see it?” A falsely blond head whipped around, and a liver-spotted hand adorned with layer upon layer of costume jewelry seized my own. “Right there, through the trees, a great big grizzly . . . ”

  “I can’t see it.”

  “That’s because you’re blind, love.”

  “Get out of the way!”

  “Take a picture! Quickly, take a picture!”

  “I can’t see it either!”

  I shook free and stood on my toes, blocked by the gathered heads. By guy standards, I was relatively short, the polar opposite of all my six-foot-five friends who had noodles for arms and string for legs, and on this occasion, it didn’t help.

  “Is it a brown or black bear?” someone demanded.

  “Black, the brown ones are at higher elevations,” the know-it-all man, Doug Wimberley, replied.

  “Aren’t we at a high elevation?”

  “Shush, you’ll scare it away.”

  “I still can’t see it.”

  Camera flashes were going off all over the place. I might have been leery about using force to get to the window, but the majority of the tourists were decidedly not so opposed. Several times I was prodded and shoved in the ribs, squashed in with the crowd like I was one of them.

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered under my breath, ducking back out into the aisle. Then, louder, “Can everyone please try to spread out so that we all have a chance to look? Thank you.”

  Slowing down to their usual shuffling pace, they obeyed.

  “Look!” Schatz shrieked at such a high octave I wondered if there were cubs involved too. In my experience, nothing excited girls—therefore, possibly elderly ladies too—more than baby animals. “We can go outside!”

  “Ah, no you can’t,” I contradicted, alarmed. “Not unless you want to be mauled or—”

  “But look!”

  This time, I was provided with a gap. Now, the majority weren’t gawping at the elusive bear at all—they were pointing at Hera, who was standing by the side of the road all by herself.

  “What?” I snapped my head around to glare at Sergio. “What were you thinking?”

  He shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Open the door again. And don’t let anyone else out, all right?”

  I ran outside, automatically inhaling a deep breath of the fresh air, a godsend after hours on the stale, perfumed bus. Then I strode over to Hera and tried to force all my earlier curiosities out of mind.

  “You can’t be out here,” I said, cringing. I sounded patronizing even to myself, using the same overly polite tone I’d used with Schatz. “It’s dangerous.”

  Hera rolled her eyes. “I beg to differ.”

  Was this going to end up another case of as-a-local-I-know-more-than-you? Dangerous creatures were an area that she couldn’t possibly fault me, as an Australian, for being ignorant of.

  “Her—” I stopped myself. I addressed all the other guests as “ma’am” and “sir,” not by their first names. But doing so felt far too awkward with someone my own age in comparison. Too bad, sunshine. “Miss Wilson, I must insist—”

  To my increased surprise, she burst out laughing. “Ha, listen to you! What century are you from?” She grinned at me, then laughed again. “There is no bear, Lewis, don’t you see? It’s a log.”

  I blinked.

  “If we run,” Hera whispered, leaning in close and resting a hand on my shoulder, “we may still be able to save ourselves.”

  I jerked away from her touch, back stiffening. “After all that, a log? They’ll be disappointed.”

  She studied me. “Disappointed,” she echoed.

  I pretended to be interested in the log. It wasn’t difficult to see how, at a distance, it could be mistaken for a bear; it was on the other side of the creek, obscured in shadow, and warped into an odd, animalistic shape. A banging on the windows behind us dragged me back into the moment.

  “You really do need to go inside again,” I sighed. “They’ll never give it a rest otherwise.”

  Hera nodded. Her grin had faded away, now replaced with something almost like resignation. “Okay. Sorry. I just—”

  “It’s not your fault.” I gritted my teeth and gestured for Sergio to open the doors again. “He should’ve known better than to let you out.”

  “No, it is my fault.” Her eyes flickered to Sergio before resting back on me. “I asked.”

  “Well . . . just ask me in the future,” I said. As an afterthought, I added, “By the way, I was wondering about—”

  But Hera had already returned to her seat, hidden behind a swarm of people still craning to see the elusive bear.

  The realization that the bear was, in fact, a log brought a chorus of groans from the group. Many people insisted that they’d suspected it from the start, and the couple who spotted it in the first place shrank back to their seats, blushing. Hera didn’t say anything, plugging her headphones in and frowning at the window.

  It wasn’t a complete disaster. We saw a herd of deer, several massive eagles, and a lone coyote slinking through the forest, enough to satisfy most of the tourists. We stopped for lunch in Squamish, a coastal town dominated by towering granite massifs, and progressed inland without having to stop again. Grace Schatz continued to throw stupid questions at me, Doug Wimberley continued to narrate with his “extensive” knowledge, and I continued to absorb myself in my papers. When I chanced another glance at Hera, I noticed she was no longer sitting alone; an octogenarian couple had joined her, speaking in thick French accents, and every now and then, they would all burst out laughing. I took it as a good thing.

  As the scenery shifted yet again, I moved into the aisle and coughed for everyone’s attention.

  “We should be arriving in Lillooet in the next fifteen to twenty minutes,” I said, met with a round of cheers. “When we arrive, don’t worry about luggage. Sergio will take it to the hotel. Our local guide will meet us, we’ll explore the town, then we’ll check into the hotel, and you’ll be free to have dinner or walk around as you choose. Questions?”

  “Yeah.” Doug stuck his pudgy hand in the air. “Why aren’t you doing the touring? Isn’t that what we paid you for?”

  My smile thinned. “You pay me to arrange hotels, transport, attractions, and general logistics, sir. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone
who is an expert in every destination.”

  He shrugged.

  More questions followed, mostly about dinner, then I returned to my seat and the group broke into chatter. I searched for something else to do and, unable to find anything, copied Hera and turned to the window to take in the scenery for the first time. It was amazing, only four hours into the trip, how exhausted I felt already.

  LILLOOET APPEARED ALL OF A SUDDEN, ANNOUNCING itself with a sign and the slogan BC’s Little Nugget. Here, the dense pine forests had thinned out, like somebody had shaved all the hills bare and trees were only just starting to regrow in a few places. We were bordering on a semi-arid region known as the Okanagan, Canada’s very own desert, suggesting itself through foothills of sage, thistles, and rabbitbrush. It was like some odd crossbreed between the alpine north and the Californian desert, and the closest to home I’d probably ever get in British Columbia.

  The main street—practically an alleyway by Vancouver standards—was begging for tourists as much as their slogan. Most of the buildings were designed to recreate the wild-western style, with sweeping porches, wooden siding, and store names containing unoriginal cowboy puns; all were clinging desperately to an age that had passed long ago.

  Everyone got off the bus, stretching and groaning like they’d been sitting down for days rather than a few hours. Our local connection, who I knew simply as “Lucy,” was waiting for us with the same polite, almost-enthusiastic expression I myself used. She was in her late teens too, glossy black hair woven into a waist-length braid, and wore a black hoodie with the symbol of the St’át’imc First Nation.