Nineteen-year-old Justine Richter has been The Caretaker to her autistic twin brother Perry ever since their father died of cancer. Perry is about to move into Fair Go Community Village, but first he and Justine travel from their home in Brisbane, Australia to the Pacific Northwest for a two-week road trip.
Are You Seeing Me? contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The book is set in 2010.
- Accent Interest: In Seattle, a girl yells at Perry, "Hey, put anotha shrimp on the bah-bee, sexy Aussie man!"
- Caretaker Reversal: Perry becomes Justine's caretaker while she's recovering from the injuries she suffered in the earthquake.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Averted. When the earthquake hits, Justine falls in the shower and hits her head. Perry finds her with no pulse and does chest compressions that crack her ribs. After 90 seconds her heartbeat starts again, but it's very weak. Perry covers her with a towel and carries her out into the lobby yelling for help. A kind stranger rushes them to the hospital.
- How Many Fingers?: When Justine wakes up in the hospital after the earthquake, Perry holds up two fingers and says, "How many fingers am I holding up?" Justine says, "Seven."
- Meaningful Name: One of Perry's obsessions is earthquakes, and his last name is Richter, as he points out a few times.
- Missing Mum: Perry and Justine's mum, Leonie Orr, left when they were four because she didn't want to spend the rest of her life caring for a disabled son and because, as she later realized, she simply wasn't cut out for parenthood. She moved to Vancouver and became the owner of a yoga studio. Her family didn't hear from her for twelve years, until Justine received a postcard from her on her sixteenth birthday. Since then the two have exchanged a handful of letters. Leonie's last letter included a phone number. When Justine and Perry reach Canada, Justine dials the number. Leonie agrees to meet her children for the first time in fifteen years.
- Neurodiversity Is Supernatural: Averted. As Leonie, Perry, and Justine watch mountain bikers drive around a course, Perry correctly predicts that an accident will happen at the bottom of a jump because the ground there is unstable. Leonie thinks Perry "saw" the accident happen with his "third-eye chakra," but Justine tells her that Perry is simply logical and observant and calls her out for seeing him as a freak of nature.
- Switching P.O.V.: Justine and Perry take turns narrating several chapters at a time.
- Title Drop: Justine says "Are you seeing me?" to Perry to calm him down. Perry says the same thing to Justine when she wakes up in the hospital.
- Unintentional Final Message: Throughout Justine's childhood, her father regularly wrote letters to her in a journal. He wrote one for Perry, too, but switched to keeping a photo album after it became clear that Perry was more of a visual learner. He was going to give both books to the twins when they turned eighteen, but he died two weeks before their birthday.
- Urine Trouble: One of Justine's father's letters, written when the twins were infants, describes Perry projectile urinating on the neighbor's cat.
