Latitude Zero

by Diana Renn

  “See you tomorrow?” they said hopefully when the lesson was over.

  “Hasta mañana,” I confirmed. “I will be here tomorrow. Count on it.”

  I hoped that after meeting with Darwin I would still have a mañana.

  After my classes were done, and Rosio had reluctantly returned my shoes, I pushed my loaner bike back toward the main street. I tried to hail a taxi. None stopped, but a pink bus, belching exhaust, finally pulled over where I stood. I saw on the sign it was going to Mariana de Jesus, the street that Vuelta was on.

  I hauled my bike up the steps and paid the fare.

  The driver shook his head at me and pointed at the bike, then at the crowded seats and aisle behind him. “Please. I’m sorry. I have to take this on,” I said in Spanish. “It’s an emergency.”

  The driver sighed and shrugged. “Bueno. Venga.”

  Passengers glared at me as I pushed the bike down the aisle. I apologized to everyone I passed. My face burned. This loaner bike might have been more than most of these passengers could afford. Who was I to barge onto the bus like this and demand to take up space?

  I finally found a spare seat near the back and, holding the bike upright, settled in for the bumpy ride. Music blared. A child wailed. A man ate a piece of corn on a stick. A suspicious substance that might have been vomit oozed slowly down the aisle. I moved my foot. I fought a wave of tears. I was here all because I was too scared to ride my bike in traffic, among people.

  The woman next to me smiled at me kindly, and something melted inside me. I couldn’t help smiling back. At the next stop, a trio of musicians hopped on and sang some kind of ballad. The blend of pan flutes, guitar, and vocals stirred something in my soul. As the music-filled bus pushed on through the crowded streets, I began to feel better.

  This was life. Not perfect. Not comfortable. Just pulsing, fragrant, sticky life. A normal life, for so many people. My mom had faced hardship in Mexico but gave up when life there seemed too hard to handle. I would not make the same choice. I was going to face life in any form. Head-on.

  The girls at La Casa and I lived such different lives. All the opportunities I’d been handed—a TV job, a private school education, enriching extracurriculars—I’d taken for granted, even complained about! My parents overscheduling me? I thought of Rosio—and her young mom, a soft-spoken woman who’d appeared, like a shadow, in a black-and-white maid’s uniform to watch her daughter ride before heading off to work. Being “overscheduled” had a whole new meaning suddenly.

  But on the bikes these girls and I were not so different. We were all working on finding our balance and making our way down a road. And the girls’ eagerness to learn, their risk-taking, had taken my breath away. They were every bit as amazing as the kids I’d met on KidVision. Maybe normal life could be amazing, too.

  The bus jerked to a stop. I fell into the aisle, on top of my bike. I righted the bike and sat back down. I strained to see out the window where all the other passengers were looking.

  A roadblock and protestors were in our way a few yards up ahead. We were stuck behind a row of cars and a triciclo with a trailer of ice cream. The smoke from the tires, on top of the bus’s exhaust fumes, leaked into the bus and made my eyes burn.

  The driver swore and tried to turn, but traffic blocked him in on all sides. The driver got off. The musicians and the passengers followed.

  I waited a moment longer, but it seemed the bus was being abandoned, and so I got off, too, even though I had no idea where we were—somewhere between the old and new towns.

  I pushed my bike through the crowds. Walking it on the sidewalk was cumbersome. I was getting jostled on all sides. I moved the bike out to the street. I got on. I pedaled a few yards, swerved to avoid a broken bottle, hit a bump on the uneven pavement . . . and promptly tipped over, Gertrude clattering loudly on the uneven pavement.

  43

  I RETURNED to the Vuelta headquarters sweaty. Dejected. Defeated. So much for my dream of an empowering ride back to the office. All I had to show for my effort was a ripped knee on my jeans, a skinned palm, and badly jangled nerves.

  I wheeled Gertrude into the shop and snuck her back into the rack. I gave the back tire a swift kick, for good measure. I wasn’t getting on that thing again. Then I looked around the office and the bike shop. Maybe I could do some interviews with volunteers and take my mind off my impending meeting with Darwin.

  The shop was eerily quiet, though. There was just one other volunteer at work—a twentysomething Australian guy, whom everyone seemed to call “Aussie Guy.” He was signing out rental mountain bikes to a couple of German tourists.

  I knocked on Wilson’s office door, to ask if he wanted me to get started on my next assignment. When he didn’t answer, I pushed open the door a little.

  Santiago was at the computer. He looked up and smiled—though less warmly than before, I couldn’t help noticing. “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “The staff and volunteers, they are all at lunch. We can join them at the café. I was waiting for your return, to bring you. How was La Casa?”

  “The girls weren’t as experienced as I thought they’d be, but they made good progress.”

  “¡Súper bien!” Santiago smiled and looked genuinely happy. “You must be a natural teacher.” Then his gaze drifted back to his computer, and his face grew serious. “Actually I am sure your teaching skills must to come from your television show.”

  I froze. KidVision. I hadn’t talked to him about my show. Had Mari mentioned that to him? When they were in the statue together yesterday?

  “I looked you up online. Here you are.”

  I went over to his side of the desk. Sure enough, he’d found the KidVision site with the archived shows. A video was paused on an image of me, age thirteen, helping a first-grade classroom harvest cucumbers at a community urban garden. Me, with braces, a bad haircut, a goofy smile, and skinny legs—my “chicken legs” phase, Kylie and Sarita used to tease me. Oh my God.

  “You are a famous person,” he said, raising one eyebrow. “I had no idea.” I couldn’t tell from his face or his voice if this was a good thing or not.

  “Oh, I’m not famous,” I said. “Really. I’m not.”

  If he’d looked me up, what else had he seen? The awful blog “article” Balboa had posted about my bandit riding? The recording she’d made of my conversation with Gage? All the commentators who’d publicly taken me down? It was up there, forever.

  “This show, I like it very much,” said Santiago. “It is good practice for me, for the listening portion of my TOEFL exam.” He clicked a link. “This I liked. Cycling for Change.”

  And suddenly there was Jake’s face filling up the screen, as he talked about the junior Team EcuaBar’s community outreach programs: “Yeah, sure, it feels great to give back. To show the world that not all cyclists are doped-up hammerheads. A lot of us are all about the sport. That’s what we want to show the kids.”

  I held my breath, listening to him. He came across as eager. And sincere. My thoughts about his character kept taking switchback turns. First I’d thought he was a huge booster for cycling and community service, not to mention an exciting boyfriend. But then he’d tried to frame a teammate for doping. But then it turned out he had doubled back to check out that bike I’d found in the woods, and he’d been right that something weird was up with Juan Carlos. He wasn’t the guy for me, but that didn’t mean he was guilty of any crime here. Or that he was a bad person. He was someone who’d made some bad decisions. I knew something about that myself.

  I hoped I’d find out something soon from Darwin that would help to clear Jake’s name as well as Dylan’s. Jake was already paying, as he should, for trying to frame Juan Carlos for doping. He didn’t deserve to be dragged through the media as a person of interest in a homicide case.

  I was relieved when the clip of Jake ended—I didn’t l
ike the feeling that my Ecuador and my Boston worlds were colliding here, in this office. But then that clip with Juan Carlos came on, and I sat forward to watch. “Turn it up,” I whispered to Santiago, and he did.

  “Bicycles are one solution for to turn around problems like pollution and poverty,” Juan Carlos explained. “One meaning of Vuelta means ‘to turn,’ and that is what we are doing. More cyclists means less dependence on the cars. Less gas and oil. This is something we are very concerned about in my country, in these days.”

  “That’s fascinating,” I said to Juan Carlos in the interview. “So how are bicycle racers, as opposed to regular, everyday cyclists, helping to turn things around in your country?”

  “Bike racing can show to kids a career path. A way out of their circumstances. It can give them opportunities for prize moneys, for scholarships to study, for travel, for lots of things. This is why Preston Lane started the Vuelta Youth Racing Club. To invest money in young racers.”

  Santiago tipped back in his chair and looked at me, twirling a pen between two fingers. “So did you know Juan Carlos well?”

  “I told you I interviewed him for my show.” What was he getting at? Why did he keep looking at me as though he didn’t believe me?

  He stopped the video clip. “The first guy—he is your novio?”

  “My what?”

  “Your novio. Boyfriend.”

  I stared at him. He meant Jake. I wanted to pretend I’d never known Jake. But I couldn’t look into Santiago’s clear blue eyes and lie again. “He was, once. Not anymore.”

  “And Juan Carlos? You were with him or not?”

  “No!” Where was he getting these ideas? Had he read my thoughts, my past, on my face, as we watched the videos together?

  He shrugged. “Well. I must to close the office and take you to the café to join the others for lunch.”

  “I can grab a sandwich later. I’m not hungry.” And I wasn’t. I suddenly just wanted to hide somewhere and prepare, mentally, for my meeting with Darwin. Just as Juan Carlos had needed his five minutes of prayer and peace before racing, I now craved something like that for myself.

  “I know you are a hard worker,” Santiago said with a small frown. “But here in Ecuador, we take the time and we stop to eat lunch. We will go join our friends and take the break, yes?”

  “Yes. Okay.” I sighed.

  “Momentito.”

  As soon as he ducked into the bathroom, I rushed to his computer and looked at the other windows he had opened. One had html code; he was updating the Vuelta website with information about Pan-American Cycling Tour events this week.

  One was an article in El Comercio, Quito’s main newspaper, about how EcuaBars and Cadence bikes were both selling like crazy worldwide since the cyclist’s crash. People had become fascinated with Juan Carlos, and how his promising career and his life were cut short by a member of his own team, the mechanic. People interviewed for the article said they wanted to buy these products to support the companies that had nurtured this great talent. Or they felt closer to him, eating the product he endorsed or riding the same brand of bike.

  I frowned at a picture of Chris Fitch and Preston Lane cutting the ribbon at the start of a new bike path opening in Boston. They looked happy, smiling. I wasn’t sure when the picture was taken, but it made me wonder. Could marketing be a motive for murder? Was Juan Carlos worth more to them dead than alive?

  No. Impossible. He had to be worth more alive, as a moneymaker for both companies. Besides, if either businessman was behind his death, they’d have to be linked to Darwin, too, and that was inconceivable. Talk about coming from totally different worlds.

  Another window was open to a mostly black screen, with dancing fruit, and a list of different teams, in English, organized by sports. Sports Xplor! it said at the top. I’d seen that website before, in Gage’s office. Once again, it caught my eye because it looked so strange. It resembled an ad in a pop-up window, with simple graphics, basic design. I saw a list of cycling teams, and I realized that’s what this must be. Some kind of ad.

  I clicked on the icon for the next open window, and that one freaked me out.

  It was the article about my bandit ride, with the audio clip of my “confession.” Just as I’d feared, Santiago had found that, with a simple search of my name.

  The toilet flushed. I quickly closed those windows.

  Was Santiago doing some sleuthing of his own about Juan Carlos? Or about me?

  44

  AFTER LUNCH, Wilson put me on an office project with Emma, the Irish volunteer—a relief after the stress of teaching at La Casa. A relief, then a bore . . . then a panic. We had to stuff hundreds of envelopes with letters soliciting donations. Wilson and the team were starting a big campaign to expand their youth outreach and programs.

  “I don’t see why these all have to go out tomorrow,” I grumbled, glancing at the clock and the darkening sky. Sunsets flared up like a candle and blew out just as fast in Quito, I’d already noticed. And the sky was especially dark, as storm clouds roiled down from the surrounding hills. The first patters of rain spit against the windows. I glanced at a wall clock, and panic seized me. I had less than an hour until my meeting with Darwin. I had to get out of this place. Why had we all lingered for nearly two hours over lunch? We could have finished this project by four!

  “He said they had to go out immediately because it’s Quito’s Bicycle Week and the homecoming event of the PAC Tour,” said Emma. “Everyone here will have bikes on the brain. They might be more likely to donate some cash.”

  More like everyone had Juan Carlos on the brain, I thought. The newsstands were full of magazines with his face splashed all over them. And Juan Carlos was a figurehead of Vuelta. I could see why Wilson was trying to capitalize on all the hype. Still, Juan Carlos’s face staring out at me from all those covers was a constant reminder that I was failing in my mission.

  I pushed my chair back from the table. “I have to get out of here,” I mumbled. I felt bad leaving her with a mountain of paper to finish, but if I didn’t get to that meeting, Darwin was going to start his online trail of destruction, his digital bulldozing of my family’s lives.

  Emma stood up, too, and followed me out of the back office. “Are you sick? You look really pale.”

  “Yeah. Not so good. Stomach stuff. Sorry I can’t finish. Tell Wilson—”

  But I ran smack into Wilson as I opened the door to the building. “I was just coming to get you two!” he said. “The surprise is coming!” Behind him I saw Santiago, Sylvia, and the seven other volunteers, including Mari, standing on the sidewalk.

  Suddenly I heard something that sounded like a middle school marching band. Some kind of parade. A tinny brass section, a crashing bass. An oompa-oompa beat. And then a bus turned the corner and pulled up by the curb, and all the volunteers, including Mari, burst into cheers and applause.

  It was the wildest bus I’d ever seen: antique-looking, with wooden sides, painted bright yellow and green. An eight-piece band sat on the rooftop, continuing to play their oompa song. The bus was open air, no windows, with benches for seats. Inside were shiny streamers and bunches of colorful balloons.

  The Vuelta staff and volunteers started chanting, “¡Chiva! ¡Chiva!” and filed onto the bus.

  Santiago raised his eyebrows when he saw me, but he didn’t smile as wide as he had yesterday morning when he picked me up at the Ruizes’ house. Something was definitely up with him.

  Maybe I’d pushed him away. He’d been so friendly from the start, and I’d been aloof and preoccupied. But I couldn’t make up for it now. I had only twenty minutes to go until my face-to-face meeting with a possible murderer!

  “My father rented a chiva. A party bus,” he explained.

  “Looks fun,” I said. “I wish I could come.” And I did wish that, powerfully.

  “What?” Santia
go grinned. “But you are coming. Everyone is invited. It is for the volunteers.”

  “But I have to—”

  “¡Oye, señorita! ¡Venga!” the driver insisted, ushering me on with an impatient gesture.

  “¡Venga, Tessa! ¡Venga!” everyone on board shouted at me, in unison.

  I hopped on and took the seat in front of Mari, who was sitting by Aussie Guy. Santiago slid onto the bench beside me. “How could you even think about missing this?” he asked, with a broad gesture, as the band thundered on above our heads. Symbols crashed, trumpets blared, and the drum banged on and on. “This is a classic Ecuadorian experience!”

  I could feel a headache coming on fast.

  A woman passed around whistles, party blowers, and little cups of Inca Kola, and away we went, shuddering and lurching into the evening, the song growing more frenzied at every turn.

  I turned to look at Mari as everyone started blowing their whistles and party blowers. “Where’s this bus going?”

  “Nowhere,” she said, playfully shaking a plastic castanet at me. “Why?” Then her eyes widened. “Darwin. Did you call him yet?”

  “No. I have to get off this thing. And what do you mean the bus is going nowhere? Everything has to go somewhere.”

  “Not this bus. Chivas just drive around. Why don’t you use Santiago’s phone?”

  “But I don’t need to call—” It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about. Mari thought I needed to call Darwin; she had no idea I was actually meeting with him. “Um, I mean, Darwin said use a pay phone only. I guess that way it’s harder to trace him.”