Latitude Zero

by Diana Renn

  Never again would I see him pray before a race. Or bump into him after to offer congratulations. Or shoot the breeze—in Spanish, so I could practice—about school or movies or KidVision or bikes.

  And I would go the rest of my life without knowing what Juan Carlos Macias-Léon wanted to talk to me about so urgently.

  I swung my legs out of bed and felt a weird pain in my chest. Then I looked down and realized what it was. I’d fallen asleep with that crucifix necklace, turned the wrong way against my chest, and it had left marks in my skin. I adjusted it and promised myself not to fall asleep with it on again. Much as I wanted to wear it forever, close to my heart, it was too awkward and painful to sleep with it on at night.

  How did he race with this thing on anyway? Wouldn’t it fly up and hit his face, or bang against him if he unzipped his cycling jersey, as most of the cyclists did to cool off?

  I swallowed hard as another reality hit me. Now I would never get the chance to return the necklace to him.

  I reached for my laptop at the foot of my bed. I’d finally fallen asleep last night after hours of crying alternating with chasing Juan Carlos—online anyway. I’d watched race videos, where he seemed very much alive. I’d viewed shots from his most recent races. Astonishing breakaways. Stunning wins. In each case, he overtook competitors at the last minute, passing them on hills and flying over the finish line. His sudden speed seemed to come out of nowhere. I could hear the crescendo of spectators’ cheers every time he flew by. Sports commentators said he raced with an ease and confidence far beyond his years, and was proving himself to be, potentially, as great a climber as the young Colombian cycling star Nairo Quintana.

  I’d left off my tearful viewing last night with an archived KidVision video. It was the story we’d done on the EcuaBar junior development team last summer.

  I took a deep breath and fast-forwarded to the end of the segment, where I’d introduced Juan Carlos as the hotshot rider recruited from Ecuador who shared the team’s mission of community service. Off-camera, before the shoot, Juan Carlos had been nervous, I now remembered. I’d told him—in Spanish—to talk directly to the kids.

  “I can talk to kids,” he’d said, flashing me a grateful smile. The camera rolled, and when he spoke, he looked straight into it and relaxed. “¡Hola, KidVision! ¿Cómo están? Me llamo Juan Carlos, y soy de Ecuador. In my home city, Quito, I worked with an advocacy group. This group is called Vuelta. We work hard to make the streets safe for bikes. We also teach kids how to ride and we have a racing club. I hope to continue this work in some ways, now I am here to Boston.”

  He’d traveled so far to change his life. Not to end it. What was the point of coming all the way to New England to develop his racing career, only to wind up at eighteen in a hospital morgue? What good was it to fight to make public streets safe for biking if he couldn’t survive a crash on a controlled route for a charity race?

  I toggled over to Juan Carlos’s fan page, which swelled with comments and condolences.

  Mi más sentido pésame.

  You were a shining inspiration to others. Vaya con Dios, el Cóndor.

  Condolencias a la familia y los compañeros del equipo.

  My hands hovered over the keyboard. Then fell to my lap. What could I possibly say? He was gone. He wouldn’t be reading this page. Words wouldn’t undo anything.

  I managed to get dressed, despite my awkward wound dressings, and limped down to the kitchen, where I found ibuprofen and a note on the table.

  Your dad had a client to visit this morning. We’re seeing Dr. Ellis at ten. Please be ready to go by 9:40 and let me know if you need help. I’m in the studio. xoxo mom.

  I took the ibuprofen and brewed coffee. I peeled a banana. I focused on the positives. It was a new day. The rest of the summer sprawled out before me. I had not been killed or seriously injured in a bike crash.

  I switched on the TV and flicked through channels as I ate, lingering on the Spanish station. I closed my eyes, just listening to Spanish pouring over my head like water. Commercials for cars, cleaning products, and cereal. Urgent pleas to call now and take advantage of limited offers. ¡Llame ahora mismo! I kept listening for words Juan Carlos had used, or voices that sounded remotely like his, trying to feel closer to him or bring him to life just by listening to his native language on a TV station he might have turned on every day.

  The banana was tasteless, mushy. I almost gagged. I looked down and saw it was almost black inside, rotting from the inside out. The sticker on the peel said FAIR TRADE BANANAS. PRODUCT OF ECUADOR. Everything reminded me of another product of Ecuador, Juan Carlos Macias-León. El Cóndor, the great bird. Downed. All because of me. I threw the banana away.

  I slipped on my flip-flops and limped out the back door. I paused at the addition on our Victorian house, and the KATHERINE TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHY sign on the door. My mom was talking to a guy around my age who was standing in the doorway, probably picking up his graduation portrait package. Sure that I looked as putrid as I felt, I snuck past them and padded onward, across the driveway.

  I lifted the garage door open awkwardly with my left arm and limped inside. Shadows clung to spiderwebs in the overcast morning gloom. I quickly switched on a light.

  The first thing I saw was my busted bike leaning against the wall next to my mom’s Lexus. I wheeled it outside. The spoke repairs were beyond me. The wheel needed truing, too. I didn’t know how to true a wheel.

  I put one leg, my good leg, over the bike frame, testing myself. I hoisted myself onto the seat. My eyes swam. The ground felt like it was rising to meet me. I quickly dismounted, breathing hard. In an instant, the full horror of the crash had returned. The scrapes, the whines, the frantic cries of “Riders down!”—it all came back again. And the news report on Juan Carlos’s death. I shivered. Who ever came up with the crazy idea of riding at high speeds on skinny tires and pieces of metal? This wasn’t a harmless sport. It was lethal.

  I pushed the bike back into the garage and let it fall against the wall.

  Then I noticed something strange.

  The back door to the garage, which led out to a small storage area for our back yard, seemed to be cracked open an inch. We never opened that door. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen it open at all. I walked to the door and pushed on it. It swung wide with a creak.

  I inspected the old lock on the outside. There were scratch marks around it, as if a sharp object had been used to pick the lock.

  I scanned the garage. My dad’s tools looked intact. The leaf blower and lawn mower were there. The kayak still hung from the ceiling. Big-ticket items, all worth stealing, all left undisturbed.

  I shivered. Someone had broken into our garage.

  14

  BREATHING HARD, I half limped, half lurched into my mom’s studio. The guy at the door had left, and my mom was glued to her computer. She didn’t even seem to hear me come in. She was going through proofs of seniors’ graduation pictures; the packages had to be delivered to clients soon, and she’d been stressing about it. Now it pained me to see all those smiling kids in their caps and gowns. Kids sailing on to their promising futures, without a care in the world.

  What would my graduation portrait look like next year? Would I still look haunted from being the cause of Juan Carlos’s death? No amount of Photoshop could remove that scar.

  “Oh, good, you’re up,” my mom said, still clicking on proofs. “How are we feeling?”

  “Better. I took the ibuprofen you left me.”

  She turned in her chair and looked at me with real concern. “And emotionally? I know you took the news of that crash hard yesterday. I heard you crying in your room late last night.” She scooted her office chair over to me and held my hand. Squeezed it. “It’s hard. I know. You knew this guy. And he was so young . . . oh, Tessa. I’m sorry you have to deal with all this. It’s an enormous burden.”

&nb
sp; You have no idea. “I’m okay,” I managed to say, extracting my hand from hers. I didn’t feel like sharing an emotional moment with my mom over this right now. I couldn’t explain to her why el Cóndor’s death had hit me so hard. “The back door to the garage was open.”

  “What? Are you sure? That’s strange.”

  “I know. Do you think Dad might have opened it this morning? Or recently?”

  “I don’t know if we even remember where the key is. But maybe. I’ll ask.” She sent him a quick text on her phone. “Did you hear anything unusual outside last night?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  My dad’s reply chimed in, jolting me, an instant reminder of the creepy texts I’d gotten yesterday afternoon.

  “He says he didn’t touch the door,” said my mom. “Gosh, I hope we don’t have a neighborhood prowler. Did anything seem to be missing?”

  “Nothing. But you should check, too, just in case.”

  “I’ll do it now. And I’ll call the police and report a break-in.”

  As she did so, I took a seat at the extra desk across the room and twirled in the swivel chair, gazing at all the portraits of babies, kids, and families on the walls.

  Who could have come by and worked their way in? And why the garage, of all places?

  Why not the house? Or this studio, with its expensive camera and computer equipment?

  I thought of my usual nocturnal visitor. Jake wasn’t the type to break and enter. Or was he? I’d also never pegged him as the type to leave his girlfriend by the side of a road, stuck between a madman in the woods and an approaching cyclone of cyclists.

  But what would Jake be looking for? All I had of his were some CDs, two shirts, and some cycling books, and he knew those were all in my room. I didn’t even have my own car yet. There was no reason for him to poke around in our garage.

  I rubbed my forehead, as if to erase these crazy thoughts. We’d been randomly targeted for a break-in, just like that text spam I got on my phone was random. Bad luck. And everything was rattling my nerves since the crash.

  My mom squeezed a little squeak toy she used to make babies laugh. “Hey! I’m talking here.”

  “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  “The police will come by this afternoon to take a report.”

  “Great.” I felt dizzy. Police would be coming. Why did I feel like they were going to lead me away in handcuffs, for killing Juan Carlos?

  “Also, I’m sending in a check to Chain Reaction today, to cover your fundraising minimum.”

  “Wow, that’s really generous of you. Thank you.”

  “Oh, it’s not a gift. You’re going to be paying me back in weekly installments. Time to start looking for a summer job, kiddo.”

  I kicked the floor and spun the chair around. “I have a summer job. With KidVision.”

  “That money all goes to your college fund. You’ll need to find something on top of that. Maybe we can brainstorm a list of places you can apply to work.”

  I stopped spinning. I stared at her. It was like she was talking in another language. I had killed Juan Carlos, for God’s sake. I didn’t care about getting a job.

  It took me a moment to remember she didn’t know the whole story.

  I looked away from her intense gaze and stared at the photo above the desk instead, a picture that had always fascinated and disturbed me. It was a black-and-white image of ramshackle homes—slums, really—clinging to a steep hill. I never understood why she hung something like that in a children’s photography studio. It was kind of depressing.

  “I have an idea,” my mom said in that bright, chirpy voice that usually signaled an idea I would not like. “Why don’t you work for me this summer? Don’t give me that look. I really could use an assistant. You could pay off your debt to me. With your time.”

  I pictured a summer spent making silly faces at kids to get them to smile, tickling babies with feather dusters, cleaning up Cheerios and puke, all the while tormented by endless replay memories of my bike crash, of Juan Carlos sprawled on the ground. “Thanks. But no, thanks.”

  “Why not? It’d be fun. You and me. Working together. Bonding.” My mom patted my unhurt leg. “I’m just happy you’ve ended it with Jake and you’ll have more time. I’ve missed—”

  At that moment, a car pulled up in our driveway, tires crunching on gravel.

  “It’s Kristen,” my mom said, looking out the window. “What’s she doing here?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You’re not filming a show today, are you?”

  “No. Next week.” I followed my mom outside and to the front porch, a pit of dread in my stomach. If Kristen was here making a house call, when she was supposed to be at her summer house, I knew it couldn’t be good.

  15

  KRISTEN STRODE up the walkway. Instead of her usual business attire, she wore her Don’t Anyone Bug Me I’m Off to My Beach House uniform: white capris, a lime-green tank top, flip-flops with little palm trees on them, a belt with tiny lobsters. A ponytail was firmly cinched high on her head, a sign of her further determination to have fun.

  “Off to the Cape?” my mom guessed, smiling weakly.

  “Eventually. I needed to see Tessa in person first. We have a situation.”

  My mom glanced at me, then got Kristen a wicker chair. My mom and I sat on the porch swing opposite her. Kristen took a tablet out of her canvas tote bag and pulled up an online newspaper. The Daily Commonwealth Online News. “You’re familiar with this?” she asked.

  My mom and I both shook our heads.

  She scrolled down to the headline of an article. KIDVISION HOST CAUGHT BANDIT RIDING! This was followed by an image of me in the medical tent, my hair wild, my expression surly.

  I read the article with a deepening sense of dread.

  In addition to being an off-the-beaten path, ear-to-the-ground, renegade reporter, I’m also a former nanny. The kids I took care of are addicted to the popular GBCN show KidVision. I’ve been subjected to countless hours of watching this relentlessly cheerful teenage host spouting perky tips for saving the world, and introducing us to an endless string of young talents and altruists.

  I must admit, even though I’m twenty-four and well out of the show’s demographic, KidVision has always elicited a sense of skepticism in me. With all these aMAzing kids with aMAzing ideas, and all their well-intentioned social responsibility, the world should be a much better place, right? But the world still seems pretty messed up to me. That’s not necessarily the fault of the host or its subjects. Yet there is a note that rings false in this show.

  So I wasn’t entirely shocked when I saw host Tessa Taylor in the medical tent and heard an argument going on with one of the ride sponsors. Looks like she’s not the golden girl she appears to be on TV. This girl had not registered to do the ride or raised any money for cancer. Unconvinced? Have a listen.

  An audio file icon followed. When Kristen clicked on it, we could hear the entire conversation I’d had with Gage about the hazards of bandit riding. She’d recorded every word.

  All I could think of was the injured Team Maureen rider next to me in the medical tent. She must have recorded the whole conversation on her phone. The camera angle was strange on the photo, though. I could see the back of the EMT working on me, not the side. It was like the photo had been taken by someone else in the tent, someone in front of me.

  “This is ridiculous,” my mom snapped. “It’s not even real journalism. It’s a blog post masquerading as a tabloid article. Thank goodness nobody really reads these things.”

  “Oh, but they do.” Kristen showed us a sidebar. “This electronic rag’s got quite a following. Nearly four thousand subscribers, not to mention their followers on social media.”

  My mom sighed. “Tessa’s father is an attorney. I’ll have him send a cease and desist letter. The
y can’t throw her image and voice up there without our consent. She’s a minor.”

  “Yes. By all means, have him do that,” said Kristen. “But I’m afraid it won’t erase the thirty-plus comments so far. Or the retweets and links to the article that are already out there.”

  “Comments? From whom?” I asked.

  “Cancer survivors. Parents. KidVision fans. Well, former fans.”

  She showed me a few. That was enough. Each one popped a hole in my soul and let the air out. All this stuff about how I’d let them down, I was a hypocrite, I didn’t really care about people, I was a complete and total fake. I was mean-spirited. Selfish. Narcissistic. Cold. I was a symbol of everything that was wrong with teenagers today. I was using KidVision for self-promotion and self-gain. I didn’t live by the values the show sought to promote.

  I took a deep breath. “I want to respond. I want to record something we can put up on the KidVision website right away.”

  “No need,” said Kristen. “Our Community Relations representative will issue a statement on behalf of the show.”

  “So I don’t get to speak up about my own behavior? You think I should continue with the show like nothing happened? Show up for taping next Tuesday and not address it?”

  Kristen gave me a long look. “You know, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”

  Panic rose in my throat. “What are you saying? That I’m a weak link?”

  “What I’m saying,” she said gently, “is that a show with controversy doesn’t look good for the network. Under the circumstances, we feel you should take a little hiatus from the show.”

  “A hiatus? Like, a break? For how long?” I asked, gripping the edge of the seat. The whole porch seemed to be spinning.

  “Her contract’s up for renewal,” my mom added. “There’s that meeting next week.”

  Kristen pursed her lips. “Actually. We were thinking. It might not be best to renew.” Her eyes shifted, averting my stony glare.

  Kristen wasn’t talking about a hiatus. I was being fired.