Latitude Zero

by Diana Renn

  Instead all I heard was the indifferent rush of passing cars.

  I shuddered as I turned away, wondering what—and who—Thursday would bring. Would I return to this spot with a bike? With information about who really had it? Or with nothing at all? And what would happen to my mom if I showed up empty-handed?

  /////

  KYLIE DROVE a couple of exits east and pulled up at our favorite farm stand, which had the best ice cream in New England. “We need a break from all this,” she said. “You’re a wreck.”

  We sat at a picnic table and ran Kylie’s mock interview.

  “You don’t need two weeks. You could face Preston Lane today,” said Sarita once we were done. “Especially with all your answers about ethics and business and corporate responsibility.”

  Kylie swatted her arm. “You should like them. You wrote them.” She grinned, then looked worried. “Maybe I shouldn’t use your words so much. Isn’t it kind of cheating? I mean, what if Preston asks me some follow-up question that I can’t answer?”

  “The ideas are yours, Kylie,” I said. “Sarita didn’t say anything you wouldn’t say yourself. She just made it all concise and sequenced, and threw in some business vocab. You’ll do great.”

  “Just win this thing. Okay?” said Sarita.

  “Okay.” Kylie smiled nervously. “I just hope I don’t freeze up when I meet Preston Lane. He’s kind of intimidating.”

  “What do you think, Tessa? You’ve met the man. Is he intimidating?” Sarita asked.

  I thought a moment. He shouldn’t be. Preston Lane represented everything Shady Pines stood for. We wrote letters to our state reps starting in second grade. We lobbied to get products with non-sustainable palm oil out of our vending machines, to save chimpanzees in Indonesia. We were highly advanced recyclers. Our whole school was in love with the guy because of the good work EcuaBar did. From afar, he seemed totally down-to-earth. Up close, I knew from my KidVision interview with him, he seemed less approachable. Distracted.

  “He seems like he’s always thinking of a million other things, like you’re not sure if you have his full attention,” I admitted. “And powerful people can be intimidating, I know. But he’s a pretty regular guy.”

  “Who just happens to be one of Boston’s ten wealthiest men,” added Sarita. “And Forbes magazine’s top pick for this year’s most socially responsible executive. Did you see that article?”

  Kylie and I shared a knowing smile. Sarita, obsessed with business, had subscribed to magazines like Forbes and The Economist since she was thirteen. “Um, I think I missed that one,” I said. Then, to Kylie, I added, “Imagine Preston Lane in cycling clothes. You can’t possibly be scared of someone in spandex.”

  Then I remembered how scared I’d been with Darwin in the woods. He’d been a man in cycling gear. Nothing funny about him.

  Thinking of Darwin, and his texts, I remembered my phone, which had been powered off for hours, a record amount of time for me. Hopefully Darwin hadn’t left me any more messages. But maybe Jake had. Maybe having my phone off this long was driving Jake crazy.

  I pushed the power button, even though I knew I shouldn’t. I just wanted to check to see if anything had come in from Jake. I wouldn’t reply. And I’d turn off the phone immediately.

  The text that buzzed in shocked me. Darwin. He was back.

  ANY NEWS?

  “Who’s that?” Kylie asked, leaning over to see. “Not Jake, I hope.”

  SO HOW’S THAT ICE CREAM? YUM.

  Darwin. Where was he? I looked around wildly, at happy families at picnic tables, and kids lining up at the ice-cream stand. I saw no one with aviator sunglasses, a buzz cut, a thick neck.

  I HAVE OTHER EYES AND EARS.

  My God. It was like he was reading my thoughts! I spun around again, scanning the crowds for anyone who looked like a potential associate. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Trench coats? Fedoras? Darwin had tried to dress like a cyclist at Chain Reaction. Any of these moms and dads mopping ice cream off kids’ faces could be working for him. Or anyone serving up ice cream. Or maybe there was some kind of webcam trained on us!

  The texts vanished, all at once, as before.

  “Tessa? You okay?” asked Sarita.

  “Darwin’s back. Texting me. He knows we’re here.” I stood up so fast I knocked over my ice-cream dish. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

  We piled into the Fingernail, and Kylie peeled out of the lot.

  While Kylie drove, fast, back to Route 2, I explained the latest texts, while looking behind us every five seconds. No cars seemed to be following us, and near the exit for Cambridge, we all finally relaxed. A little.

  “So no clues, no bike—what now?” asked Sarita. “And you’ve got spies,” she added grimly, as if I had head lice.

  “Why is this guy keeping tabs on you anyway?” asked Kylie.

  “He’s monitoring her,” said Sarita. “Making sure she doesn’t slip up. Or hoping she’ll just lead them to the bike directly.”

  “Tessa, it’s time to call the cops,” said Kylie. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I’d done everything wrong.

  I shook my head. “Not so simple. I don’t know how many of these ‘eyes and ears’ Darwin has. I’m going to keep looking for the bike or for leads and get him off my back.”

  “And we still have until Thursday to find something,” Sarita pointed out.

  “No,” I said. “We don’t. I do. You guys should keep your distance from me until this thing is over.”

  “What? No!” said Sarita. “We’re not abandoning you to this creep.”

  “Seriously. Don’t text or call my cell phone and don’t come by the house. I don’t want him tailing you, too. From now until Thursday, my phone is a direct line to Darwin.”

  17

  TAPPING SOUNDS at my window woke me up that night.

  I glanced at my nightstand clock. It was just after midnight.

  The tapping grew louder. Insistent. The windowpane shook. I sat up and drew the covers up to my chin, like a kid in a picture book frightened by monsters. There could be a monster out there. Darwin. Could he have come back to the house, and located my room?

  The slats of my bottom shutters were down, but my top ones were open enough so that I could just make out a baseball cap shape in the moonlight.

  Through the shutter slats I saw the movement of an arm reaching up, as if the person was looking for some way to open the window.

  My heart in my throat—I now understood what that expression really felt like—I glanced at my cell phone, plugged in to the wall charger. Across the room, out of reach.

  I glanced at Bianca Slade’s photo. And in the moonlight, I read the second item on the list of Qualities of Good Investigative Reporters: Having courage. You may find yourself under attack, legally or personally. Believe in what you’re doing and find the courage to carry on. No more games. I’d confront Darwin head-on and make him believe I had not intercepted his stolen bike.

  I got out of bed and crept up to the window. At the last second, I grabbed from my bookshelf a trophy I’d received last year, when KidVision was honored at the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. It was heavy, made of brass, and might function as a weapon.

  I took a deep breath and threw open my shutters.

  And stared into the face of a guy wearing a Red Sox cap and a startled expression. Jake.

  I stared at him, my fingers tightening around the trophy base. Even though I’d rather see Jake than Darwin at my window, my anger at him came back in a rush.

  “Can I come in?” he asked through the window.

  I set the trophy down on the desk, opened the window, and let him in. We did need to talk. Might as well get it over with.

  Jake was no stranger to my window. He’d even stayed over half the night
in my bed a couple of times. But now we stood awkwardly facing each other, our hands at our sides.

  “Hey,” he said. “You up for a moonlight picnic?” He gestured outside. “I have fruit and a blanket. And brie. Oh, and this.” He reached into his back pocket and took out a spray of baby roses. “I’d have sprung for the big ones, two dozen, but it’s hard to bike with those.”

  I stared at him, and the roses. How could he show up and act like nothing had happened?

  “And this?” He reached into another pocket and pulled out an EcuaBar. My favorite flavor, Jungle Gem, with real cacao nibs. The ultimate peace offering. “I think I may have overreacted,” he said. “A little.” He set the EcuaBar down on my desk.

  Those were welcome words, long overdue. Something sharp lodged inside me softened. But only for a moment. Now Juan Carlos was no longer a threat, out of the picture. Is that what freed Jake up to finally say words I wanted to hear?

  “You know he died, right?” I said.

  He looked down. “What a freak accident. I don’t get how it happened.”

  “You’re probably happy about it.”

  He frowned. “I’m not. Do you really think that? Yeah, I didn’t like the guy. But I definitely didn’t want him to die.” He shuddered. “I can’t imagine what he must have gone through out there. It’s freaky. It’s every cyclist’s worst nightmare, that kind of crash.”

  I glanced at my nightstand, where the necklace I’d removed just before falling asleep gleamed in a beam of moonlight slanting through the shutter. I didn’t feel like explaining that to Jake. I backed up slowly and picked up a sweater. I casually tossed it toward the nightstand so that it covered the cross.

  Jake stepped forward and gently touched the gauze pads taped to my right arm and right leg. “Babe. You’re hurt,” he murmured. “You really were in the crash yesterday. I’m so sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I am.” I flinched and pulled away. “You have five minutes.”

  “To do what?”

  “To tell me why you dropped me on the ride.”

  Jake sunk into a beanbag chair. “What happened to ‘hello’?”

  “Okay. Hello, you dropped me on a ride? Hello, what was the point of doing the ride together if we weren’t going to actually do the ride together?”

  “I was pissed. Okay? Pissed. Is that a crime? Am I allowed to have an emotion? Or are you the only one?” He glared at me a moment, then sighed. “Okay. See? My emotions took over just now. And they did on the ride, too.”

  “Yeah, that seems to happen to you a lot lately. Maybe you should get some help.”

  “What, like talk to someone? A professional? Please.” Then he stood up again and reached for my hand. Held it. Caressed it softly. “I don’t need to talk to anyone except you, babe. You’re the only one who truly understands me. You’re like a part of my soul. You know?” His eyes teared up. That couldn’t be faked.

  But he was wrong. I didn’t truly understand him. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t even know him. And he definitely did not understand me. I snatched my hand away. “You now have three minutes to wrap up your story about what happened to us on that ride.”

  “Fine. I made it to the first water stop, at mile twenty. You weren’t there.”

  “Mile twenty? God, Jake. You left so fast, did you really think I’d be right on your wheel? And make it that far without saying a word?”

  “I got caught up in the moment,” Jake insisted. “Besides, you’re a better rider now. I trusted you weren’t far behind me.”

  “Really? I think your guilt didn’t catch up with you until mile twenty.”

  He ignored this. “Anyway, then I heard there was this big pileup back at the six-mile mark. I got really scared that you might have been caught in it. I couldn’t get all the way back because they were turning people away. I went out to the main road and rode back to the medical tent at the staging area.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Are you kidding? Because I was worried sick about you. I looked for you everywhere. Finally some EMT in the medical tent said you’d gone home with your mom. Tessa.” He ran one finger down the inside of my unhurt arm. A movement that used to send electric thrills through my whole body, now just made me recoil. “I feel so terrible that this happened. It’s all my fault. I should never have asked you to ride bandit with me.”

  I pulled away. “I don’t get it. Why did you ask me to do that ride in the first place?”

  “Because I just wanted to ride with you. I want you in my world, okay? Why is that such a crime? It was supposed to be fun. Then it got . . . complicated. That’s all.”

  Complicated. Like so many things with Jake these days.

  There’s a beautiful moment in bike racing. The breakaway: when a rider breaks out of the line of riders in the peloton and charges toward the front, taking the lead. Now was my moment. I looked him right in the eye. “You left me on the ride. And you dismissed everything I was worried about. Like getting caught. Or the stolen bike and the guy in the woods.”

  “It won’t happen again. I’ll do better. I’m willing to fight for us, Tessa. Aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  He stared at me. “We have something really rare and special. You know it. You’re probably not going to find something like this with anyone else. But if you want to throw it away, everything we’ve worked for, fine. Be a quitter.”

  My face burned. Quitter. He knew I hated that word. But I stood my ground.

  As he opened the window and put one leg over the sill, I stared at his shaved calf muscle. I stared at it for the last time. Never again would it brush over my own leg. Then I saw a constellation of red blisters on his ankle. I pointed. “What is that?”

  “What? Oh. I had a little brush with poison ivy.” He slung that leg over the sill. “I’m not sure why the hell you care.”

  My stomach seized. Could Jake have stolen Juan Carlos’s bike and left it for the fence? I looked at him, hard. Was he the kind of person to steal something like that—or anything?

  “Jake,” I said. “Wait.”

  He paused, one leg over the sill.

  “Did you see Juan Carlos’s spare bike in the woods when we were cutting through?”

  “For real, Tessa? Is that a serious question?”

  “It’s a serious question.”

  “No. God no. If I’d seen it, I would have stopped and looked, same as you.”

  “Did you put Juan Carlos’s spare bike in the woods?”

  “You mean, did I steal his spare bike from the team trailer? And hide it in the woods?”

  “Yes. And did you leave it for that guy I ran into? The fence?”

  “Of course not! That’s ridiculous!” he burst out. “You were with me the entire time.”

  I glanced at my door. “Shh. You’ll wake up my parents. And no, I was not with you the entire time. You rode off to get your sports drinks from the car. Remember? We were apart for almost fifteen minutes.” I looked closely at him. “Did you really go get those sports drinks?” I wished I could remember seeing bottles on his frame. I’d been so freaked out about Juan Carlos giving me his necklace, and then about the guy in the woods, I hadn’t bothered to look.

  “Of course I did,” he said. “And how would I have had time to get back to my car and then go steal and hide a bike?”

  He had a point. Then again, Jake was a champion racer. Maybe he could have accomplished all that in ten or fifteen minutes.

  “You still think I did it? Tessa. What would I want that asshole’s spare bike for?”

  “I don’t know. To sell to some black-market sports collector? You said sports memorabilia from famous athletes are worth a lot of money.”

  He let out a long breath. “Wow. Just, wow.” He smirked. “If I were in that business? I might have waited until Juan Carlos was dead. Then the
bike would be worth a lot more.”

  “Look, I’d almost understand if you did.” I used the voice I always used during the doping scandal. Soothing and vaguely cheerful. “I know things have been tight financially. I know you need money for UMass. I know your mom works two jobs.”

  “Great. One rash on my leg, and now I’m a bike thief?” Jake’s eyes blazed. “And an impoverished one? I don’t need your pity party. I thought you were on my team.”

  “I didn’t call you a thief. Don’t put words in my mouth. I just want to find out—”

  “Oh. Sorry. Isn’t that what you like? Other people’s scripts?” he shot back. “Sorry you lost your job, by the way. Heard about that. Maybe now you’ll know what it’s like to be a regular person who isn’t handed everything on a platter.”

  “Get out.” My voice shook.

  “My pleasure,” he shot back.

  I turned my back. I heard him lift the window, then the soft thud of his jump to the ground. Bike wheels churning on gravel. Then silence. It was over.

  I felt something lift off my chest. I felt like I was at a higher altitude. Like the air was crisp and clean and, finally, I could breathe.

  I sank into my desk chair, trembling. Now I couldn’t rule out Jake as a suspect. I glanced at Bianca’s Qualities of Good Investigative Reporters #6: Having a Passion for Truth and Justice. Good investigators are committed to looking at all sides of a problem and working tirelessly to uncover the truth. And quality #5: Thinking Logically. Organizing and thinking through ideas and rationales is key. I picked up a pen and a notebook and wrote my rationale.

  Bike Theft Suspect: Jake

  1. He could have asked me to do the ride with him as a cover. He was away from me long enough to do the job.

  2. He could have stolen Juan Carlos’s spare bike from the Team EcuaBar trailer. He’d know where to find it.

  3. He could have hidden the bike in the woods, thinking he’d pick it up later, after the ride, and sell it. Or Darwin could have paid Jake a flat fee for the job.

  4. Even if Jake was the thief who originally took the bike from the trailer, that doesn’t mean he’s the one who intercepted it from Darwin. Or that he knows who intercepted it.