Latitude Zero (23 page)

41

THE NEXT
morning, as Hugo drove me to Vuelta for my first day as a volunteer, my stomach roiled. Maybe it was from the bag of
chicharrón
that I’d bought from that corner store.
Chicharrón
had looked, at a glance, like potato chips, but they actually turned out to be fried pork rinds—I’d eaten half the bag last night before noticing the strange wiry hairs poking up in some.

Or maybe I was just terrified of my impending meeting with Darwin.

Hugo talked on and on about the protests and how the new president was handling them, but I barely heard a word. All I could think about was how I would get to that address from Darwin by six in the evening, and how I would explain to the Ruizes why I would be late for dinner. I didn’t yet have an excuse, except maybe playing the parasite card. I could say I was too sick to take the bus back to the house.

“You are lost in thought,” said Hugo in a kind voice that reminded me, achingly, of my own dad. “I see I am not captivating you with this political talk. Maybe like Amparo you would rather talk about something else? Friends? Music? Play the radio if you like. Be comfortable.”

“No, I am interested in politics. I’m sorry. I do have a lot on my mind.”

“
Pobrecita
. You must be nervous. Your first day on the job!”

I was nervous, all right, but it was because of my planned sting operation. Maybe Mari was right, and I was getting in over my head. But I saw no other options. It didn’t help that I couldn’t trust all the police here. And without proof of anything, how could the embassy help? Or even Hugo Ruiz, who had government connections? That’s why I had to get Darwin recorded, on a device that he couldn’t hack into.

/////

AFTER WISHING
me luck, Hugo let me out at the Vuelta office. I stood at the gate for a moment, clutching the gallon of water he’d insisted I take. With the heavy plastic container slipping in my hands, I watched him drive off, and fought the urge to chase after his car. I looked around at my new surroundings. The office was up a hill from a shopping mall, on a quiet, mostly residential street. It was an impeccable modern building, painted lime green, inviting—except for the imposing bars on all the windows.

Those bars everywhere—a constant reminder that I was never entirely safe.

Inside, I waved at Mari, who was already in one of the classrooms with a group of six attentive women. She looked happy, laying out tool kits at workstations. I was glad I’d at least bought her some time by agreeing to meet with Darwin.

For the first time, the full reach of Darwin’s power hit me. Hard. And I seethed. He’d made me hide out in my house and give up my cell phone. He’d made Mari miss more than a week of work. Who knows how many other people he’d cyberbullied, stalked, harassed, and threatened. These were serious crimes. It wasn’t fair that we lived in fear and hid out, while he and his cohorts ran around freely.

It also wasn’t fair that Darwin had
something
to do with Juan Carlos’s death and he didn’t have to pay. Maybe Juan Carlos had been involved in a drug smuggling ring, but no one deserved to die like he did. Darwin and anyone he worked with had to be apprehended. Unless the investigation back home led authorities to Darwin’s trail, I was the only one now who could make that happen.

Sylvia, the receptionist, had me fill out some forms for new volunteers. While she was on the phone, I took a moment to check my email from her computer. I found messages from my parents, and a new note from Kylie.

Kylie! I went straight to her message. Finally, she was reaching out again. Maybe she’d decided to forgive me for “ghost-chasing,” as she’d put it, in Ecuador.

Hi Tessa! (Or “Qué tal,” I should say!)

I hope everything’s good down at latitude zero. Have you seen the equator yet?

I’ve heard the toilets flush the opposite way at the middle of the world. Is it true?

Anyway, here I am writing about toilets flushing, but I have amazing news!!

Had my interview with Preston Lane the other day. OMG. It ROCKED.

He asked all the questions we brainstormed, and a few more we hadn’t, but I was warmed up by then and I think I gave good answers. And I thought of him in spandex like you said to, and it totally worked. I wasn’t nervous at all. If anything he seemed a little nervous! Kind of distracted, like you said.

I know he’s off to Ecuador for that bike race thing in a couple of days. I’m hoping he’ll make a decision about the scholarship before he goes. I’m not sure how much longer my mom can stave off the tuition bills for senior year. My dad says he’s tapped out, since he’s just doing contract work these days and I don’t think he can cover it all either. Anyway, cross your fingers, send good karma, light a candle, do anything you can!!!

I grinned like crazy.
Go girl.
I knew Kylie could do it. I typed a quick and gushy congratulations note to her. The moment I sent it, Sylvia got off the phone and ushered me into the bike shop section of Vuelta.

Sylvia introduced me to a few other volunteers, and then to Wilson Jaramillo, Santiago’s dad, who was helping a volunteer named Emma, from Ireland, fix a punctured bike tire.

Like Santiago, Wilson was tall and lean, and dressed simply and conservatively. Like his son, too, he was friendly, in a calm way. He asked a few questions about how my homestay was going, and then got down to business, handing me a piece of paper with an address.

“Your first assignment,” he said. “Three classes at this location.”

“Teaching?” I stared at the address in horror. “There must be some mistake. I said on my application that I was interested in working in communications and publicity.”

“We do have some publicity and marketing you can help with,” said Wilson. “But right now, our most urgent need is covering these classes. Another volunteer had to return to the U.S. for a medical emergency, and these students are in desperate need of a teacher.”

“But I’ve never taught cycling,” I protested, trying to hand back the paper.

He pressed the address into my hand. “It is not a problem. The girls are not absolute beginners. They just need practice, tips, and confidence. If you can ride a bike, you can teach! Now here. You may borrow this bike.” He took a clunky hybrid bike off a stand and wheeled it over to me. “This is much faster, I think, than taking the trolley across town.”

My face burning, I took the bike and I walked it out of the shop. In the hallway toward the front entrance, I passed the open door to Mari’s classroom.

Seeing me, Mari left a student’s side and ran to meet me, still wielding an Allen wrench. “Well?” she asked. “Did you call Darwin yesterday?”

“I did. I called him. We spoke.”

“And? You have to tell me. We’re a team, right? We’re in this thing together.”

I hesitated. After all our confessions yesterday, I hated to hold anything back from Mari. I totally trusted her now. And we’d been a great team, getting the evidence about the sabotaged bike and leaking it to Bianca Slade. But just like with cycling, maybe there were times to work together and times to break away. I didn’t want to put Mari at more risk. And Darwin had specifically told me to come alone. If I told Mari about our meeting, she’d insist on coming, too.

“He, um, couldn’t really say much at the time,” she said. “He got interrupted. I’m supposed to call him again this evening.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. “So we’re not any closer to finding out what he wants.”

“But you’re safe for now.” I tried to sound cheerful, to bolster her spirits. And mine. “I said I’d only talk to him if he left you alone. And he will.” I bit my lip, hating the fact that I was lying again. But what else could I do to keep her safe? I couldn’t handle any more people getting hurt.

“Thanks. I hope you’re right. I’ve really missed teaching.” She glanced back at her students with a wistful smile. “I should get back to work. Where are you off to now?”

I showed her the address Wilson had written down.

“Oh, cool. That’s a woman’s shelter.” She grinned. “You’re going to work with women and kids who’ve left domestic abuse situations. That’s awesome. Bikes save lives, remember? You’re totally empowering them.”

I returned her smile and felt a notch better. This was the kind of work I’d wanted to do to make up for my past bad decisions.

If only I didn’t have this new phobia of bike riding.

Mari looked at my hybrid bike and laughed. “I see Wilson gave you Gertrude to ride. That’s what we call this clunker. But she’s a good ride on uneven roads,” she added, patting her handlebars affectionately. “She’ll get you where you need to go.”

I managed a weak smile. “I was actually planning to take the bus or the trolley.”

“At rush hour? No way. This bike’s better. And Wilson likes to promote bike advocacy by having volunteers ride as much as they can. Good luck!” She turned to go back to her class, and then paused. She looked at me carefully. “Are you okay?”

“I’m just a little spooked about riding to this job, I guess, after Chain Reaction.”

“Really?”

I shrugged, embarrassed. “I haven’t managed to get on a bike again. It’s one reason I donated my Bianchi. I figured my cycling days were over.”

Mari shook her head in amazement. “You can do this, Tessa. Haven’t you ever heard that if you learn to ride a bike, you never forget?”

“I should go,” I said, “or I’ll be late.”

I walked the bike out of the Vuelta building. I turned and saw Wilson, Sylvia, Santiago, and a couple of volunteers watching at the window. They waved at me. I waved back, then walked the bike down the hill, and around the corner, until I came to Avenida Amazonas. I held out my arm, and a taxi pulled over.

42

“¿AQUÍ, SEÑORITA?”
the driver asked me ten minutes later.

I checked the address and looked at the sagging two-story building, the unpainted cinder blocks. Steel bars, like strange uncut hairs, sprouted from a third floor that had never been completed, and faded laundry was strung up between them. The windows wept rust like tears.

The address matched the building, so this had to be the place.
La Casa para Mujeres Abandonadas
. The House of Abandoned Women. There was probably no sign on the door because it was a shelter. These women did not want to be found.

Maybe this was a good place for me to hang out. I didn’t really want to be found, either.

I paid the driver and took Gertrude the Bike out of his trunk. I made my way toward the house, tripping over the crumbling sidewalk. The smell of urine and diesel fumes made me cough. A mangy dog gave me a cold look and slunk away. A girl who looked my age, or younger, nursed a baby on that top floor, by the laundry.

A group of about eight children, young girls and boys, ran up to me from behind the house. They tugged on my shirt and backpack.
“¡La gringa! ¡La gringa!”
they chanted. I froze, smiling helplessly. One of them touched my hand. Another ripped my Shady Pines pin off my backpack.

I wanted to open my backpack and give them everything in it. I didn’t have much, just four EcuaBars, slightly smashed, that had been in the bottom of my backpack since Boston. I broke them in half and handed them out, and the kids devoured them.

Watching them eat, I thought of the ghost children that haunted my mother. The lives that had gone unremarked, unrecorded. While the kids ate, I took out my video camera. I turned it on and watched them through the lens for a moment, my finger hovering over the
RECORD
button.

Then I lowered the camera, slowly, and turned it off. Maybe not everyone’s moment had to be filmed. This moment wasn’t my story to tell.

The nursing girl on the top floor called down to me in Spanish. “You are the new bike teacher? From Vuelta?”

“I am.”

“Everyone is ready for the lesson. Come to the back of the house.”

I walked my bike behind the building, the children following close. I came to a concrete patio—cracked and crumbling, so different from the oasis within the Ruizes’ house. An assortment of beater bikes were propped against a cinder-block wall. They were the ultimate in castoffs—they made Gertrude look like a supermodel. I sifted through them, taking stock. Basic three-gears. One ten-speed from about forty years ago—my dad still had one like it in our garage. A couple of low-end hybrids. A bike that looked to be a counterfeit—snazzy, like a Trek bike, but it said “Trel” instead, and the chain was choked up with black gunk. A Barbie bike with a sagging, dirty basket and crumpled streamers in the handlebars.

Across from the bikes, my eight students waited. All girls from about age seven to nineteen. Two were pregnant, including the one who’d come down from the roof. One girl, who looked about fourteen, was barefoot.

“Zapatos,”
I said pointing at her feet. “First rule. Everyone rides with shoes.” I repeated this in Spanish, remembering that I wasn’t likely to find fluent English speakers here.

The barefoot girl shook her head and displayed empty hands.

I looked at her a moment longer. Her long black sideways braid, slung over one shoulder, reminded me a little of the way I’d worn my hair not so long ago.

I kicked off my Chuck Taylors and handed them to her. She grinned and slipped them on.

“Helmets? Do we have helmets?” I didn’t know the word in Spanish, so I pantomimed.

All the girls laughed.

“Okay. I see I’m a comedian today. No helmets. So the third rule is no falling.”

That got another laugh.

“Everyone choose a bike,” I instructed in Spanish. Maybe I could direct them to go up and down the street, and I wouldn’t have to do any actual riding.

They looked confused at first, then slowly chose bikes and stood beside them.

“Well? What are we waiting for?”

“We do not know how to ride,” said one girl.

“We have never ridden these bikes,” another said.

“You didn’t have another teacher before?”

“We were supposed to, but she never came,” said a third.

“Right.” I stared at them, chewing my lip. Wilson had oversold this class to me. This was the Total Newbie group, with me, a Total Newbie teacher. The least qualified person in the world for this job. What could I possibly teach these girls?

But they stood there, watching me with eager and expectant faces. One of them started stretching out, and another jumped an imaginary rope to limber up. They were raring to go.

I thought back to the Open Road school. What had Dylan and Amber done? Dylan had been so encouraging and supportive with that kid. Amber had been so patient. They’d also had lots of padding.

An hour later, the girls—with makeshift pads from blankets lashed to their arms—were working on gliding across the patio, which had a very slight incline like the playground where Dylan had “taught” me to glide. I drew a line with chalk, and I recalled Dylan’s words to me as he’d coached me on a simple glide. “Find your balance,” I told each girl that I coaxed along the line. “That’s all we’re doing today. Balance, and try to stay on the line.”

Some girls were hesitant at first. Then they tried and got bolder. The girl borrowing my Chuck Taylors—Rosio was her name—fell and bawled her head off. Then she got on again, and everyone cheered. Even the tired-looking women, watching us from windows, applauded as the girls experienced, one by one, some success. One of the moms even came out to try it herself.

Another wave of students came over, and some of them had clearly had lessons before. They wanted to work on starting and stopping, using the pedals. Not gliding.

“Can you show us?” the smallest girl asked shyly, pushing the Barbie bike toward me.

I shook my head. “Sorry. I have a bad knee today.”

They all looked disappointed.

I felt disappointed, too. But shoving off, using the pedals, and maneuvering around people and things, scared the crap out of me. Just imagining myself doing those things brought Chain Reaction rushing back in an instant.

All morning long, it took all my powers of concentration to keep the girls safe on the bikes, to teach them anything I knew using words and chalk diagrams on the asphalt instead of demonstrating. Dylan’s strategies worked, though. He’d had a lot of tricks up his sleeve, as a teacher. Did he have tricks up his sleeve as a mechanic, too? The more I remembered my meeting with Dylan, the less likely it seemed that he could have committed such a horrible crime, that he would have wanted a cyclist to get hurt or to die. Anyone working with bikes, as a mechanic, teacher, or coach, had to be acutely aware of safety issues. More and more I felt that Dylan, unsuspecting, had been set up to take the fall for Juan Carlos’s death.

“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.