Code(19)

I stared into my bathroom mirror. My reflection stared back. Impasse.

“Tory!” Kit sounded annoyed. “We’re waiting on you!”

“Blargh.”

I reached the table just as Whitney unveiled her menu. Crab cakes, corn on the cob, collard greens, peach cobbler.

Freaking delicious.

The adults tried to draw me into conversation, but the sneaky buildup of Whitney’s belongings had weirded me out. After scarfing my meal, I bolted for my bedroom and locked the door.

My Mac was awake, with a new message blinking on-screen. Ben. Requesting videoconference. I booted iFollow and found I was last to arrive.

Ben filled the top left quadrant of my monitor. As usual, he was lounging in sweats in his father’s rec room, which was an actual wreck. Old magazines, boat parts, camping gear, and fishing tackle were stacked in precarious piles all around him.

Shelton’s bespectacled face hung to Ben’s right, framed by the two Avatar posters on his bedroom wall. Though barely six o’clock, he was already sporting PJs.

Hi occupied the frame below Shelton. He was sitting at his desk, wearing a “Wolfman’s Got Nards!” T-shirt, and eating a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. My own image peered back from the final square.

“She’s here.” Shelton sounded impatient. “Now will you tell us what’s up?”

“I wasn’t going to repeat myself,” Ben replied, but his dark eyes sparked with eagerness.

“Then talk,” Hi said. “I’m missing Man v. Food.”

Ben got right to the point. “I solved the coordinates.”

“Did not!” Shelton looked shocked, and a little jealous. “How?”

A thin smile stole across Ben’s face. “For once, I had the flash of brilliance.”

“Go on.” Ben had my full attention.

“I was thinking about what Hi said earlier.”

“Smart,” Hi quipped.

“Not usually,” Ben continued, “but in this case you were right. The numbers have to be coordinates. Problem is, they don’t make sense.”

“Not unless we go dune-surfing in Africa,” Shelton joked.

Ben ignored him. “How much do you guys know about coordinate systems?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “I know that a specific longitude and latitude cross at a single point on a map, but that’s about it.”

“That’s right,” Ben said. “Coordinates are just sets of numbers used to denote an exact location. The most commonly used system is longitude, latitude, and height.”

“Latitude runs east-west,” Hi contributed. “Longitude goes north-south, from pole to pole.”

Ben nodded. “Now, for any system to work, there must be agreed-upon starting points. The reference planes defining latitude and longitude are the equator and the prime meridian.”

“Everyone knows that.” Shelton wiped and replaced his glasses. “The equator divides north from south. The prime meridian separates east and west.”

“Doesn’t the PM run through some observatory in England?” Hi asked.

“Greenwich,” Ben agreed. “That’s zero longitude. How far east or west a location is on a map is measured from that city.”

“In degrees, right?” I ventured. “East is positive and west is negative.”

“Gold star,” Ben said. “That’s how you calculate longitude—the number of degrees east or west of Greenwich.”

“Latitude works the same way,” Hi added. “North is positive, south is negative.”

“But you have to understand—” Ben leaned forward toward his screen, “—choosing the prime meridian wasn’t scientific. It’s not like the equator, which must be equidistant from the poles, and therefore can only be in one place. For the prime meridian, cartographers simply agreed to use an old English telescope as the universal reference point.”

“Really?” That surprised me. “When?”

“The 1880s.” Hi mumbled through a mouthful of Doritos. Of course he knew. “The United States held a conference, and most countries voted for Greenwich. It’s stuck ever since.”

“The point is,” Ben went on, “the choice was completely arbitrary. Before that conference, mapmakers had used dozens of other places as zero longitude. Rome. Paris. Rio. Mecca. Most countries just picked their own prime meridian.”

“Is this going somewhere?” Shelton stifled a yawn. “We already tried the digits as coordinates. They pointed to the freakin’ Sahara Desert, remember?”

“Say these are coordinates.” Ben lifted his copy of the clue. “The first number would be latitude. 32.773645. The second would be longitude. -00.065437.”

“And the closest town is—” Hi glanced down, face smeared with orange debris, “—Bou Semghoun. An oasis village in the Ghardaia region of southern Algeria. Think they get DirecTV?”

Ben’s eyes twinkled. “Guess what else is at latitude 32.773645?”

“What?” I felt goose bumps prickle my skin.

“Downtown Charleston,” Ben smacked his hands together. “Booyah!”

“Get out!” Hiram’s eyes widened. “How’d you know that?”