Sabotaged Read online

  In both images, the baby Andrea looked so happy that Jonah could practically hear her gurgling.

  “You could have done that with trick photography,” Andrea said in a tight voice. “You could have used Photoshop.”

  “You know we didn’t do that,” JB said.

  A single tear rolled down Andrea’s cheek. Almost all of Jonah’s experience with girls crying was with Katherine, who was given to big dramatic wails, “Oh, this—is—so—unfair!” In fifth grade Katherine had had some problems with friends being mean, and it had seemed to Jonah as if Katherine had filled the house with her loud sobs every night for weeks: “I can’t believe she said that to me! Oh, why—would—anyone—say—that?”

  Jonah had gotten really good at tuning out all of that. Somehow, Andrea’s single tear affected him more. It seemed sadder. It made him want to help.

  Andrea was already brushing the tear away, impatiently, as if she didn’t want to acknowledge that it was there.

  “Don’t do this to me,” Andrea said. “Just send us back. Now.”

  Her voice was hard. She could have been a queen ordering soldiers off to war or calling for an execution.

  “Uh, Andrea, that’s probably not a good idea,” Katherine said. “I mean, you will have Jonah and me there to help and all, but being in a different century . . . it’s probably smart if we can find out as much as we can ahead of time.”

  By this, Jonah knew that even Katherine was scared. Maybe she was also hoping that there was still some way to avoid going back in time.

  “JB can tell us what we need to know once we get there, right?” Andrea asked, her expression still rigid.

  “I could,” JB said. “I will be in contact with you through the Elucidator the whole time.”

  Jonah grimaced a little, remembering how much trouble he and Katherine and their friends had had with an Elucidator in the fifteenth century. Part of his problem was that he still didn’t understand it completely—it was a time-travel device from the future, capable of doing much more than Jonah had ever witnessed. But it impersonated common objects from whatever time period it happened to be in. In the twenty-first century, it mostly looked like an iPhone.

  In the fifteenth century, it had looked like a rock. It had still managed to translate Middle English, communicate back and forth with JB, turn Jonah and Katherine and their friends invisible, and—oh, yeah—annoy Jonah’s friend Chip so much that he’d thrown it across the room.

  Jonah tried to figure out how to mention the problems with the Elucidator without sounding cowardly or scaring Andrea. But she was already answering JB.

  “Fine,” she said. “Then give us an Elucidator and let’s go.” She sat up straight, and her chair seemed to rearrange itself in a way that made Jonah think of mother birds pushing baby birds out of the nest.

  “I don’t think that that’s the best—” JB began. He stopped, a baffled look coming over his face. He turned slightly, no longer addressing Andrea. “Really? Are you sure?”

  He took a few steps away, like someone suddenly interrupted by a call on a wireless headset. Of course, Jonah couldn’t see even the slightest trace of a headset near either of JB’s ears. By JB’s time, Jonah figured, they might be microscopic.

  “Yes? Yes? You ran that projection? Just now?” JB paused. “Yeah, Sam, I know it’s your job to think of everything, but still . . . that was fast.” Another pause. “Oh, when Katherine asked, not Andrea. That makes more sense.” He waited, then gave a pained chuckle. “No, of course I won’t forget the dog.”

  He looked back at the kids.

  “I’ve been corrected,” JB said. “My top projectionist says it would be best if we sent you right away and then filled you in on everything once you get there. It seems counterintuitive, but projections often are.”

  “Projections?” Andrea repeated nervously.

  “Predictions,” JB said. “Forecasts. Before any time trip, our projectionists run checks on as many variables as they can think of, and as many combinations of variables, to see what would lead to the best outcome.”

  “But,” Jonah began, “you said the projections don’t always . . .” He stopped himself before the last word slipped out. It was going to be work. The projections don’t always work. JB had told them that. But again, Jonah didn’t want to scare Andrea. He finished lamely. “The projections don’t always . . . make a lot of sense.”

  “Exactly,” JB said. “Which is why we’re sending Andrea back with two untrained kids. I didn’t think I’d ever have to do anything like that again. And you don’t need any special clothes this time, but you do need . . .” He opened the door he had used before and whistled out into the hallway. “Here, boy!” he called. “Here, Dare!”

  A shaggy English sheepdog came padding into the room.

  “Oh!” Andrea said, clearly surprised.

  “Didn’t JB tell you?” Katherine said. “That was one of the experts’ projections, that this was the only combination we could succeed with: you, me, Jonah, and the dog, all going back in time together.”

  “Um, okay,” Andrea said.

  JB rolled his eyes.

  “Believe me, I’ve never sent a pet back in time before,” he said. “I mean, kids and a dog? If it was anyone else giving me that advice, I’d tell them they were crazy. But Sam is the most brilliant projectionist I’ve ever worked with, so . . . meet Dare. Your fourth traveling companion.”

  The dog padded right over to Andrea and put his big head in her lap. He gazed up at her sympathetically, as if he knew that she’d been crying a moment ago, and he completely understood and would sacrifice his own life if that would make her feel better.

  How do dogs do that? Jonah wondered. He was a little afraid that the dog gazing at her might make Andrea cry again, but she just buried her face in his fur and gave him a big hug.

  “Nice to meet you, Dare,” she mumbled. Jonah noticed that she sounded happier than she had meeting him and Katherine. She lifted her face and peered up at JB again. “And the Elucidator?”

  JB pulled something small out of his back pocket—it looked like the Elucidator was currently impersonating a very, very compact cell phone. He pressed a few buttons on the “phone,” and slid it into a pouch on Dare’s collar.

  “All set,” he said. “I’ll talk to you again once you get there. All you have to do is link arms and hold on to Dare’s collar.”

  He waited while the three kids got into position. Jonah was kind of hoping he’d get to stand next to Andrea, but Katherine ended up in the middle. JB reached down and touched something on the Elucidator. “Three, two, one . . . bon voyage!”

  The room disappeared.

  Does anyone ever get completely used to time travel? Jonah wondered.

  He knew, because he’d done it before, that it just seemed like he was falling endlessly through nothingness, toward nothingness. He knew that eventually lights would rush up at him, and he’d feel as if his whole body was being torn apart, down to each individual atom. And then he’d land, and he’d sort of feel like himself again. After a while.

  He knew all that, but it was still horrifying to fall and fall and fall. . . .

  It must be worse for Andrea.

  “Are you doing all right?” he yelled across to her, the words ripped from his mouth by the air rushing past.

  Still, she nodded. She had a resigned look on her face, as if she was braced for anything.

  Or—as if she didn’t really think this was that bad, because she’d already gone through something that was much worse?

  Jonah reached out to her with his free hand. If he linked his left arm around her elbow the same way he’d linked his right arm around Katherine’s, they could travel through time in a circle, with the dog in the middle. When he and Katherine and Chip had traveled back to 1483, they’d formed a circle like that, and it had been comforting, a way to close out at least a little of the void around them.

  But Andrea jerked back from Jonah’s touch, swinging away from
him.

  “Hold on—I’m scared the Elucidator is going to fall off,” she called.

  The pouch on the dog’s collar had looked secure to Jonah, but he couldn’t really see it clearly now, in the dark nothingness. He sensed, more than saw, that Andrea was leaning in toward the dog’s collar.

  “The strap’s loose,” Andrea said. “I’ll just hold the Elucidator myself.”

  Your hand might go numb at the end, Jonah wanted to tell her. When you land, you may not even be able to be sure that the Elucidator is in your hand. . . . That’s what had happened to him in the fifteenth century.

  But some random air current hit Andrea just then, and she swung even farther away from Jonah. She still had her left arm linked around Katherine’s elbow and her left hand clenched around the dog’s collar. But the rest of her body flipped almost completely behind Katherine’s back.

  “Watch out!” Katherine shrieked, just as Jonah called, “Andrea! Hold on!”

  He reached over to put his free hand on top of her hand on the dog’s collar, to hold her in place. It seemed entirely possible that she could be yanked away. And then what would happen to her?

  He jerked his head to the right, trying to see behind Katherine’s back. This was kind of like playing three-dimensional Twister—his hand had to stay on Andrea’s hand, his arm had to stay linked through Katherine’s, and that didn’t leave him much room for arcing back, trying to see where Andrea was now. He got a quick glimpse before his head jerked forward again and Katherine’s shoulder blocked his view. Oddly, Andrea wasn’t flailing about, trying to swing back around. Instead, she seemed to be curled into a ball, hunched over the Elucidator. It made Jonah think of how kids at school would hunch over their cell phones when they got some text message they didn’t want anyone else to see.

  “Andrea!” Jonah yelled. “Try to, like, swim back around! Here! I’ll help you!”

  He kept his left hand clasped tightly over hers, both of them clutching the dog collar together. But he took his right hand off the collar just for a second, just long enough to give Andrea’s arm a little yank. This was like physics, wasn’t it? If they were traveling through a vacuum, his pull should bring Andrea back into place and him. . . .

  Oops. It sent him swinging too far out to the left—and crashing into Andrea, as she swung back.

  The dog began to bark. Katherine was screaming, “Hold on! Just—everyone hold on!” Jonah could hear that clearly, because he’d bounced back this time in a way that put his ear right in front of Katherine’s mouth. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder—he thought Andrea was screaming something too, but he couldn’t hear what it was.

  And then he couldn’t even hear Katherine or the dog, because they’d hit the part of the trip when the lights rushed up at them and Jonah felt as though his whole body was being torn apart by gravity and time. His ears roared with his own pulse, faster, faster, faster. . . . This had happened before, but what if his heart actually exploded this time?

  They landed. Jonah was too blinded, too deafened, too numbed, to be able to tell where they were. They could be on a soft sandy beach, basking in the sun, or in the middle of a blizzard, constantly slammed by ice crystals. It would be all the same to Jonah. He blinked frantically, trying to recover his sight. He tried to get his hands to reach up to his head, succeeding only on his left side. . . . What was that? Had he gotten pine needles in his ear?

  He did his best to brush away everything from his left ear, and that made a difference. Now he could hear someone screaming, though the voice seemed far away.

  “. . . lose . . .”

  “. . . lose . . .”

  “. . . you made me lose . . .”

  “Who made you lose? Lose what?” This wasn’t screaming. This was Katherine, sounding weak but relatively calm.

  “Jonah . . . It was Jonah. . . .”

  It seemed to require superhuman effort, but Jonah managed to struggle up a little and blink his eyesight slightly back into focus. Was that dog fur? Oh. The dog had landed sprawled across the right side of Jonah’s body. No wonder Jonah had been able to move only his left arm. But now Dare squirmed off with an offended yelp. Once the dog moved, Jonah could see and hear much better.

  “What did Jonah make you lose?” Katherine was demanding, even as she swayed in and out of focus.

  Andrea had her face clutched in her hands. Her voice soared into a wail.

  “He made me lose the Elucidator!”

  Jonah still couldn’t see very well, but he could tell that all the color had instantly drained from Katherine’s face.

  “Is it . . . just . . . on the ground beside . . .” Katherine began.

  “No, it’s gone! Completely gone!” Andrea fumed. “Jonah knocked it out of my hand when we were traveling through time!”

  “I didn’t . . . ,” Jonah started to protest, but his lips and tongue weren’t functioning yet, so the words came out more like, “Uh unhh . . .” He swallowed hard, ready to try again, and his mind flipped frantic images at him: him jerking on Andrea’s arm, him crashing into Andrea’s side. . . .

  Maybe he had made her lose the Elucidator.

  “It’s okay. JB knows where we are,” he said, and this time the words came out in a recognizable way. He kept talking. “Remember, part of the time we were in the fifteenth century, we didn’t have an Elucidator either, and everything turned out fine.”

  “Because we knew what we were supposed to do,” Katherine said.

  “What if we didn’t even end up in the right place and time?” Andrea asked. She waved her hands like someone about to explode into hysterics. “We could be anywhere!”

  “It’s all in how the Elucidator’s programmed,” Jonah said, trying to sound more confident than he actually felt. He thought of something, and genuine confidence caught up with him. “Remember, Katherine, when JB sent Alex to the fifteenth century before he sent the rest of us? Alex didn’t have an Elucidator with him. He just went where JB programmed him to go. So that’s how it would have worked for us, too.”

  “Really?” Andrea said. “Are you sure?”

  Jonah glanced at her. He must have been wrong about her being on the brink of hysterics. She looked and sounded fine now. Completely relieved. Even . . . happy.

  Jonah’s vision and hearing must still be messed up. She couldn’t be happy.

  “I’m sure,” Jonah said, partly to convince himself. He forged ahead to another point. “Anyhow, we know how JB does things—he tries to send kids back as close as he can to the moment when they originally disappeared. So we’ve got to be in—well, whatever time it was for Virginia Dare . . . er, you, Andrea . . . right when you were kidnapped.”

  “Hmm,” Andrea said, looking around. “I guess this could be right. Close, at least.” She sounded distracted, as if she’d lost interest in what Jonah was saying. Or as if she was thinking about something entirely different from Virginia Dare.

  Jonah followed her gaze. All he could see were pine trees towering overhead, the branches overlapping so closely that they almost blocked out the sky. It was too hard, trying to see so far off into the distance. He looked back at their little cluster. He and Katherine were still mostly sprawled on the ground, almost exactly as they had fallen. The dog had inched over only slightly, to lie at Andrea’s feet. But Andrea herself was sitting up perkily, looking completely alert. She’d even had the energy to yank her sweatshirt off and tie it around her waist, revealing a dark green T-shirt that said, Camp Spruce Lake.

  Jonah was still at a stage where he was proud just that he could notice, Oh, yeah. It’s really hot here. Doing anything about it was far beyond him.

  “See how it is, Andrea?” Jonah said. “You’re in better shape than Katherine or me. This must be the time you belong in. Everything’s fine.”

  “Then where’s Andrea’s tracer?” Katherine asked. She was struggling to sit up herself now. Pine needles showered down from her hair, and she fumbled at a cobweb that hung down into her face. “If we’
re in the right place and the right time, why don’t we see Andrea’s tracer?”

  Tracers were ghostly representations of what people would have been doing if time travelers hadn’t interfered. Jonah and Katherine had been completely freaked out the first time they’d seen tracers, on their last trip through time. It had also been eerie to see their friends Chip and Alex join with their tracers, blending so completely that they could think their tracers’ thoughts.

  The real Chip and Alex—the twenty-first-century versions—had seemed to disappear.

  It would undoubtedly be the same for Andrea.

  “We’ll find the tracer,” Jonah said, though he was thinking, Do we have to? The original Virginia Dare undoubtedly would have faced some life-threatening danger that Jonah and Katherine needed to save Andrea from. Once she was joined with her tracer, it would be very hard to pull her away from that danger. And now that they didn’t have the Elucidator, how would they know what danger to watch out for?

  Jonah stifled his fear and turned to Andrea.

  “Andrea, did anybody explain tracers to you?” he asked.

  “Oh, um . . . ,” Andrea seemed to have make a great effort to turn her attention from the pine trees back to Jonah. “Sure. JB told me all about them.” She jumped up. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go find my . . . uh . . . tracer.”

  She began striding off, going toward an area of the woods where the trees didn’t grow as thickly. The dog, with great effort, stood up and hobbled along behind her.

  “Wait for us,” Jonah said feebly, struggling to get his feet. He was as tottery as an old man. Katherine was wobbly just sitting up. Andrea skipped away, past the nearest tree.

  “Hurry up, then!” she said, looking back over her shoulder.

  Was she giggling?

  “No! Listen!” Jonah hissed. “You have to be careful! You can’t let anyone see you! You can’t let anyone hear you! You can’t let anyone know we’re here!”

  He thought about mentioning that if they still had the Elucidator, it could have turned them invisible—invisible and safe. That was undoubtedly what JB had been planning, the reason he hadn’t made them wear old-fashioned clothes. But if it really had been Jonah’s fault the Elucidator was missing, he wasn’t going to bring that up.