Redeemed

  Or maybe was still in the middle of something traumatic.

  “I can see now that you’re not Jonah,” the man said, very seriously. Somehow Jordan could tell that the man was talking about more than just the placement of a chin dimple. Jordan felt almost insulted, as if the man were saying Jordan didn’t measure up. “It’s just . . . the last time I saw you, you were a year and a half old.”

  Jordan realized that, on top of all the other oddities going on this morning, it was also strange that this man Jordan had never seen before—or didn’t remember ever seeing before—had just walked into Jordan’s house.

  “Uh, do my parents know you?” Jordan asked.

  “Jonah and Katherine do,” the man said. He stuck out his hand. “I’m JB.”

  Jordan was saved from having to shake JB’s hand because Katherine came bouncing over just then, pulling Chip along behind her.

  “It’s good to see you, too, JB!” she exclaimed, dipping down to give him a rough hug, as if he were some favorite uncle. Which, of course, he wasn’t. “I’m so glad Chip and the other kids are okay. Are you here to help Mom and Dad and Angela?”

  JB cut his gaze back and forth between Jordan and Katherine and Chip.

  “That situation is . . . complicated,” he said. “Maybe we should leave that subject for later?”

  Jordan felt like he did when Mom and Dad spoke in code language because they didn’t want him and Katherine to know something. They’d kind of stopped doing that once he and Katherine hit middle school, because it mostly stopped working.

  But now this guy is acting like he’s got secrets I’m not allowed to know about but Katherine is? Jordan thought indignantly.

  “Oh, hey, Jordan,” Katherine said. “Aren’t you sick?”

  “Um—” Jordan began.

  “And, like, hallucinating or something?” Katherine continued. “And didn’t you black out a minute ago? Don’t you think you should just go back to bed?”

  “And then everything will be fine when you wake up again,” JB said, too heartily.

  “Oh, right,” Chip agreed. “That’s how these things work. When you’re sick, I mean.”

  JB was still crouched in front of Jordan. Katherine stood right behind the man, her hand still on his shoulder, her arm still linked through Chip’s. It was like the three of them were a team—a team united against Jordan.

  Jordan wanted to say, You’re sick too, Katherine. Don’t you think you should go back to bed? After you send these strangers away? Don’t you think Mom would be mad that you let them into the house?

  But his mind kept . . . what had Katherine called it? “Hiccupping”? Jumping around, anyway . . . over certain details. Before he’d come downstairs, hadn’t he believed that Katherine was home sick too? Before he saw the oddly young versions of his parents, hadn’t he thought that Mom was working from home today, to take care of him and his sister? Why couldn’t he remember, one way or the other?

  Jordan rubbed his forehead.

  “Why do I feel like . . . ,” he began. But he saw how JB, Katherine, and Chip instantly drew closer, instantly began darting glances at one another, as if they needed to work together to handle whatever Jordan was going to ask.

  How could I believe anything any of them might tell me? Jordan wondered.

  “Maybe I will go back to bed,” Jordan said. “I feel kind of weird.”

  “Great idea!” JB said in a totally fake voice, acting like Jordan was some kind of genius just for repeating the same plan Katherine had suggested.

  Hadn’t she just suggested that? Or was Jordan a lot sicker and more confused than he thought?

  Jordan turned and walked toward the stairs. He kept his head down as he climbed them, and acted like he felt too awful to ask any more questions.

  He had to act like that. He had to pretend he wasn’t curious.

  Because he was totally going to sneak back downstairs and listen to everything the others said as soon as they thought he was gone.

  THREE

  Coward, Jordan accused himself.

  He was pretty sure a braver kid would have stayed downstairs, would have kept asking questions, would have demanded answers—and gotten them. Jordan should have been like some of the guys at school who were so sure of themselves they sometimes managed to talk teachers into postponing or even canceling tests. Any of those guys would have done something about the too-young Mom and Dad and the weird mirror-image kid, Jonah.

  Jordan wasn’t like that.

  Something had happened at the start of this school year: It was like suddenly all the seventh graders just knew that some of them were cool kids and some of them were not-so-cool kids and some of them were total losers. It wasn’t like elementary school, or even sixth grade, where pretty much everybody was goofy and nobody cared. (Or, at least, Jordan hadn’t cared.) Now, most days Jordan just hoped he counted as one of the not-so-cool kids and hadn’t slipped down into the category of total loser.

  You’re acting like a loser, he told himself as he stepped into his room. His little charade would work only if Katherine heard him shut his bedroom door but didn’t hear him reopen it.

  Jordan was just reaching back for the doorknob when his gaze swept his room, and—it wasn’t his room.

  Or, rather, it was and it wasn’t, all at once. His Ohio State basketball poster was still angled above his desk, but it shared space with a Lego robotics poster he’d never seen before—though it looked a little like one he’d had when he was younger. He’d taken his own Lego poster down, actually, at the start of seventh grade. Several of the other posters around the room were strange too: one practically on top of another, as if someone blind had tried to decorate the room twice, once with Jordan’s actual posters and once with ones that were just a little different or a little like ones he used to have.

  Jordan blinked, and for a moment he thought he saw a completely different room—a home office, maybe, with the kind of inspirational wall hangings his mom favored.

  Oh, now I’m totally hallucinating, he thought.

  He blinked again, and the weird version of his room was back. He forced himself to look at the furniture.

  His desk and dresser were still there, but maybe Jordan was suffering from double vision or something, because now there seemed to be a second desk and a second dresser crowded beside each of Jordan’s. The new ones looked practically as much like the originals as Jordan looked like that Jonah kid downstairs.

  Jordan glanced toward the bed, braced for the same kind of double-vision problem. But the bed was even more different: Somehow it had turned into bunk beds.

  Jordan had never had bunk beds in his life.

  And double vision wouldn’t make him see bunks.

  How could someone have taken away my bed and replaced it with bunk beds just in the few minutes I was downstairs? Jordan wondered.

  Somehow this change was even scarier than all the strange people downstairs, because Jordan could have an identical twin; there could be kids who looked like his parents’ childhood pictures.

  The bunk beds were impossible.

  Jordan got his hand around the doorknob. He spun out of the room and then he slammed the door, shutting himself off from the view of the strange posters and the extra desk and dresser and the preposterous bunk beds. He stood in the hallway for a moment, panting.

  Just a hallucination, just a reaction to being sick, just . . .

  He wasn’t convincing himself of anything.

  Don’t be a loser. Don’t be a coward. There’s got to be some explanation for all this . . .

  He began tiptoeing back down the hallway, back toward the stairs. Mom and Dad were the type of parents who liked having family pictures all over the house, and Jordan felt better seeing the old familiar photos: There was the picture of Jordan standing by his tent at his first Cub Scout campout . . . Katherine at five with a gymnastics trophy . . . both of them playing basketball when they were maybe seven and eight . . . Jordan proudly holding up the firs
t fish he ever caught, a tiny sunfish . . . Er, no—was that a giant catfish? And why was he suddenly wearing a blue shirt in that picture, instead of a red one?

  It couldn’t be a picture of that Jonah kid instead of me. Couldn’t be, couldn’t be, couldn’t be . . .

  Jordan stopped looking at the pictures. He put his head down—there were school pictures hung along the stairway, and he kept his gaze away from any of them as he cautiously eased down one step at a time. He concentrated on avoiding squeaky spots on the stairs. When he reached the point where he could almost see into the living room, he stood on tiptoes and peeked around the corner—that room was empty. But he could hear voices coming from the kitchen at the back of the house.

  Jordan tiptoed away from the living room and into the dining room the family almost never used. He crouched down beside the china cabinet, and practically under one part of it. This had been one of his favorite hiding places back when he and Katherine were little and they thought hide-and-seek was a thrilling game.

  The buzz of voices in the kitchen broke out into distinguishable words.

  “—feel sorry for him,” Katherine was saying. “He’s so confused. Is it really going to make any difference if he hears everything?”

  “We have to contain the damage!”

  That was JB’s voice, wasn’t it? JB’s voice, completely tense now that he wasn’t playacting for Jordan’s benefit?

  “But if Jordan’s going to have to live with the—what did you call it? Blended dimensions?—for the rest of his life, shouldn’t he—”

  Jordan thought this was the tall girl speaking now. She’d hung back so much while everybody else was running and hugging that he hadn’t noticed much about her. Was she maybe somebody else that he might have recognized if he’d looked a little closer? She was tall and pretty and African-American and . . .

  And, really, that was all that had registered with him. He didn’t think she was anybody he’d ever seen before—at any age—but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Angela, I’m not talking about the dimension challenges,” JB said, sounding impatient. “Those will work themselves out. I’m sure of it. It’s you and the two Skidmores being the wrong ages—and Chip’s parents too, and God know how many other adults around here—”

  “Angela said that was going to be fixed. Right after we got to see our kids.” Was that Dad sounding so pathetic? He’d always been a little nerdy, but somehow that made him lovable as a grown-up.

  Jordan was embarrassed for him now.

  That whiny voice would get him labeled a total loser at school, Jordan thought.

  “The time agency is working as fast as they can,” JB said, and Jordan had the feeling he was speaking through gritted teeth.

  Time agency? Jordan thought. As in time travel, like Katherine was talking about before?

  It didn’t make sense to Jordan. Even if time travel were possible, couldn’t someone spend years figuring out what to do—and then come back in time to make the fix? And to everyone else it would look like no time had passed at all?

  “You’re saying we can’t do anything but wait?” This was the young version of Mom, sounding dismayed. The real, grown-up Mom didn’t like waiting or not having anything to do. Normally, if she saw Jordan or Katherine just lying around—when they weren’t sick—she’d be like, “Oh, could you help me fold this laundry?” or “Would you stir the soup in the Crock-Pot?” or “Want me to quiz you for your social studies test tomorrow?”

  Jordan could hear Mom clearing her throat, the way she always did when she was annoyed.

  “And you’re saying we have to keep our own son confined to his room and in the dark about everything until we’re adults again?” Mom asked. Jordan wanted to cheer. She may have been the wrong age, but at least she was on his side.

  “That is what I’m saying.” This was JB again. “All of you need to sit tight and let the experts do their jobs.”

  “JB, I thought you’d eased up on thinking experts are the only ones who can solve problems,” Jonah said—it had to be identical-boy Jonah. Except he sounded so calm and authoritative. Jordan could never in a million years imagine his own voice sounding this way. “These are my parents, remember? And they’ve just met you. Be nice.”

  “I know, I know,” JB said, as if Jonah had every right to scold him. “I’m sorry. There’s just a lot at stake.”

  “Isn’t there always?” Katherine asked. Was she teasing JB? “But if two totally different dimensions can smash together, and that’s working out, then can’t the age problems be okay too?”

  Silence. Jordan had a feeling that JB might just be standing there in the kitchen with a look of panic on his face.

  “The time agency was able to solve all your problems, JB,” Jonah said encouragingly.

  What does that mean? Jordan wondered.

  The only thing he could think of was that JB might have had his age messed up too. But how could he have changed back when nobody else did? Anyhow, it was hard to imagine JB as a teenager, so Jordan decided he was probably wrong. He listened even more intently.

  “They only risked changing me because the alternative was worse,” JB said.

  This was another mysterious statement that didn’t help Jordan in the least.

  In the kitchen JB let out a heavy sigh.

  “What happened with all the un-aging—it was unprecedented,” JB said. “We’ve got dozens of adults within a one-mile radius who went back to being thirteen-year-olds. An entire middle-school staff is now the same age as the students.”

  Does he mean Harris—my school? Jordan wondered.

  It should have been funny to imagine all Jordan’s teachers as thirteen-year-olds. But Jordan didn’t feel the least bit like laughing. The way JB was talking, none of this sounded like a joke.

  “With every second that ticks by, the likelihood of permanent damage increases,” JB said grimly.

  “But why—” Katherine began.

  “We don’t know!” JB exploded. He seemed to be struggling to control his voice. He continued in a softer tone. “All we can think is that there was something seriously wrong with the Elucidator Charles Lindbergh was using.”

  “Elucidator—that’s the device that lets people travel through time, right?” Mom asked.

  Now even Mom was talking about time travel like it was real.

  “Hold on—who’s Charles Lindbergh?” Chip asked. “What’s he got to do with anything? I thought this was all Gary and Hodge’s fault.”

  “It was.” This was Jonah again. “But they manipulated Charles Lindbergh into doing some of their dirty work. Lindbergh was a famous pilot from, like, eighty or ninety years ago.”

  “He was the one who kidnapped me and turned me back into a baby,” Katherine added.

  Why wasn’t everyone laughing? None of them were actually taking her seriously, were they? Someone from eighty or ninety years ago couldn’t have kidnapped Katherine. As for turning her into a baby—

  That’s not any crazier than Mom and Dad looking like teenagers again, Jordan thought.

  He felt dizzy again. He leaned his head against the side of the china cabinet.

  Maybe this was all just a dream? Maybe after Mom agreed to let him stay home from school, he’d fallen back asleep—in his normal bed, in his normal room, in his normal life—and everything since then had just been a particularly vivid nightmare?

  He missed whatever was said next in the kitchen. Something rang, and JB groaned, “Noooo . . .” Then he muttered, “I’ll take care of it.”

  Nobody answered him. Had JB maybe been speaking on a cell phone, instead of to the others in the kitchen?

  “JB, what’s going on?” Angela asked. “They are going to be able to fix this, aren’t they?”

  Jordan strained his ears to hear JB’s reply, but there wasn’t even a whisper. Jordan turned his head so he could press his ear tightly against the wall.

  And then someone grabbed his arm and yanked him out from beside the china ca
binet. It was JB.

  “Get out from there!” JB snarled. “How much did you hear?”

  FOUR

  “Elucidator,” Jordan babbled, as JB’s fingers dug into his arm. “Charles Lindbergh. Time travel. And . . . there are bunk beds in my room.”

  “Bunk beds? Really?” Katherine said, coming into the dining room behind JB. The others were right behind her.

  “Haven’t our sons always had bunk beds?” Dad asked. But he was squinting like he really just wanted someone to agree with him, to talk him into the notion.

  “Did the time agency put them there, or did it just happen?” Angela asked.

  “Is my room his room now too?” Jonah asked. His tone was the opposite of Dad’s: He seemed to want someone to tell him no.

  “Can we all please just stop talking about beds and rooms and—” JB seemed to be making a visible effort not to explode completely. He kept a firm grip on Jordan’s arm and began angling him back toward the stairs. “I know this is a difficult time for you, Jordan, but remember, you’re sick. You’re going to go back to sleep, and later you’ll just remember that you were delirious, and—”

  “Don’t do that to my son,” Mom said. She stepped forward and jerked JB’s hand away from Jordan’s arm.

  Whoa, Mom, Jordan thought. She looked like a middle-school cheerleader—especially since she was wearing a baby-blue sweatshirt of Katherine’s that said CHEER! in sparkly letters. But she sounded fierce.

  Mom crossed her arms and faced JB directly.

  “You may think you’re in charge here, because you’re the only one who’s an adult right now, and you know more about time travel than the rest of us,” Mom said. “But this is still our house—my, uh, husband’s and mine—and there are house rules. It’s not fair for you to lie to Jordan like that and make him think he’s just imagining things. I won’t allow it.”

  The kid version of Dad stumbled over beside Mom and clumsily crossed his arms too.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “What she said.”