“And anyhow, those circles just show what happened in the past, what we lived through before the three dimensions merged,” Chip said. He seemed to be trying for a soothing, conciliatory tone. But he ruined it by adding admiringly, “Right, Jonah? We’re all in the same circle now. That’s how you saved time, isn’t it?”
Chip touched Katherine’s drawing and then squeezed his fingers together, as if to show the three circles coming together into one.
Jordan also squeezed his fingers together. Into fists.
But before he could say or do anything else, JB started shaking his phone/Elucidator.
“How could the Elucidator malfunction at a time like this?” he said disgustedly. “Hadley, listen, I’m not getting your transmission. I’m going to have to put this on voice commands and reset. Hold on.”
Voice commands! Jordan thought. Wasn’t that what Katherine had said JB had set his Elucidator on when he’d wanted her to grab it and go to the past? Even though he’d said it wasn’t allowed, was he setting up a way for Katherine or Jonah or Chip to go to the future and snatch the Lindbergh Elucidator and fix everything?
Jordan glanced around at Katherine, Jonah, and Chip. All of them were watching JB run his fingers across the phone/Elucidator’s screen.
“Okay, now try to retransmit,” JB said, holding the phone/Elucidator in front of his mouth.
Katherine rose up on her tiptoes. If she stretched out her arm, would she be able to grab the phone/Elucidator out of JB’s hands?
Jonah leaned in. He was farther away, but his arms were longer.
Chip was on the other side of the island from JB. He’d have to dive across the countertop to get his hands on the phone/Elucidator.
Whoever grabs JB’s Elucidator and goes to the future and fixes things for Mom and Dad will be the biggest hero of all, Jordan thought. He or she will be alone in a good way.
And I’m the one who’s standing closest.
Jordan reached out and snatched the phone/Elucidator from JB’s hands.
“Take me to the future!” he screamed. “Take me where I can get that Elucidator we need to help Mom and Dad!”
FIVE
Everything happened fast.
Mom still had her hand on Jordan’s back, and she grabbed hold of his T-shirt even as she screamed, “Jordan, no!”
Katherine clamped her hands around Jordan’s arm and screamed, “You’re crazy! Give that to me!”
Jonah screamed, “Katherine? Mom?”
And, distantly, Jordan heard Dad yelling, “Wait for me . . .”
And then the kitchen disappeared, and everything went dark.
Apparently there was such a thing as time travel, after all.
Jordan seemed to be zooming through a great void. In the darkness it took him a moment to realize that Katherine still had a death grip on his left arm—she was probably cutting off his circulation. And Jordan’s T-shirt was oddly tight, with something pulling it backward.
Mom’s hand, Jordan thought, with a sense of relief he’d never want to admit to anyone. Mom’s still with me too.
So however this time-travel stuff worked, Mom and Katherine grabbing him evidently meant they got to speed off toward the future with him.
That’s all right, Jordan thought. They can be heroes with me.
And, though he’d never tell her, it might actually be helpful to have Katherine along, if she really did have time-travel experience.
Now was the time for Jordan to make some joke to show how calm and confident he was, like action heroes did in movies. But before he had a chance to speak, he heard another voice, low and angry.
“You’re risking all of our lives, and the fate of the entire space-time continuum.” It was Jonah. And Jonah was . . . Jordan squinted. Jonah was on the other side of Katherine, clinging just as tightly to her arm as Katherine clung to Jordan’s.
“Be careful. Hand the Elucidator to Katherine or me, and we’ll send Mom and Dad and you back to safety,” Jonah continued. He sounded like someone talking to a dangerous wild animal he didn’t want to spook.
Jordan ignored Jonah’s request and asked, “Dad’s here with us, too?”
From the other side of Jonah, Dad moaned, “Ooohh. Is it possible to get seasick from traveling through time?”
“It’s called timesickness, Dad,” Katherine said sympathetically. “I get it too. You’ll feel okay after you land. Well, eventually.”
Jordan’s eyes adjusted enough that he could see Katherine turning back to face him.
“Really, Jordan,” she said, in the same kind of measured, cautious tone Jonah had used. “This is dangerous. At least send Mom and Dad back home so they’ll be safe.”
What? Jordan thought. And lose having them here to protect me if I need it?
Jordan couldn’t say that out loud without sounding like a total baby. And he couldn’t think of any excuse that would sound better. Reluctantly he lifted the phone/Elucidator toward his mouth and muttered, “Send Mom and Dad back home where they’ll be safe.”
Nothing happened. He could still feel Mom’s hand clutching the back of his shirt. He could still hear Dad off to the side moaning, “Ooohhh. What happens if you throw up out here?”
“Why didn’t that work?” Katherine asked, whipping her head toward Jonah.
“I don’t know,” Jonah admitted. “Jordan, please. We’re running out of time.”
Katherine snatched the phone/Elucidator from Jordan’s hand.
“Here, Jonah,” she said, passing it on as if they were playing a simple game of keep-away. Keep-away from Jordan.
“Hey!” Jordan protested, swiping his arm toward Jonah and missing by a mile. “Give that back!”
He waited for Mom or Dad to tell Katherine and Jonah it wasn’t polite to grab things—which was ridiculous when they were all floating through this dark nothingness because of Jordan grabbing the phone/Elucidator to begin with.
Mom and Dad didn’t scold anyone. Jonah did.
“Katherine, that was so dangerous,” he complained, even as he hunched his back and turned away so there was no way Jordan could grab the phone/Elucidator back. “What if the two of you had dropped the Elucidator, like what we thought happened that time with Andrea? Then we really would have been in a mess!”
“Well, I didn’t drop it, did I?” Katherine asked, a bit of her usual sassiness back in her voice. “And I knew Jordan would never give it to me. Or you. So I had to grab it. Just . . . do what you have to do! The lights are getting close!”
Lights on the horizon zoomed toward them, faster and faster and faster. What did that mean?
Jonah bent his head toward the phone/Elucidator and spoke firmly: “Elucidator, send Jordan, Mom, and Dad home to safety.”
Jordan braced himself to be sucked backward. But once again, nothing happened.
“Jonah?” Katherine cried, her voice edgy with fear. “What’s going on?”
Jonah didn’t answer her. He was muttering into the phone/Elucidator, “I said, send them home! Home! Mom, Dad, and Jordan! Send! Them! Home!”
“Jonah!” Katherine cried. Even in the near-complete darkness, Jordan could see that the color had drained from her face. “We’re almost to the lights! We don’t even know where we’re going in the future! Do something!”
Jonah looked up from the phone/Elucidator.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “JB wasn’t just pretending that this Elucidator was messed up. It really is broken!”
SIX
Jordan began spinning. He felt like every cell in his body—or maybe every molecule? Every atom?—was being torn apart.
“Don’t worry!” Katherine screamed. “This part doesn’t last long! We’ll land soon!”
Jordan wasn’t sure how he could hear her, because it felt as though his ears—like every other part of his body—had been broken down into individual atoms. Or maybe individual electrons, protons, and neutrons.
If this really is just some hallucination caused by cold medicine, I
am never doing any actual serious drugs, Jordan thought. This is what they should do to kids in DARE class, instead of giving all those stupid lectures. . . .
And then he couldn’t think anything else. Maybe his body really had been torn to bits.
The next thing Jordan knew, he was lying on some sort of flat, motionless surface—a floor? The ground?
Probably floor, he decided. Something indoors, because it’s so smooth. . . .
He knew from camping in Scouts that no matter how carefully you tried to pick a flat space for your sleeping bag outdoors, there were always tiny pebbles and twigs and clumps of dirt that would poke into your back in the middle of the night.
And how could he be thinking about Scouts and sleeping bags and dirt at a time like this?
Think about . . . finding that other Elucidator thing to fix Mom and Dad, he reminded himself. And maybe that will make it so I’m back in my normal dimension, or whatever gives me back my normal family and my normal life. . . .
Finding anything was going to be hard, because he felt both blind and deaf. He couldn’t see or hear anything. He tried blinking a few times, and feebly lifted one hand to hit the side of his head, to try to clear his ears. He couldn’t even feel his own hand. Had he lost all his senses?
Even as he started gasping in panic, he began hearing Jonah whispering nearby, “Elucidator, don’t make any noise. And please make us invisible. Please, please, please, Elucidator, let that function still be working. . . .”
Invisible? Jordan thought. Is that why I can’t see?
Somehow he knew that wasn’t right, but it took his brain a moment to figure out why: Oh, yeah. Invisible is when other people can’t see you, not that you can’t see anything. . . .
“What was in that cold medicine?” Jordan tried to say. But it came out more like “Unh ah inh . . .” because his tongue felt as thick and uncooperative as a slab of meat.
Also, something slapped against his face and covered his mouth.
Katherine’s hand? he thought. Oh—I can feel things now!
“Shh!” Katherine hissed in his ear. “Don’t make any noise until we know where we are, and if we’re safe. . . .”
Was there some reason they wouldn’t be safe? And . . . hadn’t they been going to the future?
It was so weird, how his brain couldn’t seem to hang on to a detail like that.
“Mom, Dad, Jordan—if you’re feeling sick, it’s just because you’re in a new time, and it takes a little while to adjust,” Katherine whispered. “You’ll feel better in a little bit. Just stay hidden and be quiet until you can think and hear and see straight. . . .”
Jordan wanted to ask, Are we hidden now? But getting his tongue and mouth to form those words seemed about as likely as climbing Mount Everest at the moment.
And, oh, yeah, she said to stay quiet. . . .
“Are we invisible?” Katherine hissed, probably to Jonah.
Wasn’t it crazy that she’d ask a question like that? And sound serious about it?
Jordan squeezed his eyes shut and opened them a second time, and finally they started working again. He could see Katherine and Jonah and Dad lying beside him. He turned his head the other direction, and there was Mom. All four Skidmores—five, if you counted Jonah—were lined up on some hard floor.
Like corpses, Jordan’s brain told him, and he felt himself start to shiver.
Belatedly, his brain also told him that Jonah had been shaking his head no. Every single Skidmore was completely visible, the red of Dad’s T-shirt and the purple and pink of Katherine’s sweater as bright as neon.
The Elucidator in Jonah’s hand hadn’t been able to turn any of them invisible.
“Is there, like, crazy-strong air-conditioning in the future, or are we someplace really cold, like Hudson’s ship in 1611?” Katherine asked, still in a whisper.
Was she talking about the year 1611 like it was a time she’d actually lived through?
“Shh,” Jonah replied. “You have to be quiet, too.”
“Unhhh . . .” That was Dad.
“Do you think Mom and Dad are having even worse timesickness because of that whole un-aging thing?” Katherine asked anxiously.
Jonah shrugged and drew his fingers across his lips. Evidently that meant zip it! in all dimensions.
And then Jordan saw Jonah struggle up into a sitting position. If Jonah could sit up, Jordan could too.
Jordan started pushing himself up on his wobbly arms. The vague shapes above and around him swung in and out of focus. Sterile-looking tables . . . colorful projections that glowed like a computer or TV but without any sort of actual screen or wall behind them . . .
Jordan’s best guess was that they were in some sort of futuristic lab.
Maybe it’s empty, he thought. Maybe it won’t matter that the Elucidator couldn’t make us invisible, or that our whispering might have been too loud. . . .
At the edge of Jordan’s range of vision, Jonah had not only managed to sit up, but was now twisted around and peeking over the top of the nearest lab table.
“What do you think an Elucidator might look like in the future?” Jonah whispered, turning his head toward Katherine. “Maybe . . . like the thinnest credit card ever?”
Jordan watched as Jonah glanced around, then slipped his hand over the edge of the table and picked up something.
Just then Jordan’s elbows buckled and his chest slammed down against the floor. Pain shot through his body, and he screamed, “Ahhhh!”
The sound echoed in the silent lab.
A moment later, a strange face loomed over him.
SEVEN
“Get us out of here!” Jonah hollered. “Take us all . . . someplace safe! Like—the nearest time hollow?”
In the next instant, the face disappeared from Jordan’s view. So did the tables and the colorful screenlike projections and everything else about the sterile lab. Everything went dark and spinny.
Time traveling again? Jordan thought.
But the sensation of spinning and zooming through darkness ended as quickly as it had started. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, Jordan was on solid ground again—or, actually, solid floor. He could see a room around him now. But when he looked around for any identifying features or clues about where he was, there weren’t any. The room was just empty and bland, with nothing-colored walls and a nothing-colored floor and lighting that didn’t seem to come from anywhere—it just was.
The bright colors of Dad’s red shirt and Katherine’s pink-and-purple sweater were even more jarring here.
So Jonah brought us to a place where there’s nowhere to hide? Jordan thought anxiously.
Before he could point that out, Dad sat up and said in an amazed voice, “I don’t feel sick anymore.”
Katherine giggled. “That’s how time hollows work,” she said. “As long as we’re here, you also won’t get hungry and you won’t get thirsty and you won’t ever have to go to the bathroom. It’s like we’re totally outside of time. Nothing changes in a time hollow. Jonah and I were stuck in a time hollow for decades once, and we never got hungry or thirsty that entire time.”
She had to be making that up. Didn’t she?
Jordan saw Mom raise one eyebrow questioningly—having her do that with a kid’s face didn’t work as well as when she was a grown-up. Katherine and Jonah ignored her. Dad just patted his stomach.
“You’re right,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t feel hungry, and I seem to remember that when I was thirteen the first time around, I was always hungry. It’s so strange—I don’t feel like I need anything at all.”
“I’d take being an adult again,” Mom said, practically in the same annoyed and annoying tone that Katherine so often had in her voice. Then Mom grimaced. “I guess that’s what both of you, Jordan and Jonah, were trying to accomplish. I do appreciate the effort. But maybe this time around we could take things slow and you could think before you act?”
Jordan realized that everyone else was a
lready sitting up. He pulled himself up and glared at Jonah.
“I might have taken us to the right time period—Jonah didn’t exactly give us much of a chance to look around,” Jordan complained. “So some man saw us. So what? Maybe he could have helped us. Maybe we could have made up some really convincing story and . . .”
Jonah and Katherine were both shaking their heads.
“Jordan—I recognized that man,” Jonah said. “He’s our worst enemy.”
“Gary? Hodge?” Dad asked. “Was it one of them?” He clenched his fists like he was ready to punch someone.
Jonah and Katherine looked at each other.
“This guy’s even worse,” Katherine said. “That was Second.”
Maybe it wasn’t possible to be hungry or thirsty or sick in a time hollow, but Jordan could have sworn he felt his stomach start churning, just at the grimness of Katherine’s voice. She wasn’t joking about any of this. She was terrified.
But Jordan couldn’t let anyone see that he was scared too.
“You’re afraid of some guy who’s named for a number?” Jordan asked. “What—is he that proud of coming in second place?”
By the standards of wisecracking movie heroes, that was pretty lame. But Jordan was proud he could joke at all.
Nobody laughed.
“Second’s real name is Sam Chase,” Jonah said, frowning. “He used to work for JB—JB trusted him. He told us Sam Chase was his best projectionist.”
“And a projectionist is . . . ,” Dad prompted.
“Someone who makes predictions for time travelers,” Katherine answered. “So they can see how their trip might affect time. Usually you don’t want to change anything about the past, because it could mess up everything.”
“But Sam Chase got sick of things not changing.” Jonah took up the story. He crossed his arms in a way that made him look furious. “He tricked JB—and, well, me and Katherine and our friend Andrea, too—and he decided to rearrange history. He started calling himself Second Chance.”
“And he shifted and split time, just for the fun of it,” Katherine finished. “He almost destroyed it completely.”