The dust floated up to his mouth and nose, making him cough. While he was coughing, he thought of a new argument.
“The way I see it, the tracers might be the only ones we can trust!” he said. “We know they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing because, duh, they’re tracers! They have to be accurate! I like Andrea—”
“You like her too much,” Katherine said.
Jonah ignored this.
“—but she doesn’t care what happens to time,” he continued. “Brendan seems okay, but how can we know for sure that he and Antonio aren’t working for Second?”
“You didn’t see them the first hour or so,” Katherine said. “They were completely clueless and scared out of their wits. They didn’t know anything.”
“Yeah, but as soon as they joined with their tracers, they should have known . . .” The next word Jonah had intended to say was everything. But he stopped. He remembered Brendan saying he didn’t know if his tracer had done anything great; he didn’t know what the tracer thought about Croatoan Island. He didn’t even know what year it was. And Antonio—maybe he wasn’t just being a jerk when he’d refused to talk about the distance to Croatoan because, “Our tracers aren’t thinking about that right now!”
“You think . . . ,” Jonah began. He had to try again to get the words out. “You think the tracers are keeping secrets?”
Katherine nodded, her eyes huge and frightened. Now that they were away from the other kids, Jonah could see how scared she really was—and how fake her brave face and cheerful chatter had been before.
“Didn’t Chip and Alex know everything their tracers knew, back in the fifteenth century?” Jonah interrupted. “Didn’t they know everything right away, from the first moment they joined with their tracers?”
“I think so,” Katherine said. “That’s how they always acted. Whatever we asked them, they had answers. Unless it was something their tracers didn’t know either.”
“But maybe we only asked them questions about things they’d been thinking about anyway,” Jonah said.
“Yeah,” Katherine agreed. “We never tested them with anything like, ‘What color shirt was your tracer wearing a week ago Monday?’”
“I couldn’t answer that,” Jonah said. “With or without a tracer.”
“Oh, right,” Katherine said. But she didn’t launch into any mocking rant about how he was just a stupid boy, and she could remember every outfit she’d worn since starting sixth grade.
“Do you think the tracers are working for Second?” Jonah asked.
Katherine frowned, considering this.
“I don’t think they could,” she said. “It’s like you said, they’re tracers. They can’t change.” She hesitated. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said I don’t trust them. Maybe that’s not the right way to put it. How could any of this be the tracers’ fault? They’re just what we see, and the problem’s deeper than that. The whole setup is messed up.”
“Because of Second,” Jonah growled. “He’s behind this.”
Katherine nodded.
“He must have done something to keep Brendan and Antonio from melding with their tracers right,” Katherine said.
Jonah struggled to get his aching brain to follow this thought. It seemed every bit as impossible as finding a rubber band buried on a vast beach. Brendan said Second pulled him straight out of time from his room back home—Second didn’t take him to a time cave or time hollow first, Jonah remembered. Could that be the problem? Jonah didn’t know why this would matter. The time hollows had always seemed like conveniences, not essentials. Why couldn’t Brendan and Antonio go straight from the twenty-first century to . . .
Jonah’s head throbbed, and he saw what he had been missing.
“I bet the problem was the way Brendan and Antonio came back,” Jonah said slowly. “Antonio landing . . . on top of me.”
This was still hard to talk about. It was like the moment back home when Jonah had first seen a time traveler seem to vanish into thin air, changing dimensions. Jonah’s brain had tried so hard to recast the memory, to turn it into something else—something believable.
Now it felt like Jonah’s brain was trying very hard to get him to forget completely. The memory already seemed distant and hazy, like something from a dream.
Oh, no, Jonah thought. I am not letting go.
“You know, when Antonio . . . arrived . . . that felt wrong,” Jonah said. “I bet Second did it that way on purpose.”
Katherine nodded, still deadly serious.
“I was looking right at you,” she said. “And, for a moment, it was like there were three people in the exact same spot—you, Antonio, and the tracer.”
Jonah felt chills again.
“That’s how it felt to me, too,” he admitted. He could bear thinking about that moment only in a roundabout way, as if he had to sneak up on the memory to catch it.
Katherine evidently wasn’t so limited.
“And then for a split second after that, you and the tracer both disappeared,” Katherine said, her voice low and troubled. “Maybe I blinked. Maybe I just missed seeing you fall out of the canoe. But where did the tracer go? Before, anytime we saw someone joined with his tracer—back in the fifteenth century, with Chip or Alex—it was always the tracer we could see, more than Chip or Alex. But with Antonio and his tracer, it was like the tracer blended into Antonio, not the other way around. I could see Antonio’s T-shirt better than his tracer’s back.”
Jonah shook his head, trying to make sense of Katherine’s words.
“But that didn’t last,” he said. “The tracers look normal now.” He glanced back toward the others clustered around the fire. Antonio and Brendan, still joined with their tracers, were very clearly wearing nothing but loincloths. “Well, normal for 1590s Native Americans.” He cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the last of the dust. “When did Antonio and his tracer start looking right again? And do you think Brendan and his tracer were messed up at first too?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine said. “I started looking around for you, and when I glanced back at Antonio and his tracer, everything was like . . .” she gestured toward the two boys, moving completely in concert with their tracers.
“You mean Antonio and his tracer were following all the rules of tracerdom, as we know them,” Jonah said, back to joking a little bit, because he couldn’t stand being so deadly serious all the time. “Except for Antonio—and Brendan—not knowing everything their tracers know, and maybe that’s not that different from the last time. Maybe we just didn’t notice it before. Nobody broke any other tracer rules after that, did they?”
Katherine bit her lip.
“I know you were asleep all afternoon, but . . . haven’t you been paying attention since then?” she asked. “Haven’t you noticed how easy it is for Antonio and Brendan to move in and out of their tracers?”
Jonah gaped at his sister, his brain finally catching up.
“That’s why kept you shaking your head at me!” he said. “You didn’t want me to notice. . . .”
“No, I didn’t want you to say anything in front of the others,” Katherine said. “Andrea’s already sick with worry about her grandfather, and Brendan and Antonio are plenty freaked out as it is.”
“So you want to protect them, but it’s okay to worry me?” Jonah said jokingly.
“Yeah. Because . . . ,” Katherine took a deep breath, and for a moment Jonah was afraid that she was going to say something sappy like, Because you’re my big brother, or Because we’re in this together. Or even, Because I trust you most of all. Jonah wasn’t sure he’d be able to take it if she did that. Instead, she just frowned and said, “You know how people are supposed to behave with their tracers. You’ve seen it before. You already know something’s wrong with John White and his tracer, even though that might just be because of his head injury.”
“Antonio and Brendan don’t have head injuries,” Jonah said.
“Right,” Katherine s
aid. “So isn’t it weird that they have to try to stay with their tracers? With Chip and Alex it practically took nuclear warfare to keep them away.”
“Yeah,” Jonah agreed. He almost added, Or true love. But this was not the right time to tease Katherine about that.
Katherine hit the palm of her hand against the sand. They’d both given up on pretending to look for a rubber band.
“I hate this,” she said. “We know Second did something wrong again, and we know everything’s messed up, but it’s like we’re boxed in—we don’t know what we can do about it.”
Another trap, Jonah thought. Or is it just another trick?
He looked back at the other kids: Andrea hovering near her grandfather, Brendan banking the fire, and Antonio . . . well, it looked like Antonio was posing, showing off his six-packs abs in front of Andrea. He was talking to her, too, probably saying, Look at me. Aren’t I hot? Jonah clenched his fists.
“Are you sure it wouldn’t help to punch Antonio?” he asked.
“Would you stop that?” Katherine said. She shoved at Jonah’s fists, knocking them uselessly against the sand. “None of this is Antonio’s fault. Can’t you tell he’s scared out of his mind?”
“Well, yeah, when he heard the wolves.” Jonah snickered. “Did you see how fast he was running?”
“Not just then,” Katherine said. “Ever since he got here, anytime he’s not thinking with his tracer’s brain, he’s terrified. It was like he couldn’t even hear half the things Andrea and I told him in the canoe. That’s why he keeps saying all those mean things, trying to make it so we don’t see how scared he is.”
“Oh, come on, Katherine,” Jonah scoffed. “Have you been listening to too many of those bullying assemblies at school? That’s the kind of thing a guidance counselor would say!”
“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong, does it?” Katherine challenged.
Jonah was about to make a snappy comeback or—to his surprise—maybe to grudgingly agree. But suddenly, across the beach, he heard Andrea scream.
“For real? Are you serious?” she yelled at the top of her lungs.
Jonah was already running toward her when he realized: No matter how loudly she was screaming, she didn’t sound upset.
She sounded delighted.
Jonah skidded to a stop in the sand right by Andrea and Brendan and Antonio. Katherine sprinted up behind him. By then, Andrea was grabbing Antonio in a tight hug.
“Thank you!” she cried. “Thank you!”
She hugged him again before letting go.
Antonio took a step back, just enough to blur away at the edges of his tracer. He barely missed stepping on Dare.
“What did I do?” Antonio asked, stunned.
“You told me the right year,” Andrea said, her face glowing. “The year!” She looked over at Jonah and Katherine, and her grin grew bigger. “We were wrong, what we thought, and what I told Brendan, and he didn’t know any different. But Antonio, my new best friend Antonio did. . . .” She threw her arms around him once more, before jumping back, too excited to stand still. “It’s not 1590, after all!”
“Uh, really?” Jonah said blankly. “And that’s a good thing because . . . ?”
Andrea laughed gleefully.
“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “Come on, Jonah, you were the one who figured this out before! When you were wrong!”
Jonah could feel his expression getting blanker. Still, Andrea only laughed more giddily.
“Virginia Dare was born in 1587,” she said. “She—I—wasn’t even a month old when my grandfather went back to England for supplies. He came back and found his colony deserted three years later, in 1590. So, you guys thought, John White, deserted island—it must be 1590. Doomed trip for him, no chance for us.”
Jonah was sure he hadn’t made everything sound so simple-minded.
“But,” Andrea said. She held up one finger for dramatic effect. “But! We don’t know about anything John White did after 1593. He wrote a letter describing his ill-fated 1590 voyage, and it was published in a book by a guy whose name I can’t remember. And for all anybody knows, John White might as well have died the day after he mailed that letter. But he didn’t! He didn’t!”
“You know that?” Katherine asked cautiously. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because!” Andrea crowed. “Antonio here remembers when he—er, his tracer—”
“It was both of us, really,” Antonio said. “Together. Before Gary and Hodge kidnapped me and made it so there was a separate tracer. When I was just a Spanish kid about to be adopted by Indians.”
“Okay, okay,” Andrea said impatiently. “What matters is that Antonio remembers what year he sailed from Spain, and how long he’s been in North America. Antonio?”
Antonio flashed her a puzzled look.
“I still don’t get why this is such a big deal. But . . . it was 1597,” he said. “Three years ago.”
“So don’t you see? That means it’s 1600 now!” Andrea exclaimed. “A new century! A completely different trip! And I’m thirteen years old!”
Andrea might as well have said, Ta-da! She seemed that thrilled with her revelation.
Everyone else just looked at her. Even Dare tilted his head quizzically.
“So?” Jonah finally said. “What’s the big deal about being thirteen?”
“Are you Jewish?” Katherine asked. “That whole bar mitzvah—er, bat mitzvah thing—”
“No! That’s not it!” Now Andrea sounded exasperated that the others didn’t understand. “I mean, I’m the right age for the year! I’m the age my grandfather would expect for his granddaughter! So—it wouldn’t be weird for him to see me and know who I am!”
She beamed at them, expecting everyone else to catch on. Jonah’s brain was slowly cranking out, Oh. Then that means . . . Katherine had her mouth open, but didn’t seem to have decided yet what she wanted to say. Antonio and Brendan were watching Katherine as if they expected her to tell them what to think.
Only Dare responded quickly. He began barking happily and jumping up against Andrea’s legs, practically dancing around her.
“Don’t you see?” Andrea said, reaching down to hug Dare, before letting him go to dance some more. “Don’t you think this means that . . . that everything was meant to be? My grandfather is supposed to find me, I don’t have to go back to being a toddler—everything’s going to work out!”
The other kids were still squinting and stunned and trying to understand.
“Then . . . you think history’s completely wrong?” Brendan said slowly. “What you and Katherine were telling us in the canoe—you said John White never found his family or anyone else from Roanoke.”
“The last time. In 1590,” Andrea said. “He never found anyone in 1590. But it’s 1600 now, and John White came back. And this time—he doesn’t have to fail.” She snorted. “The history we told you wasn’t wrong. Just . . . incomplete.”
“You mean, nobody in history kept track of what happened to John White in 1600,” Jonah said numbly. “Nobody wrote anything down so nobody knows. . . .”
Something about this—history having secrets, history hiding its holes—really bothered him. But he didn’t have time to think about it because Andrea was already flitting on to another point.
“Don’t you think it’s because he found his family and was happy and didn’t bother to write home?” Andrea asked. She giggled. “It’s not like there was postal service back to England!”
She pointed out toward the water glowing with the last rays of the sinking sun. The water seemed boundless; it was hard to imagine other lands off in the distance.
“This would explain why things didn’t match up on Roanoke Island,” Katherine said thoughtfully. “Why John White was alone instead of with other sailors, and why he didn’t see the word Croatoan and get driven away in a storm.”
“So maybe Second didn’t sabotage time that badly,” Andrea said. “Really, the only important thing that
got messed up with my grandfather on Roanoke Island was that the wrong kids saved him from drowning.”
“And he got a head injury,” Antonio said. Jonah was glad it was Antonio who pointed that out, because Andrea glared at him.
“Yeah, but . . . ,” Andrea seemed to be trying very hard to hold on to her excitement. She glanced down, and her whole expression changed. “I bet his head injury really isn’t that bad! Now that Antonio and Brendan are here for real—and he can see them, just like his tracer can—I bet the reason he’s unconscious is just because of us! Because his mind can’t deal with us wandering around in twenty-first-century clothes!”
She jumped up and began rummaging through her grandfather’s treasure chest. Jonah knew exactly what she was looking for: the dresses. She yanked out one that was pale yellow with a pattern of tiny roses.
“Andrea, no,” Katherine said sharply. “That can’t be the answer. People saw Jonah and me in modern clothing back in the fifteenth century, and that didn’t make anyone half-unconscious!”
“Just let me try!” Andrea said stubbornly.
She jerked the dress down over her shoulders, completely covering her T-shirt and shorts. The hem dragged down in the sand as she rushed to her grandfather’s side. He was lying practically flat on his back, his tracer eyes staring toward the darkening sky. His real eyes were still closed.
Andrea knelt beside him. Something about the dress made her move differently, or she was making a conscious effort to act like a girl from 1600.
“Grandfather?” she murmured. “I have just learned of your arrival and your rescue by these fine, uh, natives. They sent word to me to come right away, and they gave me the dress you brought. So, please, please wake up. . . .”
In her own way, Andrea sounded as ridiculous as Jonah had when he was doing his Pirates of the Caribbean imitation back on Roanoke Island. But she was looking so hopefully at her grandfather.
He stirred, swaying side to side. Andrea clutched his hand.
“Grandfather?” she said.