Caught

  Embarrassed, Jonah stood up and tried to brush dirt and dried grass off his shirt.

  “Hi, Angela,” he said sheepishly. “I couldn’t see who was driving. And it looked like you were coming right toward us. I guess my perspective was a little off . . . .”

  “No worries,” Angela said. “Better safe than sorry.”

  But the right corner of her mouth inched up ever so slightly.

  Jonah wondered how ridiculous he’d looked, diving into the ditch.

  Then a new thought struck him—a good distraction.

  “Wait—how’d you get a car to work in stopped time, when I couldn’t even make a phone call?” he asked.

  “Elucidator,” Angela said, holding up a black rectangular device that seemed to be attached to her dashboard with a cable. It looked as if she were just charging a cell phone. But Jonah knew that this was one of those times when looks were deceiving. Elucidators were like that. They always took on the appearance of some ordinary object: a rock in the fifteenth century, a candleholder in the seventeenth, a cell phone in the twenty-first. But Elucidators had provided a way for Jonah to communicate across time, to turn invisible when it was too dangerous for him to be seen, and to travel through time in the first place.

  Elucidators were great—when you knew how to use them.

  “JB gave you your own Elucidator?” Katherine asked, a hint of jealousy in her voice.

  “Only so I could watch out for the two of you,” Angela said. “Only to be used in case of emergency. Like now.”

  Any trace of humor was gone from her voice.

  “So call him already,” Katherine said. “Make him tell you what’s going on!”

  Angela shook her head grimly.

  “He’s vanished,” she said. “Him and Hadley and every other time agent I could think of to call. Last I heard Hadley was dealing with some new crisis in the past. But I don’t know where any of them went.”

  “They weren’t going to make any more trips to the past,” Jonah said stubbornly. “Not until it was safe.”

  Angela frowned at him.

  “Hadley said it wasn’t safe for them not to go,” she murmured.

  Angela’s eyes flooded with tears, and Jonah remembered that Angela and Hadley had become . . . what was that stupid term that Katherine used sometimes for kids who had crushes on each other? “Special friends”?

  Jonah grimaced. He had too many other problems to try to figure out grown-ups’ relationships.

  “Hey, hey, I’m sure Hadley and JB and the others will have everything under control soon,” Angela said, misinterpreting Jonah’s grimace. She made it sound as if he were some little kid who had to be comforted.

  Even if it meant lying.

  Katherine flapped her hands, as if trying to fight the unnerving stillness around them. Or as if she could wave away all the dangers of the past and present.

  “Can we talk about all this on our way to Chip’s house?” Katherine asked impatiently. “Come on, Jonah, get in the car.”

  Jonah noticed that Katherine hadn’t exactly stopped to ask Angela if she minded taking them to Chip’s. But Angela was already reaching around to unlock the car’s back door.

  Jonah scrambled up and jumped in. Katherine slid in on the passenger side in front.

  “Hurry!” Katherine begged as Angela shifted the car into gear.

  Angela hit the gas, urging the car faster, faster, faster . . .

  All the way to twenty-five miles per hour.

  “I don’t think you need to worry about obeying speed limits right now,” Jonah said.

  “The Elucidator is probably defying several laws of physics just to get the car to move at all,” Angela said. “This is the best I can do.”

  Jonah realized that his notion of the car as speeding toward him and Katherine before had been a relative thing. It had only seemed to be going fast because everything else around them was completely still.

  And it did feel wrong to be moving inside the car—more wrong than when he and Katherine had just been walking. It was as if even the air molecules around him were fighting against the motion.

  Is it because the air molecules are traveling with us? Jonah wondered. Or are we displacing them and then they go back where they belong after we pass by? Or . . .

  Those kinds of problems always tied his brain in knots, even without the complication of stopped time.

  The strain showed on Angela’s face, too.

  “You drove like this all the way from your house?” Jonah asked. Angela lived on the other side of the city.

  Angela shook her head.

  “Only the last mile or so was in stopped time,” she said. “I was already on my way here. Hadley told me to come find you two when he left for the past.”

  “What—were you going to show up at school and pretend to be our long-lost aunt or something?” Katherine asked.

  “I was still figuring out a good story,” Angela said. “I don’t think the ‘aunt’ thing would work very well.”

  “White kids can have African-American aunts! It happens all the time!” Katherine protested, her voice going a little squeaky. Typical Katherine—she got upset when she thought people were being racist or sexist. Even when they weren’t, actually.

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t help the story,” Angela said with a shrug.

  Jonah was still caught on something else Angela had said.

  “Hold on,” he interrupted. “You said Hadley and JB wanted you to watch over me and Katherine. Why us? Why not Chip or Andrea or any of the other missing children from history? Or—is someone else watching over them?”

  “You and Katherine have traveled through time a lot more than any of the other kids,” Angela said. “You’ve had the most contact with JB. That puts you in the most . . .”

  Jonah was pretty sure that the next word she was going to say was “danger.” But then she glanced over at Katherine and in the rearview mirror toward Jonah.

  “Oh, you know how those time agents are,” Angela said, her tone suddenly too light and teasing. “They’re always so concerned about being logical and fair, and keeping things balanced and equal. But you know you’re their favorites.”

  “But—,” Katherine began.

  “Do I turn here to get to Chip’s, or is it the next street?” Angela asked.

  For the rest of the way to Chip’s, Angela acted as if she needed the most specific directions ever. Did “turn after the blue house” mean the light blue house on the corner or the turquoise one farther down? Was Chip’s house five or six houses away from Jonah and Katherine’s house?

  “When JB said you should watch over us, did he mean—,” Jonah tried once.

  “What?” Angela said, swerving up onto the sidewalk to avoid a stopped car blocking the street. “Sorry, Jonah, I’ve really got to concentrate on driving. This is like something from a car-chase movie, where you have to keep going from lane to lane.”

  It was true that she had to go straight from driving on the sidewalk to driving in the lane on the opposite side of the street, going the wrong way. But the problem was that all of the other cars around her were stopped, not that they were darting around her.

  This isn’t like a car-chase movie, Jonah thought. It’s like one of those prehistoric video games my dad has from when he was a kid, where everything moves too slow.

  Finally they arrived at Chip’s. Katherine immediately shoved open her door and began rushing up the front walk.

  “No—wait! Maybe I should go first—,” Angela called after her.

  When Katherine didn’t stop, Angela scrambled out and ran to catch up.

  “Shouldn’t we keep the Elucidator with us?” Jonah asked. Neither Angela nor Katherine answered him, but Jonah leaned over the front seat and yanked the connecting cable away from the Elucidator.

  As soon as the link to the car was broken, the Elucidator began to make a crackling noise.

  “JB? Hadley?” Jonah asked.

  Through the crackling st
atic Jonah thought he heard a voice. Was the Elucidator working as a communications device again, now that it wasn’t powering a car?

  Jonah lifted the Elucidator closer to his ear.

  “Angela, Kath—,” he started to call out to the others. But then he got scared that the Elucidator might work only briefly, and he didn’t want to waste any time.

  “Hello?” he said into the Elucidator. “JB? Is that you?”

  “Angela? Jonah? Katherine? Are you there?” JB’s voice floated weakly from amidst the static. “Are you there? Angela?”

  Jonah realized that even though he could hear JB, JB couldn’t hear him. He began fumbling with the controls on the side of the Elucidator.

  “JB?” he said.

  “Jonah? Is that you?” The relief in JB’s voice practically drowned out the static. “Are you okay?”

  “Uh, sure,” Jonah said.

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you, Angela! Thank God!” JB might have gone on with his listing of thanks, but the Elucidator blanked out for a moment. When the sound came back on, he was saying, “. . . was so worried . . .”

  “JB, I can’t hear you very well,” Jonah said. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “. . . in a time hollow . . . watching . . . early nineteen- . . . he’s not thinking about the right things. He . . . I thought . . .”

  It was so frustrating, trying to make sense of the few bits and pieces of JB’s explanation that came through. Maybe Jonah should have Angela and Katherine listen to this too. Quickly he slipped out of the car and began walking toward them. They’d reached the doorstep of Chip’s house, and Katherine had just started pounding her hand against the door.

  “Chip! Chip!” Katherine was yelling.

  “Shh,” Jonah hissed. “JB’s talking on the Elucidator!”

  Angela whirled around.

  “. . . was afraid that . . . ,” crackled out of the Elucidator. “But you haven’t seen anything strange . . . ?”

  “Strange?” Jonah repeated. “JB, time’s stopped.”

  For a moment the Elucidator was completely silent.

  Then JB wailed, “Stopped? No! It can’t be! Your time is stopped? The twenty-first century?”

  Jonah reached the front step of Chip’s house and climbed up the stairs behind Katherine and Angela. Angela reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, we’re still okay,” Jonah said. “Angela came and got me and Katherine, and now we’re at Chip’s house, and—”

  “Chip’s house? No! Stay away from Chip! Run!” JB’s voice screamed from the Elucidator. “Run away!”

  Several things happened almost at once. Chip’s door scraped back, revealing Chip looking pale and clammy-skinned. Katherine reached out and brushed Chip’s hand with her fingers just as Jonah grabbed her arm to pull her back. Angela reached up to feel Chip’s forehead with the back of her wrist. In that one second they were all linked, each of them touching the person on either side.

  In the next second everything went black.

  FOUR

  For a long moment Jonah couldn’t think. His mind remained as blank as the scenery around him.

  Then he heard Katherine’s voice.

  “Is it just the two of us?” she asked weakly. “Just the two of us, floating through time?”

  Through time, Jonah thought.

  He was relieved that Katherine had put a name to what they were doing. This did indeed feel like all the other times they’d traveled to the past. Just as before, there was nothing but a dark void around them, an emptiness that seemed infinite. But neither he nor Katherine had shouted out a command to travel to another time; he didn’t think Angela or JB or Hadley had preprogrammed secret coding into the Elucidator to . . .

  The Elucidator, he thought.

  He clenched his left hand—the one that wasn’t wrapped around Katherine’s arm—and was relieved to feel the smooth edge of the Elucidator against his palm and fingers. He tightened his grip. He and Katherine and Andrea had lost their Elucidator on their trip to 1600, and Jonah had no desire to repeat that experience.

  “It’s you and me and the Elucidator,” Jonah told Katherine.

  “Oh, goody,” Katherine said, a bit too much sarcasm in her voice. “Why didn’t Chip and Angela come, too? I was touching Chip’s hand. Angela was touching your shoulder.”

  “Just touching,” Jonah said apologetically. “Not holding on. No one was holding on but me.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Katherine said.

  They floated on in silence for a moment, and then Katherine asked, a little plaintively, “Where do you think we’re going?”

  “JB said he was in a time hollow,” Jonah told her. “Maybe we’re just going where he went. Or, he said he was watching someone in the early nineteen . . . nineteen hundreds, do you think? Or nineteenth century?”

  “It could be nineteenth century BC, for all we know,” Katherine said bitterly. Jonah sensed movement beside him—it seemed that Katherine had plunged the top half of her body forward. “Hello? Hello? JB?” she hollered into the Elucidator in Jonah’s hand.

  The Elucidator remained silent.

  “Great,” Katherine muttered. “Now it’s broken again.”

  Jonah shrugged.

  “We’ve managed before without a working Elucidator,” he said, but his voice chose that moment to squeak. He sounded like a terrified mouse.

  Katherine was still hunched forward, poking at the Elucidator.

  “Can we switch over to voice commands?” she asked it. “Can’t you let us hear JB again?”

  “Jonah? Is that you? Are you okay?” came out of the Elucidator.

  “No, it’s Katherine now,” she shouted back. “Katherine!”

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you, Angela! Thank God!” JB replied, the same way he had before. And then, just as before, there was a pause before JB said, “. . . was so worried . . .”

  “Katherine, I don’t think JB can hear you,” Jonah said. “The Elucidator is just playing back his conversation from before. Oh—it’s giving you what you asked for—to hear JB again.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant!” Katherine wailed, as if it would do any good to scold the Elucidator.

  “Yeah, but you have to be really precise with the—,” Jonah broke off, because the repeated conversation coming from the Elucidator had reached the part where JB was describing where he was:

  “. . . in a time hollow by mistake . . . trapped watching . . .”

  “Did you hear that?” Jonah asked excitedly. “I can make out more of his words this time around. Elucidator, can you play that part back for us again?”

  The Elucidator fell silent for a moment and then repeated JB’s words. Jonah held his breath and strained his ears, listening as hard as he could. Maybe it was because they were traveling through a near vacuum, but JB’s voice came out sounding clearer and purer now:

  “I’m stuck in a time hollow by mistake. I’m trapped watching . . . in the early nineteen hundreds . . .”

  “There!” Jonah exclaimed. “We’ve got a time period!”

  “Shh,” Katherine shushed him. “You made me miss the rest of it!”

  They had the Elucidator play JB’s lines again:

  “. . . trapped watching . . . in the early nineteen hundreds. His daughter is one of the missing children of history. We had to return her. We had to. He’s not thinking about the right things. He . . . I thought . . .”

  “They returned another missing child to history?” Jonah asked. “When JB said they weren’t going to do that anymore?”

  “But if they had to . . . ,” Katherine mumbled. “Elucidator, let’s hear that again.”

  Jonah strained his ears harder than ever. He held his breath again. He listened so intently that he could hear his own pulse pounding in his veins. But he couldn’t make sense of whatever JB said between “trapped watching” and “in the early nineteen hundreds.”

  “I got it! I got it!” Katherine shrieked. “JB’s watching Al
bert Einstein. Albert Einstein!”

  “Albert Einstein?” Jonah repeated. “No way. You’re making that up!”

  But they replayed JB’s words again, and this time Jonah heard the name too, faint but distinct.

  Albert Einstein? Jonah thought. Albert Einstein and time travel? Albert Einstein and a missing daughter?

  He relaxed through the next section of JB’s words, the part they’d already figured out. And then, maybe hearing was kind of like eyesight, where sometimes you could see things better when you weren’t looking directly at them. This time, when he wasn’t listening so hard, Jonah could make out what JB had said after “He’s not thinking about the right things.”

  It was: “He could ruin everything.”

  FIVE

  “But—Albert Einstein’s a good guy. Isn’t he?” Jonah asked. “How could he ruin everything?”

  The words were snatched from his mouth by a sudden rush of air around his face. Jonah had been so intent on trying to figure out JB’s words on the Elucidator that he’d stopped paying attention to their journey through time. But now lights rushed up at them, and it felt as if every cell and molecule and atom of Jonah’s body were being torn apart.

  They were about to land.

  “Katherine!” Jonah screamed. “Shouldn’t we get the Elucidator to make us invisible? Just in case?”

  His words were whipped away from him so quickly that he knew Katherine couldn’t have heard. But he tried to curl forward, bending his head toward the Elucidator even as he struggled to bring the Elucidator up toward his mouth.

  “In-vi-si-ble!” he cried out. “Make me and Katherine invisible!”

  In the bone-crushing, teeth-jarring pressure of gravity and time crashing down on him, he couldn’t tell if his request had worked or not. He couldn’t see the Elucidator in his hand, but he couldn’t see anything else, either. He couldn’t hear; he couldn’t speak; he couldn’t feel.