Sabotaged

22

Jonah dropped the melon.

“I am not eating this,” he said.

Katherine was leaning so far over Jonah’s shoulder she was able to catch the melon before it hit the ground.

“Ooh-words,” she breathed. “Is it an Elucidator?” She brought the melon up toward her mouth and began yelling: “JB? Anyone? Hello? Are you there?”

Nothing happened.

“An Elucidator wouldn’t come with instructions to eat it,” Jonah said. “And it’s not from JB.”

Katherine bent lower over the melon and touched the words with her finger.

“Second?” she said. “Is that a name?”

“It has to be,” Jonah said. “Think it’s the same person who told Andrea to change the code on the Elucidator?”

Katherine looked back over her shoulder.

“Andrea?” she called. “Look at this.”

Andrea patted her grandfather’s arm, whispered, “I’ll be right back” in his ear, and came over to look at the melon.

“Is this… typical?” she asked, squinting down at it with a baffled expression on her face. “Did you see anything like this in the fifteenth century? Messages on food?”

“Oh, no,” Katherine said.

“I think JB would think it was wrong,” Jonah said. “Interfering too much with time. And dangerous, because someone native to this time period might see it. But this Second guy-who knows what he thinks?”

Katherine rolled the melon side to side, so Andrea could read the whole message.

“Does this sound like it might have been written by that guy who came and visited you and told you to change the code on the Elucidator?” Katherine asked her. “Can you analyze the-what do they call it in Language Arts class? The diction?”

“‘Analyze the diction’?” Jonah said incredulously. “It’s not even ten words! That’s like telling her to analyze a text message!”

“I don’t know about any of that,” Andrea said. “But the way this is carved? It does look like his handwriting.”

Jonah and Katherine stared at her.

“When he gave me the code, he wrote it out, so I could memorize it,” Andrea explained.

Katherine nodded excitedly.

“So the guy who sabotaged us calls himself Second,” she said, acting like she was Sherlock Holmes making a brilliant deduction. “And he’s the same guy communicating with us now.”

Jonah didn’t see any reason for excitement.

“Communicating?” he said bitterly. “That’s not communicating.” He pointed at the melon. “‘You’re doing great’?” He yelled up at the sky, “We are not doing great!”

He suddenly realized that the melon might be a response to their experiment from the night before-or to Andrea’s deciding to keep John White with his tracer, no matter what. Either way, the message was annoying. Insulting. Patronizing. Jonah threw his head back farther and yelled even louder: “We don’t want to do ‘great’ for you!”

“Calm down,” Katherine said. “Second. Let’s see. Second place? Second rate? Second-in-command? Second, as in, not a minute or an hour, but a really, really short period of time?”

“Who cares?” Jonah asked disgustedly.

“If someone calls himself Second, there’s got to be a reason,” Katherine said.

“Yeah, maybe his parents didn’t have any imagination with names, and he’s just their second kid,” Jonah said. He shoved at the melon in Katherine’s hands. “I don’t like this guy, and I’m not going to pretend this makes any sense. And I am not doing anything he tells me to do. Eat this? I’d rather starve!”

Andrea turned to Katherine.

“What about you?” she asked. “Are you going to eat it?”

Katherine stared down at the melon, her face scrunched up in concentration.

“No,” she finally said. “It’s too much like Alice in Wonderland. ‘Eat me,’ and then it’s something that makes you grow or shrink. Or… it’s like having a stranger offer you candy. Everybody knows you shouldn’t take that.”

“This isn’t candy,” Andrea said. “It’s a melon. And we’re hungry.”

“Do you think we should eat it?” Katherine challenged.

Andrea bit her lip.

“You two can do whatever you want,” she said. “But… I’m going to.”

“What?” Jonah said.

“Look, my grandfather needs to eat, or he’s never going to get better,” she said. “But if there’s a chance this is dangerous, I’m going to try it myself, first.”

She took the melon out of Katherine’s hand and hit it against a rock sticking up in the dust. The melon broke into even halves, revealing five brown pellets where there should have been the fruit and seeds.

“Five?” Katherine muttered.

Andrea flipped over one of the pellets, which was a slightly lighter shade of brown. It had the words, “For Dare,” carved into its surface.

The others weren’t labeled.

“Okay, then, at least test the food on the dog first,” Jonah suggested.

“No, I’ll be the test case,” Andrea said.

She hesitated for a second.

“Don’t do it,” Jonah said. “Please.”

Andrea popped a pellet into her mouth.