Sabotaged

27

“What’s this? Ketchup and mustard for the little food pellets?” Jonah muttered.

He pulled the cork out of one of the jars and got a whiff of the thick purplish liquid-it was paint.

In fact, the jars were identical to the ones in John White’s trunk.

“You have a really sick sense of humor, Mr. Second,” Jonah murmured. “Given everything we don’t have-all the answers we don’t have-and you just send us more paint?”

“Jonah! What are you doing? Come on!” Katherine called from outside the hut. “The tracer boys are leaving!”

Jonah came out of the hut waving the jars of paint.

“Look what else Second left for us,” he said. “‘With my compliments,’ he says. I say we take a stand: Second, we don’t want your stupid presents!”

He tossed the jars back into the melon plant. They broke off several of the leaves, creating a line of tracer leaves.

Katherine frowned at him.

“No, wait,” she said. “We should take those along. Not leave behind any more time mess-ups than we have to, you know?”

“All right, all right,” Jonah mumbled. He fished the jars back out of the melon leaves. He went over to the trunk and dropped them in with John White’s other art supplies.

“I’m glad we’re getting away from this creepy island and that creepy hut and that creepy guy Second’s gifts,” Jonah said. Somehow, he was sure Croatoan Island would be different.

“Some help?” Katherine muttered.

Jonah realized that Katherine and Andrea were attempting to pull John White across the clearing, following the tracer boy carrying the old man’s tracer.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” Jonah said.

He rushed over to the girls. They had been trying to tug the old man by his armpits, but with all three of them working together, they were able to lift him up, almost into a standing position. John White’s head sagged forward; his legs dragged uselessly.

“We’ve-got to-get him back with his tracer!” Andrea grunted.

Ahead of them, the tracer boy placed John White’s tracer in the crook of the branch they’d carried him on the night before. Much less gracefully, Jonah, Katherine, and Andrea settled the real man into the same spot.

“Now he looks so much better,” Andrea said.

It was true. John White’s color instantly improved. The sweat beads disappeared from his face. And even though his eyes remained closed, his whole countenance looked more peaceful now.

Does it really help John White that much to be with his tracer, like Andrea thinks? Jonah wondered. Or is it just that the tracer’s healthier, and that’s what we see?

Dare began barking. The second tracer boy was carrying the tracer chest over to put on the branch beside John White.

“Right. Don’t worry-I’m getting it, boy,” Jonah muttered.

He was glad that Andrea and Katherine were looking down at John White and didn’t notice that Jonah just dragged the chest. No, now the girls were peering through the trees ahead of the branch. As Jonah heaved the chest onto the branch-almost splintering it-he realized that they were looking at a small sliver of water visible through the woods.

“Do the tracers think this branch is going to float?” Andrea asked. “If we’re going to a whole different island…”

Jonah hadn’t thought of that. There was too much to keep track of.

“John White would fall off,” Katherine said. “He wouldn’t even make it across a puddle, if this was all he had holding him up.”

“Surely…,” Andrea began.

She broke off because the one tracer boy was pushing the branch forward-all by himself.

“Show-off,” Jonah muttered.

The other boy was walking down toward the water.

“We have to push too!” Andrea said. “We can’t let my grandfather get separated from his tracer!”

It took all three of them heaving and shoving to get the branch lined up again with the tracer boy’s branch. Fortunately, from that point, there was a slight downhill tilt, so the main problem was controlling the branch’s slide.

The next time Jonah looked up, they were at the water’s edge, and the second tracer boy was a few yards down the shore. He disappeared behind a tree. Then he reappeared on the water-in a tracer canoe.

“Oh, there’s a canoe,” Jonah said. “That’s how it’s going to work.”

He was a little annoyed with Andrea and Katherine for scaring him. Of course the tracer boys wouldn’t try to sail an old man and a treasure chest from one island to another on a splintery, unstable branch.

Jonah dashed over to the tree where the tracer boy had stood just a few moments before. This was like searching for John White’s treasure chest. Jonah just had to look in the same spot where there’d been a tracer. Granted, the tracer boy had disappeared behind the tree, but he’d reappeared so quickly in the canoe that the real version of it would have to be right there.

Jonah looked down.

No canoe.

He looked to the right.

Nothing.

To the left.

Nothing.

Jonah peered far down the shoreline, in both directions, then out into the water, as far as he could see. Nothing, nothing, nothing. There wasn’t a real canoe anywhere in sight.

“Oh, no,” Jonah groaned, dread creeping over him. “Oh, no.”

It made so much sense that the tracer boys would have a canoe. They’d been alone on an island, after all-they had to have gotten there somehow.

But they weren’t here for real, Jonah thought dizzily. In our version of time, they weren’t here. So… neither was their canoe?

Jonah didn’t want to trust that conclusion. He leaned weakly against the tree, trying to think through everything again, trying to come up with a different answer.

The tracer boy was angling the canoe up against the shore. He held the canoe steady while the other boy helped the tracer version of John White climb into the canoe. Then the second boy loaded the chest and the pouch of venison jerky. He shoved the canoe out into deeper water before jumping in and grabbing a paddle.

Then, without a backward glance, both boys paddled away with John White’s tracer.