Sabotaged

31

Jonah sprang up and darted to the side, holding his arms out protectively in front of Katherine and Andrea. He didn’t know what was coming toward them, but it seemed like a good idea to stay on the opposite side of the fire.

The last clump of giant leaves parted, revealing…

Antonio.

He was sprinting toward them at top speed, hightailing it across the sand.

“Is something chasing you?” Jonah yelled at him.

Antonio didn’t answer. He bent his head down, focused only on running. His feet barely touched ground. When he was still several feet away from the other kids, he suddenly leaped, launching himself upward in an amazing arc.

That’s going to hurt when he lands, Jonah thought. From Jonah’s perspective, it looked like Antonio was trying to dive into the sand.

No, Jonah realized. Into his tracer.

Antonio collided with his tracer in mid-air. The tracer had just stood up to carry fish bones toward the fire, so for an odd moment Antonio and his tracer looked like a monster with two heads and four arms and four legs sticking out at strange angles-and with skeletal fish attached to two of his hands. Then Antonio’s body straightened out, twisted around, and completely melded with his tracer.

“Is something chasing you?” Jonah screamed again at Antonio.

Almost imperceptibly, Antonio separated from his tracer just enough to shake his head. No. Nothing was chasing him.

Still, Jonah gazed off into the woods for a few moments, watching for rustling in the undergrowth. Nothing but wind moved the giant leaves.

“What was that all about?” Katherine demanded.

Another howl rose up from the woods.

“Brother Wolf speaks most eloquent-” Antonio-joined-with-his-tracer began. But then Antonio jerked his mouth away from his tracer’s mouth. “Crazy tracer!” he muttered.

Brendan dipped his head into his tracer’s head, then pulled back again.

“Our tracers know the wolves won’t come near the fire,” he explained. “The tracers aren’t afraid. But when we’re apart from our tracers, we never know…”

Apart from his tracer, Antonio was terrified of the wolves, Jonah realized. Even now, separated only slightly from his tracer’s head, Antonio had sweat pouring down his face and was panting heavily, gulping in mouthfuls of air. This was a particularly bizarre sight since his chest, still joined with his tracer’s, rose and fell with a calm, even pace.

“My tracer’s not afraid of anything,” Antonio said. He separated from his tracer a little more, to turn toward Brendan. “Is yours?”

Brendan shook his head.

“Not really,” he said slowly. “I mean, he knows terrible things could happen-we could starve, we could be attacked, we could die a million different, horrible ways-but if that happened, he knows it would just be the will of-”

“Don’t say it!” Antonio ordered. “Don’t say ‘Great Spirit,’ or anything like that, because that’s not how it translates-it doesn’t translate, and they’ll just laugh…” He separated his arm from his tracer’s to gesture angrily at Jonah, Katherine, and Andrea.

“Us?” Katherine said, with fake innocence. “Say it in Algonquian, and Jonah and I will understand. We’ll help you translate.”

“Never mind,” Antonio muttered. He turned angrily away. Surreptitiously, he slid his head closer to his tracer’s, so that barely anything except his mouth remained separate. “The tracers are cleaning up and getting ready to camp overnight,” he said gruffly. “Brendan, you’d better get back together with your guy so we can do this the right way.”

“Okay,” Brendan said, shrugging.

“Jonah, while they’re doing that, could you help me with something over by the canoe?” Katherine asked.

“What?” Jonah said.

“I, uh, think I might have lost a ponytail rubber band,” Katherine said. Jonah glanced at his sister.

“It’s in your hair,” he said.

She shook her head, her ponytail flipping side to side.

“Not that rubber band,” Katherine said. “A different one. It could mess up time forever if we don’t find it.”

Even though he’d slept all day, Jonah was still really tired. Just the thought of standing up seemed beyond him, not to mention having to walk over to the canoe and search for some stupid little rubber band that was probably buried under three inches of sand by now. How much could one rubber band matter anyway? Second had tossed whole jars of paint into the wrong time period.

And five kids and a dog.

“Wouldn’t Andrea do a better job looking?” Jonah said. “She’s a girl. She knows about stuff like ponytail rubber bands.”

Katherine shot a glance toward the other kids. Antonio and Brendan, completely joined with their tracers now, were bent over the fire. Andrea, with Dare beside her, was gazing down at her sleeping grandfather. None of them was looking toward Jonah and Katherine.

Katherine jabbed her elbow into Jonah’s side.

“Ow!” Jonah cried. “What-”

But Katherine already had a finger poised over her lips. She jerked her head to the right, toward the direction of the canoe. Then she quickly pointed to herself and Jonah, and started thumping the fingers of her right hand against the thumb, like someone operating a puppet.

“Oh, you mean-” Jonah began.

Katherine shook her head firmly and pressed her finger against her lips once more. She grabbed Jonah’s arm and began tugging.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming!” Jonah muttered.

They walked several steps, and as soon as they were out of earshot of the others, Katherine burst out, “You are so dense! You would be the world’s worst spy! Any of my friends would have caught on about ten years ago that I wanted to talk to them alone!”

“Well, duh,” Jonah mumbled. “They actually care about ponytail rubber bands.”

Katherine rolled her eyes. Then, near the canoe, she dropped to her knees and began sifting sand through her fingers.

Jonah groaned.

“Please tell me you didn’t really lose a rubber band,” he said.

Katherine paused long enough to glare up at him.

“No, but you need to look like you’re looking for a rubber band,” she reminded him. “In case they’re watching.” She tilted her head, indicating the other three kids.

Reluctantly, Jonah knelt down beside his sister and began scooping up random handfuls of sand. His knees ached. His shoulders ached. His head was still woozy-the day of sleeping in the sun, having nightmares, hadn’t come even close to curing him. Worst of all, he was getting chills again, the little prickles of fear all along his spine that warned of some approaching danger.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked Katherine, his voice coming out rough and accusing. “Don’t you trust Antonio and Brendan after all?”

Katherine brushed aside sand, revealing more sand.

“It’s not that,” she whispered. “It’s-I don’t trust their tracers.”