Sabotaged

41

Second clicked his thumb against the object in his hand-maybe it was a stopwatch.

“Wow,” he said. “Thirty-six seconds off. I’m really slipping. Or, the two of you are.”

“It’s true, then?” Katherine asked. “You work for JB?”

“JB signs my paychecks,” Second said, his cocky grin back.

“Then… then he knew what was happening to us along?” Jonah asked. He was having trouble believing this. “He knew from the beginning that Andrea was going to change the Elucidator, that we were going to lose all contact, that we were going to rescue John White, that… that this was what we were moving toward?” Without looking, he gestured toward the other kids and Andrea’s grandfather, still back at the canoe.

“Let’s just say that JB can be a bit hands-off as a boss,” Second said. “All about the big picture, not so concerned about the tiny details along the way. Looks at the forest, not the individual trees. Leaves it to me to understand the trees.”

Jonah didn’t have a clue what any of that meant. He couldn’t stop thinking about how certain he’d been, back in the hut on Roanoke Island, that JB had lost them completely. Hadn’t JB assured them, back at the beginning when he was shaking their hands, that they were all on the same team? That there wouldn’t be any secrets on this trip?

No, Jonah realized. That wasn’t what JB said. He said no one would keep any secrets “unnecessarily.”

Jonah felt betrayed. He wanted to scream out, like Andrea’s grandfather in the midst of one of his nightmares, “Treachery! Betrayal! Deceit!”

“But… but… the big picture here is that Andrea changed history,” Katherine said. “JB’s big picture isn’t about changing history. He just wants to put kids back where they belong so history will go the way it’s supposed to.”

“You think JB is still the same time purist he was when you first met him?” Second asked. “Do you think, if he’d stayed like that, he would have let you rescue Chip and Alex from the fifteenth century?” Second smirked. “Don’t you know how people’s hearts go soft around orphans and dogs?”

He pointed toward Andrea and Dare, but Jonah just kept staring at Second.

“JB would never have let you give Andrea steroids in her food,” Jonah said.

“There weren’t any steroids in her food pellet. It was just food,” Second said.

“But the way she paddled,” Jonah argued, “when she was trying to catch up with the tracer canoe-”

“She was just determined. Very, very stubborn and full of resolve,” Second said. “Like you were full of resolve when the food pellets showed up-you were so determined that you were going to spite me by not eating them, that you forgot to think about being hungry. And that carried you through until you could eat the fish.”

Jonah winced. Second was exactly right-that was how Jonah had felt.

“I will admit that I tampered a bit with the food pellet I knew Andrea would give to John White,” Second said. “It had a sedative in it, to make sure that he didn’t wake up too soon. And, although the medicine in the pellet helped him heal, it made him look like he was getting worse.”

Jonah’s jaw dropped.

“Why would you do that? Andrea was so worried about her grandfather!” he protested.

“And so convinced that she had to keep him with his tracer,” Second said. He smirked again. “Ultimately, it was for her own good.”

Jonah scowled at him.

“What about the paint jars you left in that hut?” Katherine said. “What was that all about?”

“Well… John White can use the paint, because some of his was damaged by the seawater,” Second said. “But, mostly, the way those showed up made Jonah so mad at me that he was determined to get off Roanoke Island, no matter what, even if he had to carve a canoe himself.” Second chuckled, not very kindly. “Teenage boys really are very easy to manipulate.”

This made Jonah even angrier. If it hadn’t been for the paint jars, he would have thought more about whether or not it really mattered to keep John White with his tracer. He would have thought more about the big picture, himself.

Second probably predicted that I’d be mad now, Jonah seethed.

He forced himself to at least try to appear calm.

“There’s still something weird about all this,” Katherine muttered.

“Yeah… What about the way Antonio came back in time?” Jonah said. “When he… fell on me. I bet that wasn’t something JB knew about, or approved, or wanted to happen. That was wrong, wasn’t it?”

“Not wrong, exactly,” Second said. For the first time, his gaze seemed shifty; he wouldn’t look Jonah in the eye. “It was a bit unconventional… just a little risky… Okay, that kind of re-entry had never been tried before. It’s called a time smack. And it was the only way to stretch time just enough for the shift, to loosen the connection between Brendan and Antonio and their tracers…”

I don’t trust their tracers, Katherine had said, only the night before. She’d been right. They weren’t trustworthy. But it really wasn’t their fault.

“So I caused one little time smack, along with the time shift. Why does that give you the right to put me on trial?” Second asked. “This is all good! John White gets to meet his granddaughter! It’s a happy ending!”

“Is it an ending or-just the beginning?” Katherine asked.

“Oh, very good!” Second was beaming again. “You are so right. There are so many possibilities, even from this one little change… With his granddaughter at his side, John White has a reason to live now. To heal. And he’ll keep drawing pictures. In just seven years, English settlers are going to try again, at Jamestown. What if John White’s new drawings get to Jamestown and then back to England? What if that changes how everyone in England views the Americas? What if John White and Virginia Dare go and help out at Jamestown, bridging the gap between the English and the natives much better than a bunch of trigger-happy, starving soldiers? What if there’s finally some respect between the two sides?”

Jonah glanced toward Andrea and the others once again. He gasped.

“And what if your wonderful time shift ruins everything?” he asked.

He pointed.

Andrea was still bent over her grandfather, her hand gently touching his face. Brendan and Antonio still hovered nearby, staring solemnly at the reunited pair. This wasn’t so odd. The four of them might have been so awed by the moment that they wanted to stay in the same position, without moving, for a long time. But it wasn’t just them staying so still. Dare’s body arced above the canoe, frozen mid-leap. A bird flying overhead was suspended in mid-air, its wings outstretched but unmoving. Even the waves beyond the canoe had stopped lapping against the sand, the crests and valleys of water locked in place, unchanging. It was impossible, but true: Except for the little cluster of Jonah, Katherine, and Second, the entire world had stopped.