Sabotaged

2

The “TV screen” turned back into a blank wall.

“Andrea,” JB said soothingly. “I know this is hard to comprehend, but you really are Virginia Dare. The first English child born in the so-called New World. Would you like to see the DNA evidence?”

“That’s so great,” Katherine interrupted. “I’d love to be Virginia Dare. You’re, like, one of the most famous mysteries in American history.” She looked up at JB. “So what did happen to Virginia Dare? Or, I mean-what’s supposed to happen?”

Jonah wanted to kick his sister. Maybe, if he knew how to work it right, he could get his chair to do that for him. Couldn’t Katherine see that Andrea was traumatized by the news of who she really was? Didn’t Katherine understand how hard it must be for Andrea, to know that she wasn’t really the person she’d always thought she was?

Of course not. Katherine wasn’t one of the missing kids from history. She wasn’t adopted, like Andrea and Jonah were. She’d always known that Mom and Dad were her parents, in every sense of the word. She’d never had to doubt her own identity.

JB ignored Katherine’s question.

“Andrea?” he said again.

Because Jonah was watching very closely, he saw something like a mask fall over Andrea’s expression. One moment she looked furious, ready to scream some more. Maybe even ready to attack. The next moment her face was smooth and blank, every emotion erased.

“Sorry,” she said softly. She eased back into her chair. “I just-sorry. You can go on.”

“Wait,” JB said. “I know what to show you. The direct link, maybe?”

This must have served as directions for the TV. An image reappeared on the opposite wall, this time focused in even more tightly on the newborn Virginia Dare, a tiny red-faced infant. It took Jonah a moment to realize that the baby was growing up before his eyes, in a weird sort of time-lapse photography. After a minute or so, the screen went dark for a second. When the image reappeared, it was clearly the same baby, but she was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt now.

The baby grew even more, into a toddler wearing an Elmo sweatshirt, a preschooler carrying a book of fairy tales, a six- or seven-year-old holding a soccer ball… the images flew by, one blurring into another. Jonah couldn’t have said how old the child was before she was clearly recognizable as Andrea-eight? Nine? She kept growing, changing, maturing. In the last seconds of the flashing images, Andrea’s appearance changed again, even more dramatically than the switch from the infant in the old-fashioned nightgown to the baby with the Mickey Mouse T-shirt. In all of the last few images Andrea’s expression was plaintive, guarded.

The final image might as well have been pulled from a mirror held up to Andrea exactly as she was now, dressed in a nondescript gray sweatshirt over a T-shirt and shorts (which was a little odd, Jonah thought, since it had been November back home.) In both the image and reality, her hair fell straight and smooth past her shoulders-and she had her lips pursed, her jaw tight, her eyes narrowed.

“Wow!” Katherine exploded, forgetting herself and bouncing in her chair again. “That is so cool! Can you do that for me? Show what I’ve looked like since birth, I mean?”

“Not right now, Katherine,” JB said. He was watching Andrea. He touched some control on the wall, and the last image of Andrea as Virginia Dare appeared again: a baby in a bonnet and a gown edged with lace. Beside it he pulled up the image of baby Andrea in her Mickey Mouse T-shirt. And then he zoomed out from both images, to show the scene surrounding the different versions of Andrea as a baby. In both, a woman was holding the baby: on the left side, Mistress Dare, thin-faced and haggard now, but still gazing at her daughter adoringly; on the right, a petite muscular, curly-haired woman who was grinning down at the baby cradled in her arms.

In both images, the baby Andrea looked so happy that Jonah could practically hear her gurgling.

“You could have done that with trick photography,” Andrea said in a tight voice. “You could have used Photoshop.”

“You know we didn’t do that,” JB said.

A single tear rolled down Andrea’s cheek. Almost all of Jonah’s experience with girls crying was with Katherine, who was given to big dramatic wails, “Oh, this-is-so-unfair!” In fifth grade Katherine had had some problems with friends being mean, and it had seemed to Jonah as if Katherine had filled the house with her loud sobs every night for weeks: “I can’t believe she said that to me! Oh, why-would-anyone-say-that?”

Jonah had gotten really good at tuning out all of that. Somehow, Andrea’s single tear affected him more. It seemed sadder. It made him want to help.

Andrea was already brushing the tear away, impatiently, as if she didn’t want to acknowledge that it was there.

“Don’t do this to me,” Andrea said. “Just send us back. Now.”

Her voice was hard. She could have been a queen ordering soldiers off to war or calling for an execution.

“Uh, Andrea, that’s probably not a good idea,” Katherine said. “I mean, you will have Jonah and me there to help and all, but being in a different century… it’s probably smart if we can find out as much as we can ahead of time.”

By this, Jonah knew that even Katherine was scared. Maybe she was also hoping that there was still some way to avoid going back in time.

“JB can tell us what we need to know once we get there, right?” Andrea asked, her expression still rigid.

“I could,” JB said. “I will be in contact with you through the Elucidator the whole time.”

Jonah grimaced a little, remembering how much trouble he and Katherine and their friends had had with an Elucidator in the fifteenth century. Part of his problem was that he still didn’t understand it completely-it was a time-travel device from the future, capable of doing much more than Jonah had ever witnessed. But it impersonated common objects from whatever time period it happened to be in. In the twenty-first century, it mostly looked like an iPhone.

In the fifteenth century, it had looked like a rock. It had still managed to translate Middle English, communicate back and forth with JB, turn Jonah and Katherine and their friends invisible, and-oh, yeah-annoy Jonah’s friend Chip so much that he’d thrown it across the room.

Jonah tried to figure out how to mention the problems with the Elucidator without sounding cowardly or scaring Andrea. But she was already answering JB.

“Fine,” she said. “Then give us an Elucidator and let’s go.” She sat up straight, and her chair seemed to rearrange itself in a way that made Jonah think of mother birds pushing baby birds out of the nest.

“I don’t think that that’s the best-” JB began. He stopped, a baffled look coming over his face. He turned slightly, no longer addressing Andrea. “Really? Are you sure?”

He took a few steps away, like someone suddenly interrupted by a call on a wireless headset. Of course, Jonah couldn’t see even the slightest trace of a headset near either of JB’s ears. By JB’s time, Jonah figured, they might be microscopic.

“Yes? Yes? You ran that projection? Just now?” JB paused. “Yeah, Sam, I know it’s your job to think of everything, but still… that was fast.” Another pause. “Oh, when Katherine asked, not Andrea. That makes more sense.” He waited, then gave a pained chuckle. “No, of course I won’t forget the dog.”

He looked back at the kids.

“I’ve been corrected,” JB said. “My top projectionist says it would be best if we sent you right away and then filled you in on everything once you get there. It seems counterintuitive, but projections often are.”

“Projections?” Andrea repeated nervously.

“Predictions,” JB said. “Forecasts. Before any time trip, our projectionists run checks on as many variables as they can think of, and as many combinations of variables, to see what would lead to the best outcome.”

“But,” Jonah began, “you said the projections don’t always…” He stopped himself before the last word slipped out. It was going to be work. The projections don’t always work. JB had told them that. But again, Jonah didn’t want to scare Andrea. He finished lamely. “The projections don’t always… make a lot of sense.”

“Exactly,” JB said. “Which is why we’re sending Andrea back with two untrained kids. I didn’t think I’d ever have to do anything like that again. And you don’t need any special clothes this time, but you do need…” He opened the door he had used before and whistled out into the hallway. “Here, boy!” he called. “Here, Dare!”

A shaggy English sheepdog came padding into the room.

“Oh!” Andrea said, clearly surprised.

“Didn’t JB tell you?” Katherine said. “That was one of the experts’ projections, that this was the only combination we could succeed with: you, me, Jonah, and the dog, all going back in time together.”

“Um, okay,” Andrea said.

JB rolled his eyes.

“Believe me, I’ve never sent a pet back in time before,” he said. “I mean, kids and a dog? If it was anyone else giving me that advice, I’d tell them they were crazy. But Sam is the most brilliant projectionist I’ve ever worked with, so… meet Dare. Your fourth traveling companion.”

The dog padded right over to Andrea and put his big head in her lap. He gazed up at her sympathetically, as if he knew that she’d been crying a moment ago, and he completely understood and would sacrifice his own life if that would make her feel better.

How do dogs do that? Jonah wondered. He was a little afraid that the dog gazing at her might make Andrea cry again, but she just buried her face in his fur and gave him a big hug.

“Nice to meet you, Dare,” she mumbled. Jonah noticed that she sounded happier than she had meeting him and Katherine. She lifted her face and peered up at JB again. “And the Elucidator?”

JB pulled something small out of his back pocket-it looked like the Elucidator was currently impersonating a very, very compact cell phone. He pressed a few buttons on the “phone,” and slid it into a pouch on Dare’s collar.

“All set,” he said. “I’ll talk to you again once you get there. All you have to do is link arms and hold on to Dare’s collar.”

He waited while the three kids got into position. Jonah was kind of hoping he’d get to stand next to Andrea, but Katherine ended up in the middle. JB reached down and touched something on the Elucidator. “Three, two, one… bon voyage!”

The room disappeared.