Sabotaged

4

Jonah still couldn’t see very well, but he could tell that all the color had instantly drained from Katherine’s face.

“Is it… just… on the ground beside…” Katherine began.

“No, it’s gone! Completely gone!” Andrea fumed. “Jonah knocked it out of my hand when we were traveling through time!”

“I didn’t…,” Jonah started to protest, but his lips and tongue weren’t functioning yet, so the words came out more like, “Uh unhh…” He swallowed hard, ready to try again, and his mind flipped frantic images at him: him jerking on Andrea’s arm, him crashing into Andrea’s side…

Maybe he had made her lose the Elucidator.

“It’s okay. JB knows where we are,” he said, and this time the words came out in a recognizable way. He kept talking. “Remember, part of the time we were in the fifteenth century, we didn’t have an Elucidator either, and everything turned out fine.”

“Because we knew what we were supposed to do,” Katherine said.

“What if we didn’t even end up in the right place and time?” Andrea asked. She waved her hands like someone about to explode into hysterics. “We could be anywhere!”

“It’s all in how the Elucidator’s programmed,” Jonah said, trying to sound more confident than he actually felt. He thought of something, and genuine confidence caught up with him. “Remember, Katherine, when JB sent Alex to the fifteenth century before he sent the rest of us? Alex didn’t have an Elucidator with him. He just went where JB programmed him to go. So that’s how it would have worked for us, too.”

“Really?” Andrea said. “Are you sure?”

Jonah glanced at her. He must have been wrong about her being on the brink of hysterics. She looked and sounded fine now. Completely relieved. Even… happy.

Jonah’s vision and hearing must still be messed up. She couldn’t be happy.

“I’m sure,” Jonah said, partly to convince himself. He forged ahead to another point. “Anyhow, we know how JB does things-he tries to send kids back as close as he can to the moment when they originally disappeared. So we’ve got to be in-well, whatever time it was for Virginia Dare… er, you, Andrea… right when you were kidnapped.”

“Hmm,” Andrea said, looking around. “I guess this could be right. Close, at least.” She sounded distracted, as if she’d lost interest in what Jonah was saying. Or as if she was thinking about something entirely different from Virginia Dare.

Jonah followed her gaze. All he could see were pine trees towering overhead, the branches overlapping so closely that they almost blocked out the sky. It was too hard, trying to see so far off into the distance. He looked back at their little cluster. He and Katherine were still mostly sprawled on the ground, almost exactly as they had fallen. The dog had inched over only slightly, to lie at Andrea’s feet. But Andrea herself was sitting up perkily, looking completely alert. She’d even had the energy to yank her sweatshirt off and tie it around her waist, revealing a dark green T-shirt that said, Camp Spruce Lake.

Jonah was still at a stage where he was proud just that he could notice, Oh, yeah. It’s really hot here. Doing anything about it was far beyond him.

“See how it is, Andrea?” Jonah said. “You’re in better shape than Katherine or me. This must be the time you belong in. Everything’s fine.”

“Then where’s Andrea’s tracer?” Katherine asked. She was struggling to sit up herself now. Pine needles showered down from her hair, and she fumbled at a cobweb that hung down into her face. “If we’re in the right place and the right time, why don’t we see Andrea’s tracer?”

Tracers were ghostly representations of what people would have been doing if time travelers hadn’t interfered. Jonah and Katherine had been completely freaked out the first time they’d seen tracers, on their last trip through time. It had also been eerie to see their friends Chip and Alex join with their tracers, blending so completely that they could think their tracers’ thoughts.

The real Chip and Alex-the twenty-first-century versions-had seemed to disappear.

It would undoubtedly be the same for Andrea.

“We’ll find the tracer,” Jonah said, though he was thinking, Do we have to? The original Virginia Dare undoubtedly would have faced some life-threatening danger that Jonah and Katherine needed to save Andrea from. Once she was joined with her tracer, it would be very hard to pull her away from that danger. And now that they didn’t have the Elucidator, how would they know what danger to watch out for?

Jonah stifled his fear and turned to Andrea.

“Andrea, did anybody explain tracers to you?” he asked.

“Oh, um…,” Andrea seemed to have make a great effort to turn her attention from the pine trees back to Jonah. “Sure. JB told me all about them.” She jumped up. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go find my… uh… tracer.”

She began striding off, going toward an area of the woods where the trees didn’t grow as thickly. The dog, with great effort, stood up and hobbled along behind her.

“Wait for us,” Jonah said feebly, struggling to get his feet. He was as tottery as an old man. Katherine was wobbly just sitting up. Andrea skipped away, past the nearest tree.

“Hurry up, then!” she said, looking back over her shoulder.

Was she giggling?

“No! Listen!” Jonah hissed. “You have to be careful! You can’t let anyone see you! You can’t let anyone hear you! You can’t let anyone know we’re here!”

He thought about mentioning that if they still had the Elucidator, it could have turned them invisible-invisible and safe. That was undoubtedly what JB had been planning, the reason he hadn’t made them wear old-fashioned clothes. But if it really had been Jonah’s fault the Elucidator was missing, he wasn’t going to bring that up.

Andrea peeked out from behind the tree.

“We’re in a wood that doesn’t even have a path,” she said and giggled again. “What are you so afraid of?”

Jonah tried to remember everything he knew about the Virginia Dare story. She was the first English child born in North America, in the… Roanoke Colony. (Wow-wouldn’t his Social Studies teachers be proud of him for remembering that!) And then, hadn’t the whole colony disappeared? Because of what?

Wild animals? Jonah wondered. Hostile Indian tribes? Some enemy the English were fighting with back then-the Spanish? The French? Some other country I don’t remember?

Jonah had reached the end of his knowledge about Virginia Dare. Somehow, not knowing what he was supposed to be afraid of made things even scarier.

“Wait, Andrea!” he called again. “Come on, Katherine!”

Katherine groaned, and he took pity on her enough to reach down and give her a hand. He was still off balance, though, and for a moment it was a toss-up whether he would manage to pull her up or whether her deadweight would pull him down. Then she reached back and shoved off against a tree trunk. The whole tree shook, and a pine cone fell straight down, bonking Jonah on the head.

“Bet that pine cone was supposed to land on the other side,” Katherine moaned. “We probably just changed history, right there.”

“It’ll change even more if Andrea gets eaten by a bear or scalped by Indians or something,” Jonah said through gritted teeth.

The two of them stumbled forward, following Andrea. They wobbled terribly, bumping into each other and the tree branches. Jonah paused to take off his sweatshirt, hoping he’d do better if he wasn’t so hot.

It was still hot. The air was so thick and heavy around them that Jonah almost felt like he should be swimming. His T-shirt was quickly soaked with sweat.

None of that seemed to bother Andrea.

“Don’t you think… it’s weird how… Andrea isn’t scared anymore?” Jonah muttered to Katherine. It was hard to simultaneously walk, talk, and keep an eye on Andrea, who was practically running now.

Katherine nodded, an action that almost knocked her over. She stopped for a moment so she could speak without falling.

“Don’t you think it’s weird how, well… JB knows where we are, right?” she muttered back. “So why hasn’t he dropped in a replacement Elucidator for us?” She peered over at Jonah. Her whole face was twisted with fear. “You don’t think us losing the Elucidator made this Damaged Time, do you?”

“Don’t say that,” Jonah snapped. “Don’t even think it.”

But the idea had wormed its way into Jonah’s head now too. No time travelers could get into or out of Damaged Time. If they’d damaged Virginia Dare’s time period, no matter how well they helped Andrea, they could still be stranded here for days.

Weeks.

Months.

Years.

Forever, Jonah thought. It could be for the rest of our lives.

He forced himself to think only about keeping up with Andrea.

He kept losing sight of her and having to plunge desperately forward just to get the briefest glimpse of her hair or her shirt. Then he’d lose sight of her again. He finally decided it was hopeless-there was no way he and Katherine could keep up.

Just then, very suddenly, Andrea stopped.

“Can’t she at least hide behind a tree until she sees what’s out there?” Katherine mumbled.

Jonah realized that Andrea had stopped right on the edge of a clearing. He thought about calling out to her, ordering her to hide, but it didn’t seem worth the risk. It would have been like yelling at a statue. She had frozen that completely.

Jonah crept forward, Katherine alongside him. They reached a huge tree right behind Andrea and, in silent agreement, they each peeked around opposite sides of the tree.

What’s Andrea’s problem? There’s nothing out there!

That was Jonah’s first thought. And then, because Andrea was still standing stock-still, her face a stunned mask, he looked again.

In the clearing were… ruins.