A baffled look spread over Mom’s face once again.
“Katherine, those teen sessions really aren’t intended forsiblings of adoptees,” she said. “It’s not too late to turn around and drop you off at home, or at a friend’s house, so you’re not a…a distraction for Jonah and Chip.”
Katherine turned around and raised her eyebrow at Jonah, as if to say,You have to deal with this one.
“She won’t be a distraction, Mom,” Jonah said. “Chip and I want her along. Right, Chip?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Skidmore,” Chip said.
Mom still looked skeptical, as if she knew something was going on. But she turned around and began reading Dad the directions for getting to the school.
Jonah had never been to Clarksville Valley High School. It was a huge new building backing up to a nature preserve, on the very edge of the city. The street leading up to the school was lined with new subdivisions, with houses in various states of completion.
Dad whistled.
“These neighborhoods are so new, you can almost smell the paint drying, can’t you?” he said. “Nice houses, huh?”
“We’re not moving!” Jonah shouted up from the backseat.
Both his parents stared back at him.
“Who said anything about moving?” Mom asked.
“Never mind,” Jonah muttered.
Act normal, he reminded himself.
They parked close to the front door of the school and joined a line of parents and kids waiting to register at a table in the lobby.
“What did you do, adopttriplets ?” the woman in front of them asked when she glanced back.
Katherine glowed at the suggestion that she might be the same age as Jonah and Chip.
“No,” Mom said, sounding a little reluctant to explain. “This is our son, Jonah, and his friend Chip, whose parents couldn’t come today; and our daughter, Katherine, who’s not adopted but wanted to be here to, uh, support her brother.”
“Well, isn’t that nice,” the woman said.
“Mom, can we go sit down while you’re registering?” Jonah asked, because he didn’t want to hear any more of this conversation. And he could see people already filing into an auditorium. If they could just scout out some of the other kids, see if any of them were the ones named on the survivors list, then they’d have an advantage when they broke up into groups later.
“Okay,” Mom said.
“Wait—you should get your name tags first,” the woman in front of them said. “Here.”
She passed back a stack of blank name tags and markers. Jonah’s hand shook as he carefully wrote his name,Jonah Skidmore . His name had never looked so strange to him before, so alien, as if it didn’t really belong to him.
What if I really am supposed to have some other identity?he wondered.The identity of a boy who’s…missing? Or from the future? Would I want to know that or not?
“Hurry up!” Katherine muttered beside him, jabbing her elbow into his side. “We’re going to run out of time!”
Jonah put the cap back on the marker, peeled the backing off the name tag, and slapped it on his chest.
“I’m ready,” he said, though he didn’t feel ready.
The three of them drifted through the crowd, peering at other kids’ name tags. Sam Bentree? Nope. Allison Myers? Nope. Dalton Sullivan?
“There was a Dalton on the list, but the last name and the address and phone number were cut off,” Chip whispered excitedly. “Thatcould be right.”
“Let’s see if we can find anyone we’re sure about, before we try to talk to Dalton,” Katherine said. “We can get back to him at the end.”
They headed on into the auditorium. Right inside the door they saw a group of kids who were laughing and talking together, as if they had known each other for years. They wore ripped jeans and dark sweatshirts and glared when Jonah stepped close, trying to read their name tags.
“What are you looking at?” one of the guys jeered.
“Oh!” Katherine giggled flirtatiously. “Sorry. We’re just looking for some kids we met online, in an adoption chat room. We know their names, but not what they look like. And”—she glanced around, lowered her voice conspiratorially—“our parents don’t know we visit those chat rooms!”
“Only dorks visit chat rooms,” one of the girls said, looping her arm around the jeering guy’s elbow.
“Um,” Jonah said. “Okay. Thanks anyway. We’ll leave you alone now.”
He pulled Katherine away.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Trying to get beat up?”
“Oh, please,” Katherine said. “We have to have some cover story.”
“That girl thought you were hitting on her boyfriend!”
“So what?” Katherine put her hands on her hips and stared defiantly at Jonah.
Jonah’s head swam. Didn’t Katherine understand anything? What if he hadn’t been there to protect her?
Chip tugged on Katherine’s arm and Jonah’s sweatshirt.
“Come on, you two,” Chip said. “Cut that out. Let’s keep looking.”
But Mom and Dad came through the doorway just then. At the front of the auditorium, a man stepped toward a podium on the stage.
“Take your seats, please,” he said into the microphone. “We’ve got a full slate of activities for the day, and I’m sure you’re all eager to get started!”
Everyone began sitting down, even the group of tough-looking kids in the back.
Jonah got a seat right on the aisle, so he could peer over sideways at the kids in the next section of seats. The man at the microphone began talking excitedly about what a great turnout they had, what a great program they had planned, how well the county department of social services worked…. Jonah tuned him out. There was a Bryce Johnson in the aisle seat across from him, a Ryan—or was that Bryan?—Crockett one row up. Jonah wondered if he could write those names down, pass them along to Chip and Katherine, and get them to shake their heads yes or no without Mom or Dad’s noticing. He felt a little guilty that he’d never studied the survivors list the way they had, that he hadn’t made a single phone call to any of the other kids.
Jonah turned his head farther, so he could see the girl behind Ryan/Bryan Crockett. She had long blond hair covering her name tag, but she chose that exact moment to flip the hair over her shoulder.
Her name tag saidSar— . She flexed her shoulders, stretching in her seat and revealing the rest of the name tag:Sarah Puchini .
Sarah Puchini. Yes!
Jonah remembered that name. It was one Katherine had told him when they were in the driveway, playing basketball. So there was at least one other kid at the conference who’d received the mysterious letters, whose name was on the survivors list, who might want to hear what Jonah, Katherine, and Chip knew—and who might have information to share with them, too.
Jonah turned to Chip beside him.
“Sarah Puchini,” he whispered in Chip’s ear. “One row back.”
Chip’s face lit up.
On the other side of Chip, Katherine was already standing up.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Jonah muttered.
Katherine looked at him blankly.
“They just said for all the kids to go back out to the lobby, to start our activities,” she said. “Weren’t you listening?”
“Oh,” Jonah mumbled.
Mom leaned over the seats.
“It sounds like you guys will be eating your lunch out there on your hike. So we’ll just meet you back here at three, okay?”
“Sure,” Jonah said.
Dad raised his hand from his armrest in a miniature good-bye wave and mouthed something that might have been, “Have fun.”
Jonah whirled around, hoping he could catch up with Sarah Puchini in the aisle, but her blond head was already disappearing through the door back out into the lobby.
Jonah joined the stream of kids flowing toward the lobby. Chip and Katherine were right behind him. The three
of them rushed through the doors together.
“Where is she?” Chip asked, as the crowd came to a stop near the table where everyone had signed in. Jonah could see a woman quietly closing the door to the auditorium behind them, probably to keep the noisy cluster of kids from interrupting the adults’ program.
“Don’t know,” Jonah said, trying to stand on his tiptoes, to get a better look. There was a blond head right up front near the table. No, wait—was that Sarah over toward the side?
“How many kids do you think are here, altogether?” Chip asked.
“Fifty?” Jonah guessed. “Sixty?”
“Angela said there were thirty-six babies on the plane,” Chip whispered. “We only had eighteen names to start with. Nineteen, if you count Dalton without a last name.”
Did Chip think they should start interviewing all the kids around them? Jonah could just imagine it:Gotten any strange mail lately? Ever seen anyone disappear? Know anything about time travel? He didn’t think that would go over very well with the tough-looking crowd they’d already annoyed. Those kids were standing in a clump off to the side—now that he was behind them, Jonah could see that their sweatshirts all had skulls on the back.
Nice.
“All right!” a short enthusiastic man with wiry hair called as he dashed halfway up a stairway behind the registration table. He spun around to face the crowd. “Can everyone see and hear me now?”
Mumbles. “Yeah.” “Sure.” Someone—Jonah thought it was a kid in the skull group—muttered, “Why would we want to?”
“Great!” the man enthused, ignoring or not hearing the surlier comments. “I’m Grant Hodge, a caseworker at the county department of children’s services. There are soooo many of you—which is absolutely wonderful; I’m not complaining at all—but we’ve decided to break you up into two groups for our activities today. One group will come with me, and the other group will go with Carol Malveaux, over there by the door.” He pointed. “Wave at everyone, Carol.”
A woman with short dark hair lifted her arm and waved vigorously.
“One of us has got to get in the same group as Sarah Puchini,” Chip whispered in Jonah’s ear.
“I know,” Jonah said grimly.
Mr. Hodge was pulling a list out of a folder.
“When I call your name, come stand behind the table if you’re with me, or go over by the door if you’re with Carol. Got it?” Mr. Hodge was saying. “I’ll call my group first.”
“Listen to all the names!” Katherine hissed at Jonah and Chip. “We’ve got to pay very close attention!”
Jonah missed hearing the first name because of Katherine.
“Shh!” He glared at her.
“Jason Ardul,” Mr. Hodge said. “Andrea Crowell.”
Katherine grabbed Jonah’s arm and squeezed hard as a girl with light brown hair quietly slipped around the table at the front.
Jonah and Chip both nodded and mouthed the words, “I know,” at Katherine. Andrea Crowell was a name they all recognized. Jonah stared at the girl, to make sure he’d recognize her later on too. She had her hair pulled back in two braids—the style seemed to suit her, though Katherine would probably say it wasn’t very fashionable. Andrea was gazing down at her shoes, as if she was too shy to look out at the rest of the crowd.
“Maria Cutler,” Mr. Hodge continued. “Gavin Danes.”
Another squeeze from Katherine, this one a surprise. Jonah hadn’t remembered any Gavin.
Jonah got eight more squeezes before Mr. Hodge reached the middle of the alphabet. Katherine looked so excited she might burst, like a Miss America contestant waiting to hear her own name called.
“Daniella McCarthy,” Mr. Hodge said.
Another squeeze, practically breaking Jonah’s wrist this time. Jonah winced, squeezed Katherine’s arm back even harder, and glanced around, because Daniella McCarthy was someone he really wanted to see. But no one was shoving her way forward in the crowd. No one was stepping aside to make way for the girl who’d been so upset about moving.
“Daniella McCarthy?” Mr. Hodge called again.
The name hung in the air while everyone looked around. Jonah saw Katherine bite her lip, grimacing. Then, suddenly, decisively, she pulled the name tag off her shirt, and crumpled it in her hand.
The minute it was out of sight, she called out, “Oops, sorry. I’m Daniella.” She gave a sheepish wave. “My bad. I wasn’t listening.”
“Kath—” Jonah started to call after her, to yell, “you can’t do that!” but she stamped on his foot as she shoved her way forward. The “Kath—” turned into an “ow!” And then she was too far away from him to say anything. She slipped around the table and sidled up between Andrea Crowell and Michael Kostoff.
“What’d she do that for?” Jonah muttered to Chip.
“Beats me,” Chip muttered back.
“If we’re all in the same group because of this, and we don’t get to talk to all the kids, she is in big trouble!” Jonah fumed.
Sure enough, when Mr. Hodge got down to the end of the alphabet, he finished up with, “And Jonah Skidmore and Chip Winston, you’re in my group too. All the rest of you, go with Carol.”
Jonah stomped up to the front of the group, while everyone else around him except Chip was pushing back toward Carol. He slid up behind Katherine and hissed in her ear, “You go tell them you’re in the wrong group right now, so you can talk to the survivors in Carol’s group, or, so help me, I’ll, I’ll…”
He was too mad to think of an adequate threat.
Katherine turned to him with troubled eyes.
“Weren’t you listening?” she whispered back. “There isn’t anyone from the survivors list in the other group.”
Jonah blinked. His fury melted into disbelief.
“What?”
“Mr. Hodge called out every single one of the nineteen names we know, even Dalton Sullivan, who has to be the Dalton on our list,” she whispered. “Jonah, we were being sorted.”
The way she saidsorted brought out goose bumps on Jonah’s arms. He forced himself to stay calm, to think back, his brain processing information he’d been too angry to fully take in before. Mr. Hodge had called out Sarah Puchini’s name—the blond girl was standing over by Anthony Solbers, a chubby boy with pimples. Haley Rivers was behind the table too and Josh Hart and Denton Price and…
“But there are other kids in this group, too,” he whispered urgently to Katherine. “It’s not just kids from the list.”
Somehow that detail seemed very important, something to hold on to. Jonah didn’t feel like his brain was working very well at the moment, but he knew he wanted other kids around, nonsurvivors. Ordinary kids who had nothing to do with a strange plane or ghost stories or mysterious letters. It was like he believed those kids could protect him.
“Jonah, we never saw the complete list,” Katherine reminded him. “Angela said there were thirty-six babies on the plane. I think Mr. Hodge called out thirty-six names.”
Jonah stared at his sister in astonishment. He didn’t want his brain working properly now. He didn’t want it to reach the conclusion it was racing toward. He wanted to stay numb and ignorant and safe. Most of all, he wanted to stay safe.
Katherine spoke the words for him, shattering his hopes for ignorance.
“I don’t know, I can’t be sure, but I think…,” she began. Her eyes were huge with worry now. “I think, except for Daniella McCarthy, they have all the babies from the plane back together again. Right here. Right now. They have you.”
TWENTY-SIX
“Why?” Jonah whispered. But Jonah knew the answer. He didn’t even have to think about it.
Beware! They are coming back to get you.
The words from the letter echoed in his mind, leaving room for nothing else but panic.
“Chip!” he whispered in his friend’s ear. “If they say, ‘Great news! We got an offer to give out free airplane rides this morning’—don’t get on the plane! Do you hear me? Don’t
get on any freaking plane!”
“Okay…,” Chip said, puzzled. He apparently hadn’t figured anything out, the way Katherine and Jonah had. He hadn’t been able to hear their conversation.
Jonah didn’t have time to fill him in. He turned back to Katherine.
“Katherine, you’ve got to tell them you’re not Daniella,” he said. “Maybe that will stop them. Maybe if they just realize she’s still in Michigan or wherever—”
“They’d just put me in the other group,” Katherine said. “I’m not leaving you and Chip.”
She crossed her arms, stubbornly, and jutted out her lower lip just like she always did anytime she fought with Jonah. But today Jonah loved her for it, loved her for it even as he wondered,What if something happens to me and Katherine both? That would kill Mom and Dad….
“Besides, you need me around to figure things out,” Katherine argued infuriatingly.
“You’re not the only one with a brain,” Jonah countered.
“I’m the only one whose brain isn’t traumatized,” Katherine said, looking at Chip, who just now seemed to be putting everything together. His face had gone pale, and he was mouthing the words, “Plane? Plane? Do you really think—?”
At the front of the group, still several steps up on the staircase, Mr. Hodge clapped his hands together.
“All right, group, let’s get started. We’re the lucky ones—we get to go outside first, while Carol’s group is sitting in a classroom,” he said.
“Does that mean we’ll get stuck in a classroom this afternoon?” someone asked. It was one of the kids with the skull sweatshirts.
Jonah missed Mr. Hodge’s answer, because he was thinking,Oh, please. An ordinary classroom. With some ordinary dull adult voice droning on, so the greatest danger is that I might fall asleep….
Jonah knew he was in greater danger than that. He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his system, his whole body on alert. But he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with all that adrenaline. He didn’t know exactly what the danger was. He didn’t really believe they were going to be herded onto an airplane.
But do they need an airplane to send us somewhere—sometime—else? What if it’s like what happened to Angela, where we take one step forward and suddenly we’re gone?
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