Redeemed

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Kevin gave a skeptical snort, but he didn’t say anything else.

  On the screen Kevin started climbing the fence. He fell; his friends ran away; Jordan, Jonah, and Katherine ran to help.

  Jordan resisted the urge to say, See? See? We risked our lives to rescue you!

  The action on the screen continued. Kevin snatched the Elucidator from Jonah; the three Skidmores climbed back up toward the fence (Jordan couldn’t quite let himself watch that part); Deep Voice appeared and whooshed them all back toward the future.

  Jordan realized that the screen was showing only what had happened to Kevin directly, not what had happened in the other versions where the boy died on the rocks or where Second worked for the FBI for thirteen years before escaping to the future.

  Is that because the Elucidator doesn’t think of those other dimensions as being connected to Kevin anymore? Jordan wondered.

  “What were you saying about a planeload of babies?” Kevin asked.

  “Show him,” Jordan told the Elucidator.

  WHICH DIMENSION? the Elucidator asked.

  “All of them,” Jordan said, because he was curious about this too. “Show us everything.”

  Now there were three views of what seemed to be the exact same scene: rows of babies sleeping on a plane.

  “So one of the dimensions has an empty seat on the plane and the others don’t,” Kevin observed. “What’s that mean?”

  “Um, I’m not sure,” Jordan said. “Different babies came from the past in the different dimensions, but . . .”

  It struck him that that the empty-seated version of the plane might have led to the dimension where Katherine was an only child. But he didn’t feel like explaining that to Kevin.

  Before Kevin could say anything else, the camera angle shifted in each scene. Now Jordan could see into the cockpit of each version of the plane. In the first version, Gary and Hodge were sitting in the pilots’ seats. They looked younger than Jordan had ever seen them, but it was hard to tell because they were screaming in terror.

  “The time agency found us! What should we do?” Gary cried as he frantically swiped through screenfuls of information on the instrument panel before him.

  “Don’t worry—they won’t shoot us down! But—evade! Evade!” Hodge yelled back.

  A disembodied voice spoke over their heads: “You are being arrested under Time Code section 503972, paragraph 48913. You must instantly land in the nearest time hollow and disembark. Repeat . . .”

  The rest of the message was drowned out by Hodge screaming, “We’ve got to get out of here! Bail! Now!”

  “What about the babies?” Gary asked, casting a glance over his shoulder. “They’re worth a fortune!”

  “We’ll come back for them later!” Hodge bellowed back.

  And then both men disappeared.

  Jordan saw that they were missing from the other two scenes of cockpits as well. He wasn’t sure if they’d ever been in those cockpits, or if those planes had been on autopilot the whole time.

  “Anybody you know on any of those planes?” Kevin asked lazily, as if he really didn’t care.

  “Me,” Jordan said. “And Jonah. And, I guess, this other kid I met once, Chip . . .”

  Neither of them said anything else as the planes landed safely in all three scenes. In each case, the plane pulled up to the airport and came to a stop.

  In one version, none of the babies were taken off the plane, and it flew on with Charles Lindbergh in the pilot seat.

  Jordan waited for Kevin to ask about that, but he didn’t. Probably he was too distracted watching the other two scenes.

  Jordan realized he’d already seen this part of the middle scene before. Once again, Gary and Hodge removed the baby version of Jordan from the plane and left him with the teenage Jonah, stranded and desperate.

  Kevin didn’t ask any questions about that either, and Jordan turned his attention to a scene he’d never seen before. An adult version of Angela stepped cautiously onto the plane and saw all the babies. And then dozens of people swarmed in behind her, carrying the babies out into the airport.

  Finally Kevin spoke. “Let me guess—none of that was supposed to happen, right?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Jordan said uncomfortably.

  “Where’d all the babies come from in the first place?” Kevin asked.

  “Um, history?” Jordan said, wishing he could sound more certain.

  “Show me,” Kevin said.

  And then they watched scenes of Chinese princesses from the fourth century and English settlers on the coast of North America in the fifteen hundreds and Albert Einstein’s daughter in 1903. They watched the stories of all the babies from the plane, endangered and kidnapped and returned and rescued again. Jordan saw everything that Katherine and Jonah had done, sweeping in and out of time. Where he’d been jealous before, now somehow he was only proud. He had to bite his tongue not to brag to Kevin, That’s my sister and brother doing all that! Don’t you see what heroes they were?

  When they’d finally worked through the last frame of the last kid’s story, the wall went dark.

  Is now a good time to ask Kevin again to help my parents? Jordan wondered.

  Kevin didn’t look mad anymore. But he also didn’t look particularly friendly.

  “Let me see you and Jonah and Katherine growing up,” Kevin said.

  “It wasn’t together,” Jordan told him. “I mean, I was with Katherine, and Jonah was with Katherine, but Jonah and I weren’t in the same dimension. And then there was even a dimension where Katherine was alone. . . .”

  Kevin didn’t ask for more of an explanation. He just grunted.

  Jordan told the Elucidator to start showing every version of the childhoods of all three Skidmore kids. In the dimension where Katherine was an only child, Jordan couldn’t believe how many pink, frilly clothes and toys she had.

  But he also saw her staring plaintively out the window as a preschooler, complaining, “Why aren’t there any other kids to play with in this house? Why don’t I have any brothers or sisters?”

  She really was lonely in that dimension, Jordan thought. She wasn’t just making that up.

  He started paying more attention to the dimensions he or Jonah had been in. Shown side by side, they were practically identical. Birthday parties and Cub Scout meetings and Christmas pageants at church. A parade of identical Halloween costumes and trips to the zoo. Mom helping each of the boys with homework; Dad teaching each of the boys to swing a bat.

  Jordan had to look away. He pretended he needed to double-check something on the surface of his Elucidator.

  “Hey, why did one of you get a new neighbor and the other one didn’t?” Kevin asked, his gaze still fixed on the wall. “That’s kind of a big difference.”

  Jordan squinted up at the scenes before him. Jonah was playing basketball in the driveway with Chip, the kid Jordan hadn’t met until right before Chip kissed Katherine. In the same scene showing Jordan’s life, Jordan was dribbling the ball in the driveway all by himself.

  “It’s because Chip was one of the babies on the plane with Jonah, I guess,” Jordan explained. “All the babies came off the plane in their dimension. I was the only one off the plane in mine. So in my world, Chip was somewhere else. Or sometime else.”

  “Huh,” Kevin said.

  Jonah and Chip seemed to be playing a lot of basketball together.

  Is that how Jonah got better at it than me, and might actually be a starter on the team when I’m not? Jordan wondered.

  Then Jonah and Chip started getting mysterious letters hinting at their origins. Jonah and Katherine and their parents went to meet Mr. Reardon at the FBI; Jonah and Katherine and Chip met Angela. All the missing children from the plane gathered back together; JB fought with Gary and Hodge to determine the fates of all the kids.

  And then Jonah and Katherine took their first trip through time, and the same scenes Jordan and Kevin had seen before began to repeat.
/>   “It’s all a loop, isn’t it?” Kevin asked. “Interconnected.”

  “I guess,” Jordan said. “I wasn’t really part of it. I missed almost all the excitement.”

  He’d glanced at scenes of his own life only a few times after Jonah’s dimension started taking such dramatic turns. Jordan already knew that his life had been completely ordinary until the morning he came down to find identical Jonah sitting in his living room.

  “Excitement?” Kevin asked. “Is that what you want?”

  Jordan thought about how the hologram of Second had made fun of him for being like Dorothy in Oz—someone who got to go on a great adventure, but spent it all just wanting to go home. Put that way, he did sound kind of pathetic.

  But he told Kevin the truth anyway. “What I want most is for my parents to be all right,” he said. “And for time to be all right.”

  “Huh,” Kevin said.

  “Maybe it’s hard for you to understand,” Jordan said. “It sounds like you don’t really like your parents. Or your dad, anyway. And maybe you had to go live with foster parents you didn’t like, either. But my parents . . .”

  He wanted to say, They love me. I love them. They’d do anything for me. And I’d do anything to save them. But there was no way he could force those words past the lump in his throat. And anyhow, it would seem kind of mean to say that to Kevin, who evidently hadn’t had such great parents. It would be like bragging, I got a good family and you didn’t!

  “What do you want?” he asked Kevin instead. “Really?”

  Kevin didn’t let his eyes meet Jordan’s.

  “You say you want to help me, right?” Kevin asked. “Would you help me like you’d help your own family?”

  Jordan squinted at him in confusion.

  “I guess,” he said. “Sure.”

  “Promise?” Kevin asked, and now he peered straight at Jordan, his eyes drilling into him.

  “Uh, yeah,” Jordan said. “I mean, yes. Exactly the same.”

  “Well, then, put the Elucidator up against my mouth so I can whisper into it and tell it my idea for fixing your parents,” Kevin said. “I think that’s the only way we’re ever getting out of this time hollow.”

  Jordan jerked the Elucidator back, so it was farther away from Kevin.

  “That’s crazy!” he said. “How do I know you’re not going to just say something like, ‘Unfreeze me and get me out of here with the Elucidator, and leave Jordan behind’?”

  Kevin looked like he wanted to laugh.

  “You could always tell the Elucidator not to follow any instruction from me unless it fixes your parents,” he said.

  “Oh,” Jordan said. “Right.”

  He didn’t move at all for a moment, because his mind was racing.

  Kevin’s a lot smarter than me, and what if he’s still trying to trick me? Jordan wondered. What if there’d still be some way he could get around my instructions?

  “Why don’t you just tell me your secret, and I’ll tell it to the Elucidator?” Jordan asked.

  “Then whoever wants to kill me might want to steal the secret from you and kill you, too,” Kevin said. “Is that what you want?”

  “Oh,” Jordan said. “No.”

  He’d never felt so stupid in all his life. He did fine in school. He did fine on all those standardized test kids had to take all the time. But this felt like a test no one could pass. Even the genius Second Chance hadn’t been able to understand and navigate everything about time travel; even he hadn’t been able to anticipate and avoid whoever wanted to kill him. The kid standing frozen before Jordan right now was just an earlier version of Second—a not-yet Second Chance.

  Or should Jordan see him as a Third Chance?

  What if he thinks he’s helping me but he really isn’t? Jordan wondered. Or what if he’s just tricking me, and I’m too stupid to figure it out?

  Jordan felt as paralyzed as Second.

  Oddly, it was something Mom had told him about taking multiple-choice tests that floated into his brain: When you don’t know the right answer, try to eliminate all the choices you know are wrong. Then pick from what’s left.

  Jordan didn’t want to be stuck in this time hollow forever.

  He didn’t want Mom and Dad frozen and thirteen forever.

  He didn’t even want Jonah and Katherine to be frozen forever.

  And he didn’t want to ruin time.

  “Don’t follow any orders from Kevin unless he’s helping Mom and Dad and the other un-aged grown-ups,” Jordan mumbled into the Elucidator.

  Then, slowly, he reached the Elucidator out toward Kevin’s mouth, to touch the side of his face.

  Kevin whispered something.

  Instantly both boys began whirling through time.

  FORTY-SIX

  “What did you tell it?” Jordan screamed at Kevin. “You weren’t supposed to say anything about traveling through time! It wasn’t supposed to follow any extra orders from you!”

  “I didn’t tell it anything extra! I swear!” Kevin screamed back as they both spun dizzily through time.

  Somehow Jordan believed him.

  “Then where’s it taking us?” Jordan screamed. “And why? Elucidator, take us back to the time hollow! Or, no—take us to be with Mom and Dad, so we can see if they’re the right ages again!”

  ALL FURTHER COMMANDS FROM THE TWO OF YOU ARE SHUT OUT the Elucidator informed him. SORRY.

  “What?” Jordan screamed. “What’s it talking about? Kevin, what’s going on?”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “I . . . feel funny,” he said.

  “You don’t look so good either,” Jordan snapped.

  Kevin had prickles of sweat along his hairline. The only light nearby came from the glow of the Elucidator, but even that was enough to show that the color had drained from Kevin’s face.

  Kevin held his hand in front of his face and stared like he’d never seen it before.

  “Oh,” he said. “I see. I see how this is working. It’s even faster than I thought.”

  “What?” Jordan demanded. “What do you see? What’s faster than you thought?”

  Kevin turned his head to peer directly at Jordan.

  “I don’t think there’s time to tell you,” Kevin said. “You’ll figure it out if you think hard enough. And you need to think that hard. But you should know this. I really did try to help your parents. I did what I could. Everything is up to you now. Remember your promise.”

  “Why is everything up to me now?” Jordan asked. “You’re right here with me—wherever we’re going, we’ll be there together. Right? We can work as a team now, can’t we?”

  Kevin smiled sadly.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” he said.

  But something had happened to his voice. It had lost its defensive huskiness—lost its low register, too. By the word “that,” Kevin’s voice came out sounding as sweet and childlike as an elementary school kid’s.

  And . . . was Kevin actually smaller than he’d been a moment ago?

  Jordan reached out and grabbed Kevin’s arm. Jordan’s fingers circled the bicep easily, with room to spare.

  Was his arm so spindly before? Jordan wondered.

  Kevin’s hospital gown seemed much too large all of a sudden. The top part of it started sliding off one shoulder, and he had to tug it back up. Then he had to clutch the bottom part of it to keep it from doubling over and getting tangled in his legs.

  How was there suddenly so much extra cloth in the gown? Hadn’t it ended right at Kevin’s ankles before? Right at the top of his boots?

  One of Kevin’s boots slid off and fell into the darkness. Then the other one did too.

  “What’s happening to you?” Jordan demanded.

  “Can’t you tell?” Kevin asked with a sad smile that revealed huge gaps where teeth were missing.

  Kevin had all his teeth a minute ago, Jordan thought. Didn’t he?

  Kevin slipped his hand into Jordan’s, and it felt so small an
d fragile and bony that Jordan worried that it might break.

  “I’m scared,” Kevin said. “What if we see the bogeyman?”

  Kevin sounded like a kindergartner. Jordan lifted the Elucidator so its dim light shone more directly on Kevin’s face: Kevin looked like a kindergartner too.

  “You’re getting younger,” Jordan gasped. “You’re turning into a little kid.”

  Little Kevin scowled at him in a way that made Jordan think that Kevin/Sam Chase/Second Chance had certain expressions that fit on his face no matter what age he was.

  “You’re stupid,” little Kevin said. “I’m not going to stop there. Watch.”

  He was practically lisping. A moment later, he opened his mouth, and maybe he wasn’t even capable of speaking anymore at all.

  But Jordan couldn’t listen to anything Kevin said anyway. Just then they hit the phase of time travel where everything sped up, and Jordan felt like his body was being torn down to its smallest particles. To the extent that Jordan’s brain could function at all, he just kept thinking, Hold . . . on to . . . Kevin’s . . . hand . . .. You . . . promised . . . promised . . . like . . . family . . .

  And then everything stopped. Jordan’s senses began to wake up again.

  What am I holding? His brain sputtered. Holding . . . Am I still holding on?

  His brain was so pathetic. He couldn’t quite remember who or what he was supposed to be holding. But he kept trying to remember, kept trying to double-check, even though his eyes were still too blurry to see anything, and the nerve endings of his fingertips were still too numb to feel.

  He fought harder against the timesickness than he ever had, trying to come out of it as soon as possible.

  Right hand? He thought. Right hand holding . . .

  It was something small and smooth. The Elucidator?

  Okay, I’ll think about that later. If it won’t take commands from me or Kevin, it’s not going to do me much good. Left hand?

  His left hand seemed to be empty, the fingers extended. But there was something soft pressed against his left wrist and the inside of his left elbow. No—he was cradling something.