“Um, a little privacy here?” Andrea muttered, and she and Jonah ducked into the living room by themselves.
Katherine elbowed Jordan.
“Isn’t that sweet?” she said. “But don’t feel like you need to keep up by getting a girlfriend too. Really, it’s almost like Jonah and I are years older than you, because we traveled through time so much. . . .”
“And I at least saw every bit of time you traveled through,” Jordan reminded her. “So maybe I’m even more mature. Anyhow, I was kind of thinking . . . Emily is really nice.”
“Whoa, nothing like starting at the top,” Katherine said, gaping at him. “You know she’s Albert Einstein’s daughter, right?”
Jordan hadn’t even been thinking about that. What he’d noticed was how kindly she’d patted Kevin’s head even after she knew who he really was.
“Hey, I managed to hold my own with Second and Kevin,” Jordan said. “Well, sort of. I got them to trust me, anyway.”
“And thanks to you, now I have a third brother!” Katherine complained jokingly.
“There are worse things,” Jordan said. “You could be an only child, remember?”
He thought about how lonely she’d looked in the glimpse he’d gotten of that dimension. He could still hear Mom and Dad and Angela and Hadley exclaiming over baby Kevin in the kitchen. But he couldn’t tell how Katherine really felt about getting another brother—especially one who happened to be the baby version of her former worst enemy. She and Jonah were the ones who’d been angriest with Second from the very beginning.
“I was thinking,” Katherine said. “Now I know what we should get Mom and Dad for Christmas. A picture of you, me, Jonah, and Kevin. Together.”
So maybe Katherine was fine with everything, after all.
It was much easier to forgive a baby.
Across the room, a group of kids in Santa hats started singing “Jingle Bells.” Jordan recognized Gavin and Antonio in the group, and realized it was a lot of the same kids who’d worn skull sweatshirts and acted mean in the time cave back when everything started with Chip and Jonah and Katherine. It seemed like they’d all changed a lot.
So maybe time travel really is good for some people, Jordan thought. He wondered if maybe he should go out and make this argument to JB. Jordan went over to the window and glanced out, but JB was nowhere in sight.
So that means it’s all over, Jordan thought. It’s really over.
He felt like some old person who had nothing left in his life but memories of the past. Then he heard someone behind him say, “Psst.”
It was Jonah, and he was alone.
“You and Andrea broke up already?” Jordan asked.
“Very funny,” Jonah said. “No—she wanted to go call her grandfather on his cell phone and let him know everything was okay.”
He grinned in a goofy way that made it clear he and Andrea thought things were much better than okay.
“Some dude from the sixteen hundreds is really using a cell phone?” Jordan asked.
“I guess so,” Jonah said.
Somehow this made Jordan sad. If there was no more time travel, how could fun things like that ever happen again?
Jordan saw that Jonah was motioning for somebody with his head. Katherine sidled up beside them.
“Is it time?” Katherine asked.
“I think so,” Jonah said. “If we can just go somewhere private.”
Katherine and Jonah led Jordan to the same spot in the dining room where Jordan had once hidden from JB.
“Now,” Katherine said.
“JB wanted us to tell you that a hundred years after people ban nuclear energy, they figure out a way to make it safe and start using it again,” Jonah said.
“Okay,” Jordan said. “So?”
Jonah slipped something out of the pocket of his blue jeans.
“JB also gave me this,” Jonah said. “For you, me, and Katherine.”
It looked like a thumb drive. But Jordan saw a little flash of light—not quite words, but the promise of words.
“Oh!” Jordan said. “It’s an—”
Before he could say the word “Elucidator” Jonah and Katherine clapped their hands over his mouth.
“We have to keep it secret,” Katherine said.
“And it’s only for emergencies with Kevin,” Jonah said. “Or . . . just times that we think are necessary.”
Jordan reached out and touched the Elucidator.
“And he really trusted us with it, instead of Mom and Dad?” Jordan asked.
Katherine nodded. “We have the most time-travel experience,” she reminded him.
Jordan pulled his hand back. It wasn’t actually that he was longing to travel through time right now. Just knowing it was possible was enough.
Life right now was exactly enough for Jordan.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Since this is the last book in a series that I began writing eight years ago, I feel like I have years of thank-yous to say. First of all I’d like to thank my husband and kids for putting up with me sometimes being mentally in an entirely different century. (Who would ever want to have to tell their teacher, “My mom forgot to sign that permission slip because she kind of thinks it’s 1483 right now”? I don’t think I was ever that bad—was I?) I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my agent, Tracey Adams, and everyone at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers who supported the series, especially David Gale, Navah Wolfe, and Liz Kossnar. My friends Linda Gerber, Erin MacLellan, Jenny Patton, Nancy Roe Pimm, Linda Stanek, and Amjed Qamar read portions of this and some of the earlier books and offered helpful comments. Kids, teachers, librarians, and bookstore people all over the country also often asked interesting questions that helped me see new angles to take with the books. I have particularly fond memories of a gathering of kids at a book-signing at Hicklebee’s in San Jose, California, in 2010, who asked about the time travel in my books vs. Einstein’s theories and string theory and all sorts of other fun physics concepts. I think they were all secretly Stanford graduate students who just happened to also be twelve-year-olds, but wow, what a fun conversation.
And, finally, I owe thanks to my friend Marcy Mermel Gessel, who made a really good suggestion five years ago when I was (already) stressing out about how I was going to end this series. Marcy, you were right—a party is always a great idea.
MARGARET PETERSON
HADDIX
is the author of many critically and popularly acclaimed teen and middlegrade novels, including the Missing series, the Shadow Children series, the Palace Chronicles, Claim to Fame, and Uprising. A graduate of Miami University (of Ohio), she worked for several years as a reporter for the Indianapolis News. She also taught at Danville (Illinois) Area Community College. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio.
Visit us at
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authors.simonandschuster.com/Margaret-Peterson-Haddix
ALSO BY MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX
THE MISSING SERIES
Found
Sent
Sabotaged
Torn
Caught
Risked
Revealed
Sought (an eBook original
Rescued (an eBook original)
THE SHADOW CHILDREN
Among the Hidden
Among the Impostors
Among the Betrayed
Among the Barons
Among the Brave
Among the Enemy
Among the Free
THE PALACE CHRONICLES
Just Ella
Palace of Mirrors
Palace of Lies
The Girl with 500 Middle Names
Because of Anya
Say What?
Dexter the Tough
Running Out of Time
Full Ride
Game Changer
The Always War
Claim to Fame
Uprising
Double Identity
The House
on the Gulf
Escape from Memory
Takeoffs and Landings
Turnabout
Leaving Fishers
Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey
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SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haddix, Margaret Peterson.
Redeemed / Margaret Peterson Haddix.—First edition.
pages cm.—(The missing ; [8])
Summary: Jonah was able to save all of time from collapsing but in doing so gained a twin brother, Jordan, who must learn what has happened and do his own part to save time—and his parents.
ISBN 978-1-4424-9756-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-9759-7 (eBook)
[1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Space and time—Fiction. 3. Twins—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 5. Family life—Fiction. 6. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H1164Rd 2015
[Fic]—dc23
2014014609
Redeemed Page 26
