“You had to knock him out too?” Jonah protested.
“Didn’t have to, but it saves time,” JB explained. “We’ve got to get you out of here now.”
Jonah curled his fingers around the edge of the hallway rug, holding on tight.
JB sighed, a little bit of a wheeze left in the sound.
“Your parents will be fine,” he said. “We’ll leave them here, and those tranquilizer darts will keep them knocked out until we can fix everything. . . . They’ll be safe. After all of this is over, they’ll wake up their normal ages and not remember much more than a weird dream.”
Jonah wanted to believe him. But kid JB—or adult JB either, for that matter—hadn’t realized that Katherine was in danger. How could Jonah leave his parents behind when he didn’t know what was going on? When he couldn’t be 100 percent sure that they would be safe?
“You can keep them tranquilized,” Jonah said through gritted teeth. “But if you’re taking me to safety, you’re bringing my parents, too.”
JB sighed again.
“It’s not—” he began.
Angela stepped in front of him.
“I’ll go get the car from in front of Chip’s,” she interrupted. “Won’t take me a minute. Why don’t you two start carrying Jonah’s parents toward the garage? We’ll take them out that way—less chance of being seen.”
“We can’t protect everyone!” kid JB fumed. “We don’t have time to worry about people who aren’t actually in danger!”
“These are his parents,” Angela said simply as she turned to go.
Jonah was glad that Angela, at least, was on his side. He picked up kid Dad—the boy was scrawnier than he looked, and Jonah had no trouble lifting him by the armpits and dragging him across the floor. Real, normal, adult Dad was six inches taller than Jonah and kind of heavyset; it was frightening to have Jonah’s father seem so lightweight and frail.
Fragile, Jonah thought. Easily hurt.
It was a huge relief that JB picked up Jonah’s mom—he seemed to be going along with Angela’s plan without any more arguments. Jonah had such a lump in his throat he couldn’t have said anything else.
Angela already had the car in the driveway when Jonah hit the garage door opener.
“You run out and crouch down in the backseat,” JB told him. “I’ll get your parents in beside you and then we’ll throw a blanket over all three of you to keep you hidden.”
“But I need to shut the garage door before we leave—” Jonah began to argue.
“I’ll handle that!” JB ordered. “You stay out of sight!”
There was such tension in his voice that Jonah obeyed.
Who does JB really think would be watching? Jonah wondered. Gary and Hodge? This Charles Lindbergh character?
The entire street looked deserted, and as far as Jonah could tell, the blinds were still drawn in the front windows of all the houses around them. But Jonah knew from his past experiences with time travel that there were ways for people to watch him without being anywhere nearby—without even being in the same century, actually. In one of his first encounters with time travelers, he’d learned that it wasn’t even safe to write down certain things that a time traveler might see at some moment in the future.
Charles Lindbergh—he’s the past, Jonah reminded himself. Mom said he was an old-timey pilot. . . .
This didn’t make Jonah feel any better.
In no time at all Jonah was huddled in the backseat of Angela’s car, with the unconscious kid versions of both of his parents beside him. JB tossed a quilt from the hall closet over the top of all three of them.
Jonah reached over and fastened seat belts around both his parents. It didn’t seem like enough protection, not after he’d watched Katherine disappear right before his eyes barely an hour ago. Because he was under the quilt anyhow, and no one could see him, he reached out and held on to Mom’s right hand and Dad’s left hand.
There, Jonah thought. If anyone or anything zaps them to some other place or time, we all go together.
But would that make it more or less likely that he would be able to rescue Katherine?
TEN
From the way the car lurched around corners, squealing tires at every turn, Jonah could tell that Angela was more concerned about driving fast than anything else. He poked his face out from the quilt a little so he could tell her, “You may have forgotten what it’s like to be thirteen, but if the cops stop you for speeding, they’re not going to believe you’re who your driver’s license says you are. They’ll think you stole your mom’s car and her license.”
“We’ll slow down once we’re out of the afflicted area!” JB yelled back to him. “Now—stay hidden!”
Afflicted area? Jonah thought. He guessed JB meant the area where adults had un-aged into teenagers. But “afflicted” made it sound even more horrifying than that.
He grasped his parents’ hands with only one of his own, and used his other hand to pull the quilt back up in front of his face. But he left himself a small peephole beside the window, no bigger than his eye. This was enough that he could see they were still in Jonah’s neighborhood, on the main street that led out of the subdivision.
There wasn’t another car in sight. For that matter there wasn’t another person in sight.
Jonah suddenly realized how odd that was.
Where are the grown-ups driving to work? he wondered. Where are the dog walkers? Where are the moms pushing their babies and toddlers in jogging strollers?
Had they all turned back into thirteen-year-olds? Were they all so stunned and terrified by the change that they could only cower indoors? (Or argue, in the case of Chip’s parents?) Was Jonah’s mom the only one brave enough to step outside to try to figure out what was going on?
And look what happened to her, Jonah thought grimly.
Kid JB reached over the back of the seat.
“I said stay down!” he screamed at Jonah, shoving Jonah’s head lower. “It’s for your own good!”
“You can come out when you’re safe!” Angela yelled back at him. “We promise!”
It was too unnerving to try to look out, anyhow. Jonah did notice that after a few more turns Angela slowed down to a pace more suited for a staid old lady driving to church on a Sunday morning.
Does that mean that the adults who became thirteen-year-olds were all within a mile or two of my house? Jonah wondered.
Was Jonah’s school close enough to be affected? He tried to imagine his teachers as thirteen-year-olds; he tried to imagine the principal and the custodians and the cafeteria ladies as teenagers too. In another mood the whole scenario would have struck him as hilarious. But he had too much else to worry about to laugh right now.
Katherine . . . Charles Lindbergh . . . Am I Charles Lindbergh’s son?
He thought about hissing to JB and getting him to answer some of Jonah’s questions as Angela drove. But Jonah could hear bits and pieces of an argument going on in the front seat, and it sounded like JB was way too busy yelling at Angela about the quickest and safest way to get wherever they were going.
“We’ll have to take the back way in—” JB was demanding.
“No. I told you,” Angela argued back. “When I went back, a lot of those trees were gone. Right up to the front entrance. It looked like there’d been a storm, and—”
“A storm, right,” JB said, and Jonah could tell even without seeing him that the other boy was rolling his eyes.
“Are we sure this place is still safe?” Angela asked. “What if our enemies just want us to think that it’s safe?”
“Do we have any other choice?” JB asked.
“Hadley will—” Angela began.
“If Hadley or any of the other time agents could get to us, don’t you think they’d already be here?” JB asked.
Jonah’s stomach lurched. Maybe he’d be better off not listening to the other two? What if by insisting on bringing his parents, he was leading them into danger rather than keeping th
em away from it?
Just like I put Katherine in danger by letting her help me and Chip way back at the beginning, Jonah thought. Before we knew our identities had anything to do with time travel . . . I shouldn’t have ever let Katherine in on any of our secrets.
He was being silly: The way Katherine was, once she’d known there was some mystery connected to Jonah and Chip, there was no way Jonah could have kept her out of his business. He’d never been good at bossing her around, even when she was a really little girl.
And anyhow, if Jonah hadn’t had Katherine alongside him on all their time-travel trips, would any of the missing kids from history they’d helped still be alive? Would Chip and Alex? Would Andrea and Brendan and Antonio? Would Dalton and Emily? Would Daniella and Gavin and Maria and Leonid?
How can I know that any of them actually are still alive right now? Jonah thought, remembering that Chip had vanished that morning.
Angela’s driving changed again, from old-lady staid and sedate to reckless-teenager wild and crazy. She also seemed to have left all pavement behind, and Jonah jolted up and down and side to side. Kid Mom and kid Dad, still unconscious, flopped around like rag dolls, held in place only by their seat belts and Jonah’s hand. Branches lashed the side of the car; what seemed to be boulders beneath the tires made the whole car tilt dangerously.
Angela’s car doesn’t look like the type with four-wheel drive, Jonah thought. Do Angela and JB have a plan for what to do if we get stuck?
Bouncing up and down, Jonah risked another peek around the edge of the quilt. All he could see were trees and sky.
“Stay hidden!” JB screamed from the front seat. “We’re almost there—stay out of sight!”
Is this what it would feel like to be kidnapped? Jonah wondered. Is this what it felt like when I really was kidnapped?
Jonah reminded himself that JB and Angela were actually trying to rescue him. He pulled the quilt back over his face.
The car kept bouncing and bouncing and bouncing before it finally slowed down, before it finally came to a stop. Jonah felt scrambled.
“I’ll shut the door and put in the code!” JB hollered. “Stay put!”
Jonah heard the car door scraping open, JB running away, and then something grinding or being ground. It was a familiar noise that teased at Jonah’s memory; it made him feel tense and worried and frightened even without quite remembering when or where he’d heard it before.
Jonah heard the footsteps running back toward the car.
“We did it!” JB shrieked, his voice soaring a full octave. “We’re safe!”
Jonah took that as his cue to uncover his entire face. In the dim light around them, he could see rock on all sides of the car. Rock, and rows of benches shoved off to the side . . .
Familiar rock, Jonah thought. Familiar benches.
He’d been here before—twice. Once right before his trip to the 1400s, and once right after it.
“What?” he screamed. “Why’d you bring me to Gary and Hodge’s cave?”
ELEVEN
Jonah let go of his parents’ hands and grabbed the handle of the car door. Weeks ago, the first time Jonah had been in this cave, he’d pretended he had claustrophobia. Then, when the walls seemed to be closing in on him, he’d started wondering if he really did have that problem.
The sensation hit him even harder this time. The rock walls seemed to be moving closer, closer, closer . . .
Jonah jerked the car door open and took off sprinting toward the keypad he knew was nestled in the rock on one of the walls. If he got to it in time, he could open the rock door again. He could see the open sky again; he could drag himself and his unconscious parents back out into the fresh air. . . .
JB tried to tackle him, but Jonah kept going, even with JB’s arms around his neck.
“Angela!” JB screamed.
Angela slammed against Jonah. All three of them toppled to the ground.
A second later Angela was sitting up and scooting away even as she brushed dirt off her blue jeans.
“Do not make me do that again,” she said sternly, and she sounded so much like her regular self—her true, regular adult self—that Jonah felt the fight and the panic go out of him. This was Angela and JB taking care of him, even in their kid forms. These were his friends.
JB shoved away from Jonah too.
“You’re right—this was Gary and Hodge’s cave,” JB said. “But we time agents took it away from them. When we sent them to time prison. Remember?”
There was something about JB being the same age as Jonah that made Jonah want to be surly to the other boy. Even if he was a friend.
“And then Gary and Hodge escaped from time prison, and you don’t know where they are now. Remember?” Jonah said in his snarkiest voice. “How do you know they’re not hiding out in the back of this cave? How do you know they didn’t want us to come right here? How do you know it’s not a trap?”
He suddenly realized that those were the very questions JB and Angela had been arguing about in the car.
“There are sensors on the door,” JB said. “They showed the cave was empty.”
“Oh, and if Gary and Hodge can hide from your entire time agency, don’t you think they could tamper with a few little sensors?” Jonah asked.
Angela pushed Jonah and JB farther apart. She held up her hand like a traffic cop. Or a referee.
“Peace, you two,” she said. “Truce, all right?” She stared down at her own hand. “You made me break a nail tackling you. I am not sacrificing my entire manicure to keep you two from beating each other up. Why don’t we focus on finding out what we want to know?”
“Exactly,” JB said, as if he’d been the one acting like an adult all along.
Jonah bit his tongue to keep from arguing.
“Right now I’m the biggest and the toughest-looking of the three of us,” Angela said. “So I’ll search the whole cave to make sure there aren’t any surprises lurking in the shadows.”
Jonah realized she was right: As an adult, Angela had probably been about six feet tall. As a thirteen-year-old she wasn’t much shorter. For the first time, Jonah noticed that changing ages hadn’t created any clothing problems for her, like they had for Mom. Angela had rolled up the legs of her jeans an inch or so, but other than that her adult clothes seemed to fit her fine. She must have been one of those kids who’d gotten her growth spurt early.
It wasn’t like kid JB, who had his belt tightened past its last notch and his pants rolled up three or four times. The baggy pants made him look ridiculously scarecrowlike—Jonah felt a little bad that he hadn’t offered JB some of his own clothes to change into.
Not that they would have been small enough either.
And not that there had really been time for that.
“This cave is still a functioning time hollow, right?” Jonah asked JB as Angela went off on her search. This was kind of Jonah’s peace offering, giving the other boy a chance to act all know-it-all like he seemed to want to.
“Right,” JB said. “So we can find out what’s going on, and we can fix things. We can take all the time we need. And then when we open the door and go back to the twenty-first century, it will be like not a single moment passed since we left. Because no time ever passes in a time hollow.”
Jonah knew that was how time hollows worked. He’d known that since his very first experience with a time hollow—in this very cave, in fact. But he refrained from telling JB to shut up.
“But how are we going to fix anything—or even see what’s going on—without a working Elucidator?” Jonah asked.
JB flashed him a disgusted look and stood up.
“There are monitors here in the cave,” he said. “I wouldn’t have brought us to a place where we had no way of getting information. The monitors are supposed to work with an Elucidator, but I’m sure I can jury-rig something.”
Of course you’re sure, Jonah thought but didn’t say.
He stood up and followed JB over into a
dark section at the back of the cave. The last time Jonah had been in this area, he’d been worried about getting Tasered. This time JB hit some sort of switch on the wall that Jonah hadn’t noticed. Instantly the entire wall lit up with what appeared to be an array of TV screens.
Or maybe broken TV screens? None of the screens actually showed a recognizable image. They were all full of fuzzy, jumpy pixels, like the TV at home when someone hit the wrong button on the remote and the cable cut out.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” JB muttered. “This is going to take a while.”
“But that doesn’t matter, since time never moves in a time hollow,” Angela said, coming up behind them. She made a mocking salute. “Reporting back for duty, sir! I’ve checked out the entire cave, and there’s nobody here but us chickens. What’s the next assignment?”
Jonah tried not to gape at her. Normal, adult Angela was one of the coolest people he knew. How could she be so goofy as a thirteen-year-old?
JB didn’t seem to be paying much attention.
“There’s not anything you or Jonah can do until I get these monitors working,” he muttered, his head bent over a keyboard of sorts that had appeared in the stone wall. “It’s not like either of you would know enough to help me without taking about eight years’ worth of advanced training. . . .”
Of course not, Jonah thought.
Angela just shrugged.
“Okay, then,” she said.
Jonah didn’t want to just stand there. He wandered back toward the huge open part of the cave, where kid Angela had left the car parked haphazardly. Both of Jonah’s parents were still unconscious and slumped awkwardly in the backseat. Jonah opened the doors to give them some fresh air. He reached in and tried to straighten them up a little, so they wouldn’t be sore when they woke up.
Though I guess that wouldn’t happen in a time hollow, he reminded himself. You never get hungry, you never get thirsty, you never have to go to the bathroom . . . I guess you couldn’t get a crick in your neck, either.
At least it made him feel better to make them look more comfortable.
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