Caught

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Jonah saw a tracer version of Mileva’s father rushing toward them, arriving much faster than the actual man.

  So in original time he must have heard Mileva wailing. Something in that letter made her cry so hard he heard her from the roadside.

  Mileva limped past Jonah, so close that the bottom of her skirt brushed his ankles. Jonah thought about grabbing the Elucidator from her hands and demanding to be made invisible again. But Mileva would undoubtedly start screaming and fighting against him—he couldn’t risk causing such a huge disturbance with Mileva’s father so close by.

  Maybe there’s something else I can do, he thought. Not about the invisibility, but . . .

  He inched his hand out, below her line of view.

  It wasn’t the Elucidator he was reaching for.

  It was the letter.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jonah closed his fingers over the corner of the letter that showed at the edge of Mileva’s pocket. He drew his hand back—slowly, slowly . . .

  This was like pick-up sticks or Kerplunk or Jenga—one of those little-kid games where you had to take what you wanted without making the whole game collapse.

  She’s going to turn around, Jonah thought. I’ll have to make up some lie about just catching the letter when I saw it falling out of her pocket.

  But Mileva didn’t turn around. She took the next step, putting a huge space between her and Jonah. And then she just kept rushing on, scurrying toward her father’s shouting.

  But Katherine and Emily both saw what Jonah had done. They gaped at him, horrified once more.

  “Jonah!” Katherine exclaimed. “When she finds out that you stole—”

  “It’s just going to make her cry,” Jonah said, pointing at the sobbing tracer Mileva. The tracer version of her father huddled over her, trying to comfort her.

  Katherine frowned, but didn’t say anything else as all three kids crouched down behind the downed log, hiding from the real version of Mileva’s father and anyone else who might approach from the road. Once they were in a safe position, Katherine yanked the letter from Jonah’s fingers.

  “Let me see that,” she said. “Since you’re going to get us in trouble anyhow, we might as well read it.”

  Jonah could tell she was dying of curiosity.

  “Read it out loud, so we can all hear,” Jonah said. He flipped over onto his stomach so he could see over the log. That way he could watch for Mileva or her father coming close even as he listened to Katherine. She had the letter out of the envelope and was unfolding it.

  “‘Dear Dollie,’” she began in a whisper. Dimly, Jonah realized she was translating it into English as she read, for Emily’s benefit. Katherine looked up and explained to Emily, “He means Mileva. She and Albert call each other these silly pet names—it’s going to be way embarrassing if they’re still doing that when their kids are teenagers.”

  “Katherine!” Jonah said. “Their kid is a teenager now! Emily!”

  “Oh, right. Sorry,” Katherine said.

  “Never mind,” Emily said. “I feel like . . . Do you really think we should be reading her mail?”

  “Yes,” Jonah and Katherine said together.

  “But—it’s private,” Emily objected. “Personal.”

  Jonah wondered if maybe she was a little too nice to cope with time travel. He wondered how she’d survived middle school back home.

  “Yeah, well, the fate of the world could depend on us knowing what’s in that letter,” Jonah said.

  He expected Katherine to roll her eyes and tell Emily, See how full of it my brother is? The fact that neither girl challenged him made him feel even worse about their situation.

  Katherine went back to reading out loud.

  “‘I’m not the least bit angry that poor Dollie is hatching a new chick,’” she continued in a hushed voice. She’d adopted a bit of a German accent to imitate Albert’s voice. “‘In fact, I’m happy about it and had already given some thought to whether I shouldn’t see to it that you get a new Lieserl. After all, you shouldn’t be denied that which is the right of all women. Don’t worry about it, and come back content. Brood on it very carefully so that something good will come of it.’”

  Katherine almost dropped the letter.

  “Is he for real?” she muttered.

  “Hold on, hold on—‘hatching a new chick’? Getting ‘a new Lieserl’?” Jonah asked. “Does he mean Mileva’s going to have another baby?”

  “I bet that’s what she’d just told Albert. And that’s why she kept throwing up on the way here,” Katherine said. “She’s pregnant.”

  “She threw up by my bedside, too,” Emily said thoughtfully. “I remember thinking, as Lieserl, ‘Mama sick too? Mama sick too?’”

  Jonah shot her a puzzled look.

  “Look, you try thinking with the brain and vocabulary of a toddler,” Emily said. “It’s not easy.”

  “But do you see how Albert talks about this?” Katherine said, shaking the letter for emphasis. “‘I’m not the least bit angry’—that’s not what a man should say when his wife tells him she’s pregnant! That’s, like, just asking for trouble!”

  Great, Jonah thought. Katherine’s in sixth grade and she just got her first boyfriend—and she thinks she’s qualified to be a marriage counselor?

  Katherine was still ranting.

  “And talking about getting a ‘new Lieserl’ and how Mileva should ‘come back content,’ when the original Lieserl is really, really sick and, for all Albert knows, on the verge of death?” she asked.

  “Lieserl is on the verge of death,” Jonah said, glancing quickly toward the still-sobbing tracers. “She was. Er—would have been.”

  “What kind of mother is going to come back content from her own child’s deathbed?” Emily asked. “What kind of father acts like one kid is pretty much interchangeable with another?”

  “You said it!” Katherine agreed fiercely. Then she clapped her hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I forgot, these really are your parents—”

  “No,” Emily said. “My real mother is a special-ed teacher. My real father works in a factory.”

  “Back home,” Jonah said, because Katherine still didn’t look as if she understood. “In the twenty-first century.”

  “Right,” Katherine said.

  “Does the letter say anything else?” Jonah asked, because he wasn’t sure how long it would take Mileva to send her father away. Their tracer versions were still huddled together right beside the downed log. But he could see nothing of the real people except, far off in the distance, one small corner of Mileva’s skirt that wasn’t blocked by all the trees.

  Katherine looked back at the paper in her hands.

  “The second paragraph is all about Lieserl, but I don’t quite understand it,” she said. “Listen. It says: ‘I’m very sorry about what has befallen Lieserl. It’s so easy to suffer lasting effects from scarlet fever. If only this will pass. As what is the child registered? We must take precautions that problems don’t arise with her later.’”

  “So he is worried about Lieserl, after all,” Jonah said. “But what does he mean, asking how she’s registered? What ‘problems’ could he be talking about?”

  “Scarlet fever can lead to blindness, deafness, brain fever, rheumatic fever, heart problems, kidney problems . . . ,” Emily began reciting.

  Jonah and Katherine turned to stare at her.

  “What?” she said. “I heard the servants talking.”

  Jonah shook his head.

  “I don’t think that’s what Albert means,” he said. He pointed at the letter in Katherine’s hand. “It sounds more like he thinks they need to take precautions so that problems don’t arise because of how she’s registered.”

  “Registered,” Emily said thoughtfully. “What’s that mean? A birth certificate? A passport? Why would it matter?”

  “Maybe it’s in the next paragraph,” Katherine said, looking back at the letter and starting to read a
gain. “‘Now, come to me again soon . . . ,’” She skimmed ahead, picking out bits and pieces: “‘A good little wife shouldn’t leave her husband alone any longer. Things don’t yet look nearly as bad at home as you think. You’ll be able to clean up in short order.’” She jerked her head back. “Sheesh, is he a jerk or what? Sexist! She’s here taking care of their deathly ill child and he wants her to, what, come home to clean up his dirty dishes? Wash his socks? ‘A good little wife shouldn’t leave her husband alone’—bleh! What century does he think this is?”

  “The twentieth,” Jonah said, rolling his eyes. “It’s 1903. I think pretty much everyone was sexist in 1903.”

  Katherine slugged his arm with a little bit too much force.

  “Yeah, well, he’s Albert Einstein,” she said. “He should be smarter than that.”

  Jonah didn’t want to get into that debate.

  “And if we were smarter, we’d know why Albert’s never seen his daughter,” he said. “We’d know why Lieserl’s living with her grandparents.”

  “I think . . . ,” Emily began. She tilted her head thoughtfully to the side. “I think there’s something wrong with me. Something the servants whisper about that I don’t understand. Some reason the family is ashamed of me. Or—they should be.”

  Jonah realized she was talking about herself as Lieserl now, and drawing on the little girl’s memories. He remembered the defensive way Mileva’s father had spoken to the doctor: My granddaughter is a blessing. She is a gift from God.

  “Oh, no,” Katherine said, shaking her head. “Oh, no. Is this one of those times and places where almost nobody values little girl babies? Is that why Albert Einstein’s never bothered meeting his daughter—because she’s not a son?”

  “Shh,” Jonah said, because she wasn’t being careful to keep her voice down anymore.

  “Don’t you tell me to be quiet,” Katherine said. “This is an outrage!”

  She wasn’t even keeping her head down now. Jonah pulled her back out of sight behind the log.

  “Katherine, you’re just guessing. You don’t know what any of this means,” Jonah protested.

  “There,” Katherine said, pointing at the paper in her hand. “There in Albert’s letter. He says, ‘Brood on it very carefully so that something good will come of it.’ Don’t you think that’s code for, ‘Make sure you have a boy this time’?”

  “No,” Jonah said emphatically. “Because then why would he talk about giving her a new Lieserl? They wouldn’t name a boy Lieserl!”

  “But—,” Katherine started to object. Emily put her hand over Katherine’s mouth.

  “Shh!” Emily hissed. “They’re coming this way!”

  They were. In the few moments that Jonah and Katherine had spent arguing about the meaning of Albert’s letter, Mileva and her father had gotten so close that Jonah could hear their voices.

  “Papa, really, you don’t have to worry,” Mileva said.

  “Mileva, my child, you’re not strong,” her father said. “In your condition, you shouldn’t carry Lieserl around the house, let alone—”

  His voice stopped so suddenly Jonah couldn’t stand it. He had to know what had happened. Had Gary or Hodge or JB or some other time traveler suddenly appeared out of nowhere? Had Mileva accidentally let him see the Elucidator? Had Jonah or Katherine or Emily left behind some evidence of the twenty-first century when they’d scrambled behind the log? A shoelace, a scattering of glitter from Katherine’s shirt, an iPod or cell phone one of them had forgotten they were carrying?

  Jonah dared to raise his head just a little, just enough to peek over the top of the log.

  Mileva’s father was bending over, picking up something from the ground: a blanket. The blanket that had been wrapped around Lieserl. The blanket that Emily had left behind when she’d separated from her tracer.

  “Where is she?” he asked, sounding completely bewildered. “She couldn’t have crawled away—somebody stole her!”

  “Papa, no, there’s something else going on—I can’t really explain, but—you have to trust me on this!” Mileva begged.

  Mileva’s father touched his daughter’s forehead.

  “You’re feverish,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re saying. We have to organize a search party. We’ll have every able-bodied man in the village search every inch of ground for miles around . . .”

  Katherine grabbed Jonah’s arm. He turned and saw the panicked look on her face. He could tell she was thinking, What are we going to do? We’re not invisible anymore! If they have people searching every inch of ground for miles around, someone’s bound to find us!

  He shook his head at her. He hoped she could tell that he was thinking, Don’t worry. Mileva will figure out some lie to tell her father, some way to keep him from starting that search party. Or, if she has to, she’ll make us invisible again.

  But he didn’t hear Mileva speaking up or objecting. He peeked over the edge of the log just in time to see why not.

  Mileva was swaying side to side. She had her mouth open slightly, as if she wanted to say something. But she was so pale—ghostly pale, practically tracer pale. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

  And then she fell to the ground in a dead faint.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Mileva!” her father cried. “Oh, my poor child!”

  He bent over and picked her up.

  Okay, at least we’ll have some time to figure out what to do while he’s taking care of her, Jonah thought.

  But, with Mileva in his arms, he immediately began running back toward the road and screaming out, “Help! Somebody help us! My granddaughter is missing! My daughter is ill!”

  He’d barely paused to take a breath before Jonah could hear someone shouting back to him.

  “Milos! Milos Maric, is that you?” a voice cried.

  And then another: “What can we do?”

  And another: “I’ll alert the others!”

  I guess this is how 911 worked before there was a 911, Jonah thought.

  He scrambled up, hoping nobody was close enough yet to see him.

  “Hurry!” he told Emily and Katherine. “We’re going to have to run!”

  He glanced back toward the road. Already he could see someone advancing toward them with a torch, an eerie glow in the darkening gloom.

  “No,” Emily said, shaking her head stubbornly. “We run, we’ll make too much noise. They’ll chase us. And when they catch us . . .”

  She only had a small child’s memories of what it was like to live in this place in 1903. But did she know something about how they’d treat strangely dressed outsiders suspected of kidnapping Albert Einstein’s daughter?

  Jonah really wished it were Gary and Hodge facing that fate, not him.

  “So if we don’t run, what are we going to do?” Katherine asked. “There’s nowhere around here to hide. Not well enough.”

  “What about Lieserl’s tracer?” Jonah said reluctantly. “If Emily just rejoins it long enough to let the villagers find her, they’ll call off the search. We can pull her out again right afterward. It’s a gamble, but . . .”

  But when he glanced toward the place where Mileva’s tracer had been sobbing and clutching Lieserl’s tracer, both of them had vanished.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no,” he muttered. “Did both tracers die?”

  “No,” Katherine said, shaking her head emphatically. “Didn’t you see? Mileva rejoined her own tracer right before she fainted. And when her father carried her off, there was just the faintest bit of tracer light with them—in original time, he would have been carrying Lieserl, too.”

  “I saw it too,” Emily murmured.

  Jonah shook his head, trying to clear it. But that only allowed him to focus better on the crowd gathering in the distance. He could see several torches now.

  “We have to run,” he said. “It’s the only thing we can do.”

  “No,” Emily said. “We can climb.” She pointed toward the tops of the trees around them. “N
obody’s going to look for a missing toddler up there.”

  It made sense.

  “Right,” Jonah said. He flicked Katherine’s shoulder. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

  “Maybe because we’re not related to Albert Einstein?” Katherine said.

  Now that they had a plan, they were almost leisurely selecting the best trees to climb, the best strategies for getting to the top. Jonah gave Emily and Katherine each a leg up to reach the first branch of the tallest, broadest tree they could find. He chose a neighboring tree with low-hanging branches.

  “Psst, Jonah!” Katherine hissed across to him. “Just don’t think about the crow’s nest back on the Discovery!”

  “I wasn’t going to—until you mentioned it!” Jonah grumbled.

  On their trip to 1611 they’d found themselves on a sailing ship, and twice Jonah had been forced to climb to the crow’s nest near the top of the tallest mast.

  Jonah hated heights. On his first climb in 1611 he’d managed to reach the top only because he was so annoyed with Katherine, and that had distracted him from his fear.

  Jonah realized he’d gotten halfway up this tree thinking about how annoying Katherine had been in 1611, and how annoying she was now.

  Ergh! She did it again! he thought.

  He decided that halfway up was far enough. The shadowy trees seemed to gather the darkness around them—or maybe that was just in contrast to the bright torches advancing toward them.

  It was only a few moments after Jonah stopped climbing that he saw the first torch reach the spot directly below him. A cluster of three men circled the downed log where Jonah and Katherine and Emily had hidden when Mileva’s father came near.

  “Something—or someone—was squatting here,” one of the men said, pointing down into the leaves. “Squatting here watching the baby lying right over . . . there?”

  Jonah froze in fear, his fingers digging into the tree bark. Back in 1600 his friends Brendan and Antonio had been able to look at an indentation in a sandy beach and figure out exactly how many people had once camped there. What if these Serbs were just as talented at reading signs in nature? What if they could look at the pattern of old leaves scattered across the ground and know that three kids were hiding in the trees above them?