“Do you think some time travelers ruined it?” Andrea asked.
“No, because then we’d see a tracer version of the whole village in good shape,” Jonah said. “And lots of happy tracer villagers . . .”
Katherine touched one of the huts with one finger, and the whole thing swayed perilously. An unmoving tracer version of the hut appeared and then vanished when the real hut stopped swaying and rejoined it. Katherine took a step back.
“Then what did happen here?” she asked. “Where did everyone go?”
“Don’t know,” Jonah said. He was trying not to get too creeped out by the emptiness, the desolation. Maybe there was some perfectly ordinary—even happy—explanation. Maybe the people had just abandoned this village because they’d built a newer, nicer one someplace else. What had Mrs. Rorshas said in fifth-grade Social Studies? Hadn’t it been common for Indians to move around, going from village to village based on the growing seasons or animal habitats or whatever?
Jonah wasn’t sure enough about that to mention it to the girls. Mrs. Rorshas really hadn’t talked that much about the Indians. It’d mostly been the explorers, Jamestown and the Plymouth Colony, the American Revolution . . . all done and over with by Halloween.
Jonah didn’t remember anything in that history about Indians getting nicer, newer villages. Or happier lives.
“Look,” Andrea said in a hushed voice. “You can tell they had a cornfield over there.” She pointed at a rectangle of cleared land just beyond the last falling-down hut. “We’re going to need food. . . .”
She didn’t add, if we’re stuck here a long time. But Jonah could tell by the others’ faces that everyone was thinking that.
Jonah walked over and kicked at a downed dried-out stalk. Dare snuffled along beside him, nosing aside empty husks. This was more like the ghost of a cornfield—Jonah couldn’t imagine how long ago it had last been planted. Years? Decades? Whatever food had once grown here had undoubtedly been carried away long ago, by birds and mice, if not by people.
Jonah’s stomach twisted, but it was more from fear and worry than hunger. For now, anyway.
“When we catch up with the tracer boys, maybe they’ll have some food we can eat,” Jonah said, with more confidence than he felt. The tracer boys weren’t likely to have anything but tracer food.
He began peeking into some of the huts that were in the best shape, just in case. It was dim enough in the huts that the glowing tracer boys would really show up brightly, if they were there. But the enclosed spaces made Jonah nervous. He didn’t like looking into darkness, in the midst of all this desolation.
The first hut was empty. As was the second. And the third.
In the fourth hut, something leaped out at him.
“AHH!” Jonah jumped back, scrambling to get out of the way. He had a quick impression of hooves and glowing eyes. What is that—a demon? he thought. Where are we?
Barking furiously, Dare streaked off into the woods after the creature.
Jonah couldn’t figure out what it was until his heart stopped pounding so hard and he turned around, catching a glimpse of the tracer that remained in the hut: It was only another deer.
Or, no, it could be the very same one that the tracer boys had killed, because that one is really still alive . . . how many tracers of the same deer could there be? Jonah was picturing the one deer multiplying into dozens of tracer deer, every time it came into contact with some new disruption in time. Then Jonah realized his leftover panic was making him stupid. There can be only one tracer of any animal. Because there is only one version of original time, only one way time is supposed to go.
It was ridiculous, but Jonah felt much better knowing that this wasn’t the same deer the tracer boys had killed. He gazed almost fondly at the single tracer version of the deer he’d startled. The tracer deer didn’t even lift its head, but just kept peacefully munching on—what was that? Some sort of rotten melon?
Then Jonah noticed the commotion behind him.
“Dare, no! Come back, boy!” Andrea was calling out after the dog.
Katherine was practically falling on the ground, she was laughing so hard.
“Oh, my gosh! You should have seen your face! You’re white as a ghost. You almost look like a tracer!” she screeched.
“Ha, ha,” Jonah muttered. He leaned weakly against the side of the hut, which bowed dangerously inward. Jonah decided he could stand on his own two feet. He straightened up.
“Dare!” Andrea screamed, her voice echoing off the trees. “Dare!”
“Shh,” Jonah said. His ears were ringing, and he didn’t think he could blame leftover time sickness anymore. The screaming, the laughter, the dog and deer crashing through the woods—it was all too much noise, too much more change in this silent, deserted, tracer-haunted place. “Be quiet! Somebody will hear us! We really will ruin time!”
How much change was too much? At what point would there be too many tracers to ever fix?
Katherine’s laughter softened to snorts and little bursts of giggling. Andrea called out, “Dare!” once more, but then she turned back to Jonah.
“Really, Jonah,” she said soberly. “I don’t think there’s anyone except us and the tracers on the whole island. Can’t you feel it?”
Someone could be hiding, Jonah wanted to say. Like your mystery man, coming back to make us do whatever he wants us to do. But which was worse—bringing up the possibility that dangerous, unknown people could be lurking anywhere? Or acknowledging the emptiness, the desolation, the ruin? It feels like something bad happened here, Jonah thought. And, maybe . . . it’s not over?
Jonah was not going to say that.
Instead, he muttered grumpily, “How do you know we’re on an island?”
“That’s where the Roanoke Colony was,” Andrea said. “On Roanoke Island.”
Jonah threw up his hands.
“Am I the only one who didn’t pay attention in fifth-grade Social Studies?” he asked.
To Jonah’s surprise, Andrea laughed. But it was kind laughter. Not at all like Katherine’s.
“I don’t really remember hearing about the Roanoke Colony at school. I’m not sure my teacher ever mentioned it,” Andrea said. “But remember that day in the cave? When they told us the names of the missing kids stolen from history, even though they wouldn’t say which of us was which kid?”
Jonah nodded and shrugged.
“Yeah. So?”
“So I went home that day and decided I was going to research every single one of the girls’ names I could remember,” Andrea said. “I live with my aunt and uncle now and, well . . . anyhow, it’s good if I can just go in my room and shut the door and have something to do.”
“But—” Katherine began. Jonah could tell by the way she had her eyes all squinted together and her nose wrinkled up, that she was about to ask some really nosy question like, Don’t you like your aunt and uncle? Why not? What’s wrong with them?
“Wow,” Jonah interrupted quickly. “I just went home that day and ate most of a large pepperoni pizza all by myself and then went right to sleep.”
Andrea laughed again. It was a nice sound.
“That’s okay—you did have that whole detour to the Middle Ages in between,” she said.
“Yeah, after being in the 1480s, I was . . .” Jonah stopped himself before he got to the last word, which was supposed to be starving. It didn’t seem smart to bring that up right now. He shifted gears. “So you really learned everything about all the missing kids from history? All the girls, anyway?”
Andrea shook her head, her eyes very solemn.
“No, and this is kind of weird,” she said. “I started with Virginia Dare, and I meant to move on, but I just . . . kept . . . reading about Virginia Dare.”
“Ooh . . .” Katherine let out a low, spooky-sounding moan. She’d stopped squinting—now her whole face was lit up with excitement. “So you must have known that’s who you were. Did you just have this feeling about Virginia Dare
? Like something subconscious, or not so subconscious, telling you, ‘That’s who you are. It has to be!’”
Jonah glared at his sister. Didn’t Katherine remember how Andrea had reacted back in the time hollow with JB, when JB had said she was really Virginia Dare? That’s not me! That’s not my mother! she’d screamed. Was Katherine trying to upset Andrea again?
But Andrea didn’t scream this time. She just tilted her head thoughtfully to the side, considering Katherine’s questions.
Maybe Jonah didn’t understand anything about girls and their moods.
“I don’t think I knew anything,” Andrea said after a few seconds. “Even subconsciously. I was just really interested in the Virginia Dare story. I think it was because of the grandfather coming back—how hard he tried to get back to his family, and how many times he failed, and then when he finally made it to Roanoke . . .”
“No one was there,” Katherine whispered.
Jonah should have been immune to all of Katherine’s dramatics after living with her for nearly twelve years. But he couldn’t help shivering at the eerie tone in her voice. Off in the distance, Dare’s barking seemed to have a plaintive, desperate quality to it now.
“That’s not just him barking at the deer anymore, is it?” Jonah asked.
“No—do you think he’s hurt?” Andrea asked. “Fallen into some hole left by a hunter or—oh my gosh, they wouldn’t have had metal leg traps at Roanoke, would they?”
She whirled around and started running toward the sound of Dare’s barking. Jonah and Katherine rushed after her.
They weren’t going back into the woods now, but into an area of tall grasses that whipped against their faces and cut into their arms. Jonah began wishing he’d kept his sweatshirt on, despite the heat, just to protect his skin. But there wasn’t time to stop and put it back on.
Dare’s barking shifted, becoming higher pitched, more panicked.
“Something is wrong!” Andrea called back to Jonah and Katherine. “I can tell. We have to . . .”
She didn’t finish her sentence. She just sped up.
“Wait, Andrea! You don’t know what’s out there!” Jonah called after her. He didn’t even know what danger he should be worrying about. The mystery man, back to steal Andrea away completely? Whatever enemy had destroyed the Roanoke Colony and the Indian village to begin with? Some other danger the mystery man wanted Andrea to encounter? Pirates, brigands, murderers, thieves . . .
Listing dangers helped Jonah run faster. But the faster he went, the faster the grasses whipped against his face, against his bare arms, against his ankles. He was glad when the grasses thinned out, but then he was running through sand. It spilled into his shoes, making every step twice as hard.
And then he sped around a corner and discovered that Andrea had caught up with Dare.
The dog wasn’t caught in a metal trap. He wasn’t being carried away by evil time travelers or pirates. Instead, he was crouched on a narrow beach and barking furiously at something out in the water.
“What is it, boy?” Andrea asked him. “What do you see?”
Still running, Jonah put his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the bright sun so he could stare out into the surf. The waves were rocking violently back and forth; it was almost impossible to tell from one moment to the next which section of the water he’d already looked at and which he still needed to scan. There was a dark shape bobbing up and down out there—or was it just a shadow?
Jonah squinted harder and ran closer to the edge of the water. The dark shape began to make sense.
“It’s an upside-down boat,” he said. “Smashed up, like from a shipwreck.” He instantly regretted saying that word. Shipwreck, car wreck—maybe Andrea won’t think about the similarities? “It probably happened years ago,” he added soothingly. “I think sometimes it takes debris like that a long time to wash up onshore.”
“Jonah, it was right side up a minute ago,” Andrea said. She raced to the edge of the water. She jerked off her right shoe, then her left. She rolled up the bottom edges of her shorts.
“What are you doing?” Jonah asked.
Andrea shoved away the sweatshirt she’d knotted around her waist. It dropped onto the sand, one sleeve trailing into the water.
“There was someone in there!” she screamed. “I saw him!”
Jonah barely had a moment to think before Andrea plunged into the water.
“No!” Jonah called after her. “It’s not safe!”
Jonah knew there were other objections he should be yelling at her—something about time, about how you weren’t supposed to change time, about how maybe this was a trap or a trick set up by the mystery man? But she was being buffeted by the waves so completely he couldn’t put two words together. She was underwater; she was back on the surface; she was underwater; she was back on the surface. . . .
Beside Jonah, Dare was now barking furiously at Andrea. The dog put one paw into the water, got hit by a huge wave, and backed out, whimpering.
“You’re a lot of help,” Jonah muttered. He dropped the sweatshirt he’d been carrying, so he could cup his hands around his mouth and scream, “Andrea! Come back!”
Andrea turned slightly—maybe to yell back at Jonah—and a wave knocked her sideways, somersaulting her deeper into the water.
She didn’t resurface.
“Andrea!” Jonah screamed.
He threw himself into the water and began paddling desperately toward the spot where he’d seen Andrea disappear. His shoes and clothes got waterlogged within seconds, dragging him down. But he didn’t have time to tug off even his sneakers. He kept pushing forward, doggedly, even though all the water in front of him looked the same now. He couldn’t remember where Andrea had vanished. He reached down, and his fingers brushed something soft—seaweed? Or Andrea’s hair?
Jonah kicked hard, lifting his head high above the water, trying to gulp in a good breath before he dove down to search for Andrea.
The wind seemed to be calling his name.
“Jonah! Jonah!”
Jonah looked to the right, and it was Andrea.
“Swim—parallel—shore!” she called.
Oh, yeah. Jonah knew that. That’s what you did when you got caught in an undertow.
He wasn’t sure if the force tugging at him was really an undertow—or if it was just the dragging weight of his own clothes. But he did a sort of modified dog paddle toward Andrea.
“It’s coming close!” she shouted.
It took Jonah a moment to realize that she meant the boat. It wasn’t just coming close—it was rising up, towering over them. In a minute, depending on how the wave broke, it could be slamming down on them.
“Watch out!” Jonah yelled, just as Andrea screamed, “The man!”
Jonah glanced back at the boat, and caught a quick glimpse of a man’s hand, clutching one of the splintering boards.
“This way,” Jonah shouted, getting a faceful of salty water. It seemed as if an entire gallon had landed in his open mouth. He sputtered and coughed, but still managed to grab Andrea’s arm and shove her toward the shore. That sent Jonah reeling backward, barely able to keep his head above water.
The waves heaved up, then hurled the boat down, down, down. . . .
It didn’t hit Jonah. It hit a rock formation Jonah hadn’t even known was there. The boat shattered instantly, setting off an explosion of broken boards. So now it wasn’t just one boat Jonah had to watch out for, but dozens of sharp, pointed remnants of the boat, constantly being tossed by the waves near Jonah’s head.
And Andrea was swimming back into the debris.
“No! Don’t!” Jonah screamed.
“He’s right here!” Andrea screamed back.
She’d reached the man floating in the debris. He seemed to be trying to swim, but Jonah saw that that was an illusion: His arms and legs were only moving with the current.
“Help—flip—over!” Andrea called.
Belatedly, Jonah rememb
ered that he should actually know how to deal with this situation. He’d taken junior lifesaving lessons at the pool the past summer. But the pool had always been so calm and safe, one kid at a time jumping into the peaceful blue water to “save” an instructor flailing about in imaginary danger. There’d been no hazardous debris, no heaving waves, no actual unconscious victim.
Jonah shook his head, trying to focus.
“Uh—armpit!” he screamed at Andrea. “Grab him by his armpit!”
Either Andrea couldn’t hear him, or she couldn’t understand. Jonah grabbed the man himself, yanking him by the arm to pull him close, then awkwardly turning him over. Finally Jonah wrapped his own arm around the man’s chest, both of them rolling in the waves together. Any of Jonah’s lifesaving instructors would have frowned and pointed out everything Jonah had done wrong. Jonah knew he wasn’t supposed to end up clinging to the drowning victim like this, as if he was just trying to use the victim’s buoyancy to keep his own head above water. And there was something Jonah was supposed to remember about clearing obstructed airways and checking to see if the man needed mouth-to-mouth or CPR. But right now Jonah was doing well just to breathe himself—to breathe air, that is, not saltwater. Jonah was starting to forget which was which.
“Maybe—we can—go in—there,” Andrea sputtered, her words coming out between waves and breaths.
Jonah looked, and the shoreline had changed. The current had flung them downwind from the sandy beach: Now they were facing rocks. And the waves were already smashing the debris from the boat against the rocks, splintering the boards into smaller boards—more dangers that Jonah and Andrea would need to avoid.
Jonah glanced down at the man in his arms. The man’s chest was moving up and down, but Jonah couldn’t tell if that meant he was breathing or if it was just his body bobbing in the surf, bobbing along with Jonah.
Sidestroke, Jonah reminded himself. Just do the modified sidestroke like you’re supposed to, and don’t think about anything else.
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