Sabotaged

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  He’d only managed to take three strokes forward when something hit him in the head—something from the air, not in the water.

  Now, that’s not right, Jonah wanted to complain. It’s not fair for everything to be dangerous!

  He turned his head to look and discovered that a huge branch had fallen into the water.

  “Grab on and climb out!” Katherine yelled. “Don’t swim! Climb!”

  Oh . . .

  Katherine was at the other end of the branch. Katherine must have thrown it in.

  Had Katherine been trying to hit him?

  No, Jonah realized, she was trying to help him. The branch was a wonderful thing to hold on to while the water seemed to be trying harder and harder to dash him and the unconscious man against the rocks. Holding on to the branch, Jonah could almost stand up. He braced his feet between two rocks and yelled at Andrea, “Help me drag the man in!”

  She grabbed on to the branch too. Between the two of them, they managed to jerk the man toward the shore. When they finally reached dry ground, Katherine let go of the branch and helped Jonah and Andrea yank the man out of the water. Jonah fell back on the scrubby grass, completely spent. But Andrea leaned over the man, putting her ear against his chest, her hand beneath his nose.

  “He’s alive!” she screamed. “He’s breathing!”

  Jonah didn’t move. The ground seemed to be spinning beneath him. Overhead, the clouds were whipping across the sky with amazing speed. The contrasting motions—spinning earth, speeding clouds—were making Jonah feel nauseated. So he closed his eyes. But that just made him feel as if he was back in the water, being tossed back and forth by the waves. . . .

  “You saved his life!” Katherine said, in awe, her voice coming from the same direction as Andrea’s. “You and Jonah. That man would have drowned without you.”

  . . . would have drowned . . .

  . . . would have drowned . . .

  Jonah winced, thinking about how moments ago, standing on the shore, he’d wondered if the capsized boat in the water was a trap or a trick set up by the same man who’d convinced Andrea to sabotage her own trip through time. Jonah had been worried about Andrea drowning. But this was something else. This was him and Andrea willfully changing time. Katherine had felt guilty about knocking down a pine cone in the wrong place. Now the three of them had saved a man’s life. What if the man went on to change history even more? He might have children he wasn’t supposed to have; he might turn around and kill someone who wasn’t supposed to die; he might do anything.

  Jonah felt sick, but he couldn’t have said what was making him feel worse: Thinking that he could have stood by and let the man drown? Or thinking that maybe that was what he was supposed to do?

  This setup was a trap, Jonah thought. It was a trick.

  Back when he was in 1483, Jonah had argued with JB about taking so many chances with Chip’s and Alex’s lives. But even JB wouldn’t have set Jonah and Katherine up with a dilemma like this one.

  “Not fair,” Jonah muttered. “Not fair.”

  He didn’t know how it had worked, but he felt certain that the mystery man had planned for Jonah and Andrea to be on the beach right at that moment, right as the boat capsized. He had planned for them to have to make a choice.

  Did he know what we would choose? Jonah wondered. Does he know what will happen because the man didn’t drown? Does he use projections, like JB?

  “Jonah? Are you all right?” Katherine asked.

  Jonah realized he still had his eyes squeezed shut. And he was probably moving his lips, like a little kid just learning how to read silently.

  “Yeah . . . yeah . . .” Jonah didn’t want to talk about tricks and traps and dilemmas with the others. Not yet. He didn’t want to talk about how they might have ruined time by saving the man’s life. Because that wouldn’t change anything they did from here on out—it wasn’t as if they were going to push the man back into the water. Jonah opened his eyes, cleared his throat, tried to remember how to act normal.

  “I’m fine,” he told Katherine. “Thanks to you throwing that branch in.”

  “Yeah,” Andrea agreed. She was brushing sand from a huge scrape on her leg. “That was really smart. How’d you think of it?”

  “Oh, you know me, I’m just so brilliant,” Katherine said, grinning. She hadn’t used up all her energy fighting the waves, so she had some left for clowning. She held one hand out, placed her other hand on her stomach, and dipped down in a mocking bow. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” Then she shrugged. “Really, though, I just thought of it because I saw what they did.”

  “They, who?” Jonah said, baffled.

  Katherine was already pointing, toward a spot directly behind Jonah.

  “Them,” she said.

  Jonah turned around. There in the grass were the two tracer boys they’d seen earlier.

  And lying between them was a tracer version of the man Jonah and Andrea had just rescued from drowning.

  It took Jonah’s waterlogged brain a moment to figure out what that meant.

  If the two tracer boys rescued the drowning man in the original version of history, then . . .

  “He was supposed to live!” Jonah burst out. “We didn’t ruin history by saving him! We saved history by saving him!”

  Andrea whirled around and glared at Jonah.

  “Is that why you didn’t want me jumping into the water?” she growled at him. “You think history is more important than a man’s life?”

  “No, no—” Jonah tried to explain. “I was worried about you! I—”

  “If I’d gotten back to my parents the day of their crash, would you have stopped me from saving them?” Andrea asked.

  “Of course not!” Jonah said. “I would have helped you! But . . .”

  “But what?” Andrea asked, her glare intensifying.

  “I don’t think we would ever get that choice,” Jonah said.

  “Because of Damaged Time,” Katherine reminded Andrea.

  Jonah could have left it at that. It would have been easier. But he had too many ideas roiling around in his mind. Some of them were going to spill out whether he wanted them to or not.

  “I think some things just aren’t possible, even with time travel,” Jonah said. He turned to Katherine. “Don’t you remember JB talking about how time protects itself from paradoxes? Certain things aren’t supposed to be possible.” He gestured at the man who had nearly drowned, at the churning waves beyond. “This wasn’t supposed to be possible. We weren’t supposed to be here!”

  Andrea patted the man’s chest protectively.

  “But we are,” she said. “And we saved him.”

  Jonah shook his head.

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I’m not saying it right. I’m glad the man’s alive. I helped save him too, remember? But don’t you think there was something wrong with how it all worked? Don’t you feel . . . used?”

  “Used?” Andrea repeated numbly.

  “Why were we here on this island, in this time period, just at the right moment to see the man drowning?” Jonah challenged.

  “You mean . . . because I changed the Elucidator code?” Andrea whispered.

  “And because Dare barked,” Katherine reminded him. “Don’t forget that.”

  Jonah reached over and grabbed Dare.

  “How do we know he’s even a real dog?” Jonah asked furiously. “How do we know he’s not some . . . some animatronic thing that’s supposed to spy on us and direct us wherever Andrea’s mystery man wants us to go?”

  Jonah rolled Dare over on his belly and felt around in his fur, looking for some on/off switch or computer chip implant. The dog yelped and squirmed away.

  “Jonah, you’re being paranoid,” Katherine said. “It was JB who gave us Dare, not the mystery man.”

  “And why would he need a fake dog to spy on us?” Andrea asked. “Couldn’t he watch us anyhow? Can’t time experts do that, if they know where you are?”


  Oh, yeah . . .

  Jonah turned his face to the sky.

  “We’re onto you!” he yelled at the dark clouds. “We know exactly what’s going on here!”

  But he didn’t. That was the problem. He didn’t know what would have happened if the man they’d rescued had died. He didn’t know if there still might be other reasons Andrea’s mystery man had wanted her to go to the wrong time. He didn’t know where the real versions of the tracer boys were, when they were supposed to be right here, acting like lifeguards.

  He spun toward the tracer boys, as if he could catch them doing something wrong. But they were only tending to the tracer man: pulling tracer seaweed out of his hair, brushing tracer sand away from his mouth. Somehow that made Jonah angrier. He scrambled up and stood over them.

  “Where are you for real?” he screamed at them. “Why aren’t you here?”

  He reached out toward the curly haired boy, wanting to shake his shoulders. But of course Jonah’s hands went right through the tracer. And he’d been so sure that he could grab the tracer boy’s shoulders that he was thrown off balance. He fell facedown in the sand.

  For a moment he just lay there, not moving.

  Then he felt a hand on his arm, pushing him to roll over. It was Katherine.

  “Jonah?” she asked, peering down at him. “Jo-oh?”

  The old baby name steadied him a little. That was what she’d called him when they were in preschool. But that had been a long time ago. He braced himself for her to start making snarky comments about how teenage boys couldn’t control their temper.

  Instead, she just kept looking at him.

  “I don’t like this setup either,” she said. “But what do you want us to do?”

  “What JB sent us to do,” Jonah said stubbornly. “Fix time. Save Andrea. Then go home.”

  And not have to think, he could have added. Not have to worry that everything we do might ruin time. Not have to watch out for tracers.

  “But we’re not where JB sent us,” Katherine said. “So . . .”

  Jonah could tell she was trying to choose her words very carefully, trying not to set him off again.

  “What if everything’s connected?” Andrea asked, looking up from beside the man they’d rescued. She was mimicking the tracer boys almost exactly, picking kelp out of the man’s hair. “What if we have to fix their problems with time”—she pointed to the tracer boys—”before we can fix mine?”

  Jonah felt really, really tired all of a sudden. How could they solve tracers’ problems? Tracers didn’t even exist, not really. They were just place holders. Signs of trouble. They were useless without their real selves.

  At least we have the real version of the drowning man, Jonah thought. Could he be a clue?

  “Hey, look,” Katherine said abruptly. “Their guy’s sitting up and talking.”

  She gestured toward the tracer man, who was looking dazedly from one tracer boy to the other. He seemed to be thanking them.

  “Is our guy awake too?” Katherine reached over and tapped on the real man’s shoulder. “Sir? Sir?”

  The man didn’t respond. His eyelids didn’t even flutter. He lay deathly still.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Katherine asked.

  She put her wrist against his forehead, feeling for a fever. She put her finger against his neck, feeling for his pulse. She put her hand on his head, ready to turn it side to side. Jonah guessed she wanted to study the bruises already showing up on his face. She stopped.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  She lifted her hand.

  It was covered with blood.

  Jonah was amazed that Katherine didn’t start screaming, “Ew! Ew! Get it off me!” and start running away from the man. She did look a little pale. But she just wiped her hand on a clump of beach grass and said faintly, “Maybe, if there’s something we could use as a bandage . . .”

  “My sweatshirt!” Andrea volunteered. She took off running down the shore, to the spot where she’d left her sweatshirt and shoes right before she’d rushed into the water.

  “How bad is it?” Jonah asked quietly.

  “I forget how it works with head injuries,” Katherine said. “Do they bleed a lot and always look worse than they really are? Or is it the other way around?”

  Jonah didn’t know.

  He looked carefully at the man for the first time. It had been easier to stay mad when Jonah wasn’t looking, when he was thinking of the man as just part of some trick or trap—or a clue—not as a real live, flesh-and-blood person. But the man was real. Beneath his tattered white shirt, his chest rose and fell in shallow breaths, and Jonah almost felt like cheering at each sign that the man was still alive.

  “He’s old,” Jonah said, surprised.

  The man had wrinkles beneath the sand caked on his battered face. Along with his thinning white hair, he had a white beard that might have looked dapper and well trimmed if he hadn’t just gone through a boat crash.

  “Why would an old man go out in a boat by himself?” Jonah asked.

  Before Katherine had a chance to answer, Andrea was back and handing Katherine two sweatshirts. She’d picked up Jonah’s, too.

  “The one sleeve dragged in the water a little,” Andrea said breathlessly. She pulled her shoes back on; she hadn’t taken the time to do that before.

  “That’s okay,” Katherine said. “If we just wrap them around like this . . . and press against the wound . . .”

  Andrea held her hand firmly on the sweatshirts, even when the blood began to show through. She glanced back at the tracer man behind them.

  “Why doesn’t he need a bandage?” she said.

  Jonah walked over to the tracer man and studied the back of his head.

  “He doesn’t have any big cuts like that,” Jonah said.

  That was probably the reason the tracer was sitting up and talking—even weakly—while the real man lay still and unmoving.

  And what does that do to time? Jonah wondered dizzily. Is this man’s head injury part of the trap or the trick? Or is it just . . . something that happened?

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Andrea complained. “Both men were rescued the same way. Right?”

  “You and Jonah were just a little later getting the man away from all those broken boards,” Katherine said apologetically. “From where I was standing, I could see the one tracer boy swim out to him while you were still floundering about, getting thrown around by the waves.”

  Jonah wanted to protest, We were doing the best that we could!

  But then, to his surprise, Katherine added, “And I was a lot slower holding the branch out to you . . .”

  Just then a sudden gust of wind shoved against them, practically knocking Andrea over. Both girls were forced to hold their hair back so it didn’t whip into their faces. Andrea peered up at the sky, where the dark clouds were now racing even faster.

  “I think there’s a storm coming,” she said, shivering in her wet clothes. “That’s why the water’s so choppy.”

  Katherine frowned.

  “The man’s not even conscious,” she said. “He can’t stay out here in a storm.”

  A bolt of lightning slashed the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. Andrea looked up appealingly at Jonah.

  “Will you help us get him to safety?” she asked. “And then worry about what it all means for time?”

  “What kind of a person do you think I am?” Jonah asked indignantly. “You think I’d leave a hurt old man out on a beach in the middle of a storm? Of course I’ll help!”

  “Thanks,” Andrea said, smiling at him. Even with her hair blowing around, the smile made her look pretty again.

  Am I being used again? Jonah wondered. Did Andrea’s mystery man know that I’d react to her like that? Did he know this storm was going to blow in? Did he cause it?

  Or was Jonah just being paranoid, as Katherine had said?

  “Okay, great,” Katherine said. “We’re all willing to help. But what
are we going to do? Even working together, I don’t think we could get him back to that Indian village, and there’s nowhere else to go. . . .”

  Without thinking about it, all three kids looked toward the tracer boys.

  They were casting anxious looks at the sky as well. They jumped up and grabbed another downed branch which, as soon as they moved it, turned into a tracer as well, with the original branch still lying flat on the ground. This branch had slick, shiny leaves and several rather large offshoot branches, but the tracer boys dragged it effortlessly across the ground. When they reached the tracer man, they gently eased him into a crook between the main branch and one of the offshoots. Then they tugged on the other end of the branch, pulling the man along behind them.

  “The very latest in ambulance transportation, circa—what? One thousand B.C.?” Katherine muttered.

  “Who cares! We’ll try it!” Jonah said.

  He ran over and grabbed the end of the branch, but it wasn’t quite as light as the tracer boys had made it seem. Jonah had to do a lot of tugging and jerking to maneuver the branch into place beside the unconscious man. Then, no matter how the three kids tried, the best they could do was roll him facedown onto the branch.

  “One of us will have to walk beside him, holding him on,” Katherine directed.

  Ahead of them, the tracer boys were marching steadily along, the man perched on the branch sliding smoothly behind them.

  For Jonah, Katherine, and Andrea, it was more a matter of tugging, jerking, and snarling at one other, “Can’t you push any harder?” and “I’m doing my best—can’t you push harder?” Jonah began to have a lot more respect for the tracers. They may have looked scrawny and malnourished—and they were wearing ridiculous clothes and evidently belonged to a culture that hadn’t figured out how to invent the wheel. But they were incredibly strong. In Jonah’s time, they probably would have won several Olympic gold medals for something.

  Jonah couldn’t have said how close they’d gotten to the deserted Indian village—halfway back? Two-thirds of the way?—when the blinding rain began.